How much?!

Thursday 14th September 2023

I’ve been in Manchester over the last couple of days attending the Public Transport in the North of England conference organised by Modern Railways and Buses magazines both part of Key Publishing and before that, Ian Allan.

I’ll write about the conference itself on Saturday but for now I just want to have another rant about Britain’s crazy rail ticket pricing regime.

I needed to travel up to Manchester on Monday afternoon so I’d be ready for the early start of the conference on Tuesday morning. As I wasn’t sure when a lunch time appointment in central London would finish on Monday nor when I’d be ready to return home on Wednesday afternoon I wanted the flexibility of an off-peak return rather than buying advanced tickets and restricting myself to specific timed departures.

After all, the London Manchester corridor now enjoys a 20 minute frequency once more following the Covid and staff shortage hiatus so it’s very much a “walk up and travel” railway.

Leaving Euston mid afternoon seemed ideal, taking one of the three departures from Euston between 15:00 and 16:00, ie 15:13, 15:33 or 15:53, having travelled up to London from Hassocks, my home station on the Brighton Main Line, during the morning for my lunch appointment.

Guess how much the return ticket from Hassocks to Manchester is for that journey?

Space for your guess.

A staggering £291.15.

I checked to make sure I’d entered my Senior Railcard to get the third off discount.

I had.

Without a Railcard (or if I was aged between 30 and 59 travelling alone for whom there’s no Railcard option) it would cost a whopping ………. £441.20.

That’s simply outrageous.

I had to check I hadn’t inadvertently specified first class.

I hadn’t.

That would have been ………. £600.20.

This is for a journey leaving Euston in the middle of the afternoon, at 15:13 and returning another day in the afternoon from Manchester.

It’s unbelievable. Since when was 15:13 regarded as peak time travel?

For many years, it would seem.

You see, an off-peak return means passengers can only leave Euston for Manchester on trains departing between 09:33 and 14:53 and then again from 18:53 to 22:03. Travel on those trains and an off-peak return costs £123.60 without a Railcard or £81.55 with a Railcard which strikes me as a much more reasonable price.

But even that involves oddities including the fact even though it’s an off-peak return I can leave Hassocks slap bang in the middle of the morning peak at say 07:30 – the off-peak time restriction only applies from Euston (specified as “after 09:26”).

Which means a single leg journey to Manchester with a railcard costs £40.77 (half the return price of £81.55) and £40.77 back again, whereas if I just wanted to travel from Hassocks to Victoria at 07:30 on Southern or Gatwick Express and return in the afternoon it would cost me £54.30 for a non Railcard Anytime return as Railcards aren’t valid at that time of the morning for journeys wholly within the Network Card area.

It does seem odd I can crowd out a peak hour train on the Brighton Main Line (not that they’re as busy as they once were) but not leave Euston in the middle of the afternoon with the same ticket.

Avanti West Coast removed all time restrictions on tickets on Fridays some time ago which was a very welcome move and presumably reflects the lack of ‘business travellers’ that day and the desire to encourage leisure travellers to spread their journeys over a three day (Friday to Sunday) weekend.

Post Covid, the same logic applies to Mondays to Thursdays with the boom in leisure travel being suppressed by these Byzantine pricing policies left over from a different era.

I managed to cut my lunch appointment short to get to Euston in time for the 14:53 departure and therefore travel ‘off-peak’. I expected it to be quite busy with passengers seeking to avoid the financial penalty of catching the next ‘peak hour’ departure at 15:13.

But no. I took a walk through the train after we left Euston and it was only around 20% full as evidenced by coach D for example.

If that’s the 14:53 I dread to think how empty the 15:13 must have been – the one you need to consult your financial advisor before buying a ticket.

If the railway was being run with a commercial led approach to encourage passengers and maximise revenue these crazy pricing and time restrictions would be swiftly ended.

But it’s not. It’s being run into the ground by a fatal combination of Treasury and DfT incompetence with seemingly no interest in its long term prosperity.

Furthermore decision makers don’t pay for their own travel by train enjoying either free travel as railway employees or on an expense account if civil servants or Ministers travelling in the course of their work.

And it’s not just Euston.

If a passenger uses the ‘Any Permitted’ route options and leaves from other London termini they’ll find the same 15:00 restriction applies for journeys out of Kings Cross with a 15:15 time limit at neighbouring St Pancras. There’s a slightly more acceptable 16:00 from Marylebone and even better from Liverpool Street with a 16:28 time limit and 16:40 from Paddington. Obviously journeys take much longer by these more indirect routes.

Still, I’m sure this will all be sorted when the much promised ‘rail ticket reform’ is introduced.

Oh look – I just spotted a pig flying over there.

Roger French

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS

41 thoughts on “How much?!”

  1. Roger,

    Using ‘Split My Fare’ a journey this afternoon from Hassocks to Manchester costs between £48.85 and £114.53 with a Senior Railcard. I don’t use Rail Operators’ own web booking sites anymore unless it’s Govia for a local journey or TfL Travelcard (whilst they exist until late January)

    I agree that train fares are generally madness!

    Alec

    Liked by 1 person

  2. The emptiness of the trains suggests there is overprovision, leading to high costs and therefore high fares. Moving fresh air and empty seats around the country at up to 125mph doesn’t come cheap.

    Chris B

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Yeah, I’ve taken “peak hour” departures from Euston to Birmingham and there have been two or three of us in a entire standard class coach. Even on days when Avanti was at rock bottom and running hourly to Birmingham and Manchester I’ve always been able to get a seat. There is huge over-capacity on that line now.

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    2. When there is an over supply of any product, conventional economic theory (demand / supply curves etc) suggests that the price falls. The DfT intervention in this market is to maintain a higher price. It makes no sense at any level.

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  3. The Railways are pricing themselves out of the market and there is now a lot of spare capacity. Covid has changed working practices. A lot of meetings are now held on line and a lot of people now only go into the office a few days a week leaving a lot of excess capacity

    The Railways need to accept that travel patterns have changed a

    Liked by 2 people

  4. ScotRail is abolishing Pek Hour restrictions this winter

    The six-month pilot will allow customers to travel all day on off-peak fares from Monday, October 2, until the end of March 2024.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Some years ago (pre-Avanti) I had to travel from Ipswich to Manchester, leaving Ipswich at around 8.30am. I booked using Greater Anglia’s website, and the price was an incredibly reasonable £20. Out of interest, I checked to see how much a single to Liverpool Street – on the same train – would cost. The answer – £26. So Greater Anglia were effectively paying me £6 to travel for Liverpool Street to Euston and on to Manchester. Bonkers.

    Andrew Kleissner.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. I think we’ve all got examples of the utter madness, but here’s a few I’ve run into this year:
    – coming back from Salisbury to London it is cheaper to buy advanced tickets on two mid afternoon trains than an open single.
    – from Euston to Wales it is almost always cheaper to split the ticket on the outward leg at Birmingham and most times on the return leg as well. That’s assuming you can actually buy a ticket right the way through, for much of the last year the combo of Avanti and TfW’s issues has meant they’ve not been on sale until the week before.
    – If I travel from London to Hereford to see my folks, on Mondays to Thursdays its better to go out with GWR, on Fridays because of Avanti’s abolition of morning peak its better to go via Birmingham.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Hi Roger,

    In mid August I booked a ticket for two of us to travel from Manchester to Edinburgh last weekend., leaving early afternoon on Thursday. After negotiating the TPE website’s attempt to sell two Advance Singles rather than a cheaper off peak return, it refused to allocate us two seats together, telling me no pairs of seats were available. I tried First Class and got the same message. I then tried the Avanti website, which offered seats together in Standard Class on the same TPE train, which I booked. The train was far from full. The same was true on the return journey last Monday.

    On the outbound journey the train was cancelled at Carlisle with no prior warning, causing great confusion as it was full of noisy school kids who had boarded at Penrith and made it very hard to hear the announcement. When I tried to claim through Delay Repay, the TPE website insisted I claim through Avanti, as they sold the ticket. Avanti rejected the claim as it related to a TPE train, though admittedly seem to have transferred it to TPE to process.

    I think this illustrates:
    1. train operators’ enthusiasm for selling more expensive single tickets and steering customers away from off peak returns (apparently in breach of their obligation to provide impartial advice)
    2. The online seat reservation system offered by some operators doesn’t work (I’ve found Cross Country to be an honourable exception as were Virgin in pre-Avanti days)
    3. The Delay Repay system is Byzantine in its working. Why can’t there be a single system for all operators with the claim automatically directed to the TOC responsible for the delay?

    I am reasonably computer literate, a regular public transport user and I have a PhD in public transport pricing. If I find it that difficult what hope to most people have in getting what they need at a sensible price! And they say there is no need for ticket offices……..

    Simon

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Roger, Even crazier, an Anytime return to most suburban stations in Manchester such as Salford Crescent or Eccles from Hassocks is “only” £145.55 and, of course, valid for break of journey at Piccadilly. Jim Davies

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  12. One small correction – that ‘peak’ time restriction you mention of 1600 at Marylebone is a super-off peak restriction – currently you can use off-peak tickets throughout the pm period. There is no peak pm restricted travel period currently from that station.

    However, I understand that the DfT have forced Chiltern to accept a peak restriction from this December, and yes, it will start at 1600.

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  13. If you are starting from London rather than Hassocks, then a St Pancras to Manchester “via Chesterfield” Super Off-Peak Return (SSR) is valid till the 1532 departure at a couple of quid less than the Euston price, while an Off-Peak Return (SVR) is 50% more and valid on the 1602 and 1632. It does take an hour longer and needs a change, but avoids the Euston – Manchesteri fare, where an anytime return is 3.56 times an off-peak return.

    Frankfrog

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  14. I purchased an off peak single for my wife to travel from Paddington to Cogan £54.90. Unfortunately, she couldn’t get to Paddington to get the 1448, the last train for super off peak but got there in time for the 1718. She went to the ticket office to upgrade and was charged £85.90 extra

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    1. No longer any flights between London and Manchester is one reason as trains no longer need to compete with airlines.
      I always book through raileasy as give you split fares taking a small amount for themselves.
      Get to raileasy using Quidcp and currently you get 1.6% back into your Quidco account.

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  16. Totally bonkers. I don’t see how you can absolve the private operators however. The ticketing system before the pandemic meltdown was Byzantine enough. What we have now is the worst of all possible worlds. A private sector who have failed are in collusion with a government that couldn’t care less about public transport and whose incompetence is infecting every area of our country. Take a look at commercial pricing in the airline sector. It’s hardly customer friendly and depends on conning people with drip pricing to maximise extortion potential.

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  17. The insanely high West Coast fares were introduced by Virgin Trains immediately after privatisation when TOCs had freedom to do silly things with fares; at the same as VT were hiking prices into the stratosphere, Central Trains were reducing what were then called cheap day returns to £4.90 or £9.90 to break the psychological £5 and £10 barriers. On CT we then had to field (justifiable) complaints from passengers who were unhappy that their journey (priced by VT even for CT trains) was some stupid price where the next town along (priced by us) had a £4.90 or £9.90 CDR.

    So your atrociously high fares on the West Coast are a benefit of privatisation and the Branson regime’s attempt to screw everyone who couldn’t book weeks in advance for airline-walk-up-money-no-object levels of pricing.

    Any commercial business would of course long since have reduced those fares, but this is the railway where the heavy hand of the DfT stops any useful innovation or anything genuinely customer-focused and the politicians like to have an industry ready to act as a whipping boy.

    A retired railwayman

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  18. @Frankfog

    But you really, really don’t want to use the ‘fast’ train between Chesterfield and Piccadilly. It is invariably an ancient 2 or 4 coach thing run by EMR that is often 2 coaches (Norwich to Liverpool), is filthy, has no working toilets, is dangerously overcrowded, and is often cancelled.

    This ruote could easily handle a full intercity 9 or 10 ciach train and would still be busy so long as the pricing was not ridiculous.

    I live in Nottingham and need to get to Liverpool to see my aged parents. I travel via Crewe instead. Splitting the ticket is cheaper, the journey is longer, though more reliable, and usually less busy and of a higher quality. Getting the cheapest fare for this route though can be a thing from nightmares.

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    1. I wasn’t saying that London – Manchester via Chesterfield would be reliable or comfortable, just that it was possible to use a cheaper ticket if you needed to travel at a particular time.

      When I’ve been in Nottingham lately, all the Liverpools have been 4 car. I find EMR’s 158’s cramped but OK, and they have more seats than the 170’s now running to Crewe.

      Frankfrog

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  20. No problem with rail tickets. Saver return to Stafford then 4 in 8 Coast and Peaks allowed me travel via Warrington, even went to Liverpool by Arriva buses then caught train to Manchester.
    The problem came Tuesday morning when I attempted to buy all day Tram and Bus ticket at Victoria tram stop. Machine only issued off peak version of ticket. Security chap said go to Shudehill travel centre which opened 7am. We don’t sell those buy it at tram stop. Website had two tickets same price of £9.50 (System One and Get me there) and it incorrectly stated you needed a photocard. Gave you but every cloud has silver lining it enabled me use the to appreciate the challenges of catching Salford bound 36 and 37 buses at Piccadilly during morning peak!

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  21. Roger – “decision makers don’t pay for their own travel by train enjoying either free travel as railway employees or on an expense account if civil servants”

    Are those swipes at railway employees and civil servants justified?

    Are you sure railway employees get free (unlimited) travel? I thought they did get a sizeable discount, but did not travel free. I could be mistaken.

    As for civil servants, I hope you aren’t suggesting that no civil servant involved in railways uses the railway other than for business journeys (paid for on expenses)? If you are, I will respectfully suggest you are wide of the mark. But in any case, civil servants are not the decision-makers, they are acting on the directions issued to them by ministers.

    Blame for the sky-high fares on Britain’s rail network falls partly upon those who privatised it with “light-touch” regulation (only certain fare types were protected), and with an approach of treating the franchises as a business opportunity for the successful bidders to go and make money from through the farebox. Where rail franchise operators have hiked the fares to squeeze more money out of passengers to please their shareholders, they have done so because the franchising system has enabled them (maybe even encouraged them) to do so. Blame also falls upon governments (politicians) that have chosen to push (regulated) fares up at above the rate of inflation. Could these by any chance be the same governments that have chosen to freeze fuel tax for motorists since 2010, and recently cut air passenger duty for domestic flights?

    Malc M

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    1. Think you’re mistaking it a bit.

      Roger said “Furthermore decision makers don’t pay for their own travel by train enjoying either free travel as railway employees or on an expense account if civil servants or Ministers travelling in the course of their work.”

      The key point that Roger makes is about the DECISION MAKERS – he’s not referring to just any employee or civil servant. He’s talking about those in elevated positions who make the fundamental decisions about pricing policy. They probably are enjoying free travel.

      BW2

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  22. Meanwhile you get on a bus, and the worst that can happen is you pay two pounds. Incredible refreshing to have such simplicity.

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    1. Or you get on a bus expecting to pay £2 only to discover that it’s one of those companies (such as Roger’s mates at Vectare) who aren’t taking part in the scheme so your fare is rather higher.

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  23. A train costs pretty much the same to operate whether it is empty of full
    There has to be better to manage demand then the over complex and ineffective pricing system they use now that frequently leaves trains half empty

    The other issue i the crazy costs of building new infrastructure and the excessively high operating costs

    Given how much costs have fallen since the days of steam you wonder why they are so high

    Steam locomotives needed a crew of two., They constantly needed to be filled with water and at least a couple of times a day need to be filled with coal. They needed intensive maintenance and turntable to turn them round. Large Engine depots were need all over the country

    The signalling was mechanical and needed signal boxes every mile or so. The track was bolted together and held in place with wooden wedges that need to be constantly checked

    How do you drive down costs? The cost of new station which in most cases are very basic is just crazy. In most cases it should be possible to build a new station within few months. The elapsed time may be a lot longer because a lot of the work would ned to be done whilst the line was closed

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  24. Allowing the off-peak ticket to be used from Hassocks does make some sense and helps reduce the “split ticket” problem. If you couldn’t start from Hassocks until 0930 but still had to fit into Euston’s off-peak hours it would leave a very narrow window to travel in. The occasional extra passenger from Hassocks in the morning peak really isn’t going to affect overall crowding to any noticeable extent.

    I’m not sure decision-makers not paying for travel themselves is relevant. Would you really want them setting fares in their own self-interest? We’ve had far too much self-interest in other aspects of public policy lately!

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  25. Know the feeling. Wanted to leave Swanwick to go to London Victoria & return next day. Over £50 return. A bit more digging & got an Advance single each way in peak for £6 each!

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  26. As someone has said above, Virgin started all this nonsense when they turned the WCML into a ground hugging airline.

    All this advance booking for “cheap” fares is a scam paid for by price gouging on the anytime fares. I’m thankful that I have no reason to travel long distances by rail these days. I think back to simpler times when we had a walk up railway. All my childhood holidays involved us turning up at our local station on the day and my Dad buying our return tickets then and there.

    The thought of having to go on a TOC website, trawl through the available trains and noting how the price drops just after the latest convenient train I need, acts as a mental barrier to travel. Do I really need to go I ask, not really I reply, so I don’t.

    Peter Brown

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  27. I think most people understand that sometimes trains are crowded and you may even have to stand, and other times you get a seat. But people will tolerate that for a simple fare system. Rather than one that somehow tries to optimise everything so there are always the same number of seats as passengers.

    And especially noting given Roger’s pictures of near-empty carriages, the optimisation algorithms are clearly not working anyway.

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  28. The mad thing is that even when Virgin started this nonsense, long before covid, many of their peak trains ran around largely empty.

    Network South East had a much more sensible approach of offering discounted fares all day going out of London on longer distance routes. Actually the root of many split ticket savings.

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  29. Not hard to see why we now have three competing Coach companies managing to survive and profit. And always a guaranteed seat!

    Terence Uden

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    1. Excellent news FirstGroup have the option of operating the West Coast Mainline for up to 9 years and will no doubt build on the progress made on the erstwhile franchise this year. This is a very welcome deal for both FirstGroup PLC & the UK tax payer and will no doubt prove dividends to those of us who both invest and use the company regularly and have witnessed the improvements the company has made this year.l

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        1. No doubt few Daily Mail readers actually use Avanti West Coast preferring thier Chelsea Tractors. As someone who regularly uses Avanti from Sandwell & Dudley there has been a marked improvement in its reliability and punctuality in recent months. I fully support the award of the franchise for up to 9 years and will potentially bring stability to the service.

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  31. Rotala PLC who are a major operator in the North West have today issued a statement to the City that they have received an approach of an offer from a number of Directors of the PLC to take the Company private at a sum of 63p per share.

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