Bagging a better deal on train tickets – what are your tactics?

There’s also a whole range of “alternative” journeys that Trainsplit finds that other web sites don’t show. For example don’t take a Virgin Manchester train if you have to be there early, take a Liverpool train and change at Stafford. You can save £70 single. There’s other ways to save by taking advantage of what inter TOC competition there is. It finds a range of unique, cheaper journey options and should definitely be checked before buying elsewhere if you want to save money. Just like buying anything else, consumers need to shop around for the best fares, in the past fares were all the same but they very definitely are not now.

I tend to break my journey up which makes it cheaper
Arriva have lost their contract and the delays and state on some of their older stock
Is disgusting

I wonder whether it is possible to illustrate to buyers of rail tickets just what a rip off their ticket might be? One way I could envisage is if the cost per mile is stated on the ticket. From there if there were “standard” lookup tables of typical UK journeys (say on line or printed sheets at the booking office) the passenger would then be in a position to understand how much he is paying compared with other journeys. This would be particularly interesting if the list compared other European countries too. Googling “cost per mile European railways” shows many good illustrations of how we in the UK are ripped off – or the good(?) reasons as to why we have to pay so much.

Perhaps over months/years the TOCs and the Government would start to take action to improve the fare structures if travellers could really compare prices. I want to be charged a standard pence per mile throughout the UK – and to know that it is a fair price. Like the British tax system rail ticket pricing is deliberately made as complex as possible to ensure a total fogging to the travelling public. There may be many ways to “get a bargain” but let’s start with a standardised and simple baseline.

Many European countries subsidise their railways substantially more than the UK. An average train ticket costs around 20p a mile. Buying and running your car costs around £1 a mile. Rail fares do not seem too bad. I’d be happy to subsidise freight to get heavier vehicles off our roads.

They always mention they are spending more to improve the services. What are they improving?
Peak times they put on 4 carriages , everyone is jammed packed into the carriage and more are trying to squeeze in. In the afternoon when hardly anyone is rushing to work they have 8 carriages.
Come on, let’s use some common sense .

Like all the privatisation’s all they are interested in is making the maximum profit at the expense of the travelling public who they do not give a dam about. It is an on going scandal that some of the rip off profits go to ‘state owed’ railways in other countries. The only way to get the foreign interests out of our railways is to re-nationalise it as a single entity by bringing back ‘British Rail’ It has been the public taxpayer that has payed through the nose for every privatisation including power, water, transport, telephones including overpriced shoddy broadband. With the Corillion scandal the chickens have now well and truly come home to roost, and urgent change is needed. Privatisation was the biggest theft in history.

TOC declared profits average 3% http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/83871.aspx. That does not seem like a “rip off”.

I can’t see why all you commuters keep on whining, if you get a train at 8am when everybody else wants to get on then you will always have problems. They have the same problem in other countries, UK is not alone. I don’t know if the New York subway has been cleaned up in the last thirty odd years, but the first time I went there I asked where the subway was, “It’s in the cellar, just follow your nose!” It smelt like a Bombay urinal! In Wall Street It was not uncommon to see city bankers urinating onto the tracks, even Millwall supporters didn’t do that!
In the mid 70’s I used to commute out of London to Chelmsford and it was quite entertaining to see the all the noses squashed against the windows on trains going into London. With the advent of computers things seem to have got worse. As many people seem to come into London to sit in front a screen, why not build regional computer centres, or work from home, improve the infrastructure, get wideband, or whatever todays fancy name is, countrywide, it is much cheaper to dig up the pavement than to spend vast sums on things like HS2, who wants to get to Birmingham ten minutes faster anyway?
If the worst predictions of global warming ever come to pass, whoever comes up with a way to install artificial gills in people will make a fortune, either that, or it will be standing room only worldwide!

Although you mention that you must go via stations listed on a split ticket, note carefully that the train must STOP at these stations. This nicety ensures that you could get off the train there (to complete one leg of your journey) and immediately get back on (to start the next). Though as you rightly say, you don’t have to do this.

The most effective method is to boycott Southern, but as many would not agree due to having no other commuting alternatives,Southern will just continue to rip us all off whilst chuckling at us in their” bored” rooms! my alternative is by bus, only it isn’t time reliable for connections from Elephant & Castle to London Bridge. On the return journey approx. 16:00- 17:00,DistrictLline from Cannon St & Overground From Highbury & Islington to S.E are pretty Reliable with not much more than a 5 min wait, normal av. 2-3 mins