Update: getting the rail industry to deliver a fairer ticketing system

Travelling with a bike?
Two adults and two children travelling with their bikes booked on, and you have connections to make?
You end up with so many tickets you could have a pleasant family card game to keep you occupied.
It’s a pleasing distraction from finding that the electronic seat booking system is not working today.
Family with two young children fighting for seats in very busy train is not my idea of ‘letting the train take the strain’. My apologies to those who remember the origins of that phrase. But perhaps I should just use my car!

If you are standing at the South Pole and step forward in any direction you are heading north, so this has to be welcomed in that spirit. It is long overdue, short formation, and not necessarily going all the way, but we should climb aboard and see where we end up.

My first observation is that the document was designed by people who have no conception of the problems of people with poor eyesight or colour definition difficulties. Printing the main text in a feint blue skeletal font is not a good omen for greater clarity in ticket purchasing. Some of the other text is also hard to read being green on a green, or blue on a blue, background.

My second observation is that despite various promises of greater clarity, absence of jargon, and plain English in ticket selling, the vocabulary of the document is not very accessible and the amount of gobbledygook is unbelieveable. Let’s hope the writers of the following section don’t have a role in explaining ticket conditions –

[Proposal] : Customers should have access to a clear and understandable choice of tickets when buying from vending machines . . .
[Action] : RDG will produce a transparent road map of current capability to identify what can be done in the short term.

The document abounds with ‘tools’, ‘road maps’ [even transparent ones] and other management speak and there is complete inconsistency over whether we are passengers or customers.

The proposals are all sensible and in line with what passengers have been grumbling about for years, but it addresses only part of the problem. A faster arrival would be appreciated as some of the actions are already in the long grass awaiting franchise renewals.

I was pleased to see that the facility to buy tickets with seat reservations on-line on the day of travel will be extended to some other operators [it’s only available on CrossCountry at present] and that, most importantly, the current flaw in the CrossCountry process will be rectified. [At the moment it is possible to book a reserved seat on a CC train after it has set off so the joining passenger might have been allocated a seat which is already occupied by a passenger who got on the train earlier when the seat was still unreserved. The new passenger has the right to take the occupied seat and to tip out the person already in it. This has been controversial since it was introduced, especially as the short CC trains are frequently over-crowded on sections of their routes.]

However, the elephant in the room is the basic fares pricing structure and there is no acknowledgment in the document that the elephant will be recognised let alone dealt with in order to make a rational and consistent fares system. The fares pricing structure as it is now dates from the days of British Rail in the 1970’s when they changed from a distance-based tariff to a market yield or demand management model. Each journey is priced according to the level of demand, the standard of service [frequency, speed, calling points, etc], quality of accommodation [newer carriages, electric trains, etc] and attempts to shed overloading to other times of day [this gives rise to the peak/off-peak definition inconsistency across different operators]. Over the years, due to changes in populations, travel to work patterns, travel alternatives, franchising, and massive increases in passenger numbers on some routes, the basic construct of this pricing model has become grossly distorted and now makes almost no sense to anyone outside the industry [and I think even the DfT are frightened of it so ignore it as a problem]. It gives rise to silly situations whereby similar journeys can be priced at wildly different levels. There are fifty different fares for journeys between London and Birmingham. Does off-peak mean when the train departs or when it arrives? – both definitions are in use along with several different starting times even on the same route. Why are passengers on some journeys of thirty miles or more not allowed to buy an off-peak period return but have to buy two singles whereas a day-return is priced at 5p more than a single [but you can book to the next station after your destination, get an off-peak period return at the cheap rate and get off one stop early!]?

The people who preside over this are going to be responsible for the reforms now promised so it is essential that Which? does get stuck in and holds them to account. Vickie asks “Will you work with us and help us find out how well train companies are doing at delivering on this action plan?” Just tell us what you want us to do and I am sure there will be an eager response.

Cheap Day Returns. In my opinion these should be available based on the time that the train arrives at a destination not at the time it leaves the departure station.

If the cheap day starts at 9:30am it should be available on a train that arrives at your destination after 9:30am not at the time of departure.

If the departure is from Bedford and the destination is London St Pancras with a scheduled train journey of 40 mins any train departing Bedford after 8:51am should offer a cheap day ticket.

The current system based on departure arrival times gives preferences those departing from closer to their destinations.

In the current scheme a train leaving Bedford at 9:15am does not allow Bedford passengers a cheap day ticket, however when the same train departs from Luton at 9:31am a luton passenger is entitled to cheap day tickets. So Lutonians arrive in London on Cheap Day at the same time as those from Bedford without a cheap day.

Clear as mud eh!

The return journey in my opinion should be allowed anytime, but I do understand the need to avoid peak commute load times.

When the Edinburgh Gateway station opened earlier in the week it integrated trains and trams. However trains and trams don’t compete for business. Buses and bus companies do however. The integrated transport model in London is excellent, it works and it’s expanding. One Oyster fits all. However London got an integrated transport authority and the rest of the nation got deregulation and so-called competition. It’s not competition when I can’t freely chose a bus company because my ticket isn’t transferable. We have tickets on the rail network that work across train companies, an Oyster in London that works across different underlying bus companies and modes of transport but the rest of the nation is stuck in the transport dark ages. We need a complete rethink of transport across the UK which does not depend on expensive proprietary hardware , uses smartphones and/or contactless bank cards and which works out the smartest fares for our journeys via electronic ticketing with a transaction log, like Oyster online. The very idea of having to print a ticket in 2016 is ridiculous. Only some tickets can be bought online and loaded via an app or printed at home. The rest you have to stand in line at ticket machines with slow printers. If we upgrade how we think about ticketing, how ticketing is delivered and have clear and simpler rules this would be a huge step forward. And of course driverless trains because automatically controlled trains will be able to run closer together, serve more passengers and won’t go on strike. Works for the DLR!

I have just returned from Milan using the railway system in a combination of fares and services both second (standard) and first class. I give the example of the outward travel: the Exeter to London Paddington (2hrs) (317 Km) consisted of a peak hour discounted Senior at £54 standard class (amazing value for UK travel!) a Second class Eurostar to Paris (2h14) from Lon StPan Int of £45 (450Km); a First Class TGV Paris to Strasbourg/Basel £87 (1h45+ 1h20) (600Km); a First class EC Basel to Milan (4h) (550Km)for £75. All these tickets were either exchangeable or refundable (save the UK ones). I ask myself the basic question as to why train fares and services in the UK have to be so much higher and bear unpredictable pricing compared to those available on near mainland Europe from a range of operators and why we have such crowded travel at times with passengers paying such a range of prices depending on when, how, where they purchase and conditions imposed that NO REGULATOR should put up with. I do hope your campaign produces results, though by past experience there appears rather more than inertia and a cultural element at work too.

A recent “viral video” has highlighted an important point. When first class is “declassified” any customer that has paid a first class price should be automatically refunded the difference between the price paid and the equivalent second class fare – in cash, not vouchers.

If a ticket bears the ambiguous term ROUTE: ANY PERMITTED, a Court might hold that this means that any route is permitted.

Re: renationalisation. the Swiss and Japanese railways are widely recognised as the world’s most efficient and are both state-owned. Ditto the French system where investment has been far greater than in Britain. If, as John Ward states the profits are small and the risks are great, why do private companies continue to bid for rail franchises? Answer: they receive huge public subsidies for running largely loss-making services and in the final analysis, can hand back the keys before the end of contract and thus avoid much of the treasury repayments. Steve Clark must have a pretty short memory himself if he believes that BR never offered off-peak fares; not true Steve! And in what way does a fragmented, privately-run rail network preclude the unions ‘bringing the entire network to a standstill’, – it could still happen. As we have seen with the Southern dispute it is often the taxpayer who foots the bill not the train company. As someone old enough to have used rail services during the British rail era as well as more recently, (indeed I have worked in a technical capacity for both BR and two of the private comanies) I am well aware of the failings of both public and private. The only significant difference between them is the enormously inflated costs both to the traveller and the taxpayer of the privatised system. The complex ticketing system which many of you complain about is as a direct result of the involvement of multiple companies and the huge bureaurocracy needed to make it all work together.