Season ticket sales at 7 year low...

[jonny777]

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/dec/30/rail-season-tickets-sales-slide-passengers-shun-rising-travel-costs

 

Presumably, this will lead to even more regular grid-lock on our roads?

 

Not quite the vision railway builders had in mind. 

[Dunsignalling]

It won't be just the prices, though. Many people are working from home two or three days a week nowadays and existing season ticketing doesn't suit their purposes. The lucky ones are on flexi-hours and can travel off peak when they do need to go in.

 

Given that keeping fare rises below inflation would increase passenger loadings (which are already at cattle-truck levels on many routes in the peaks), what is the solution?

 

The uncomfortable truth is that, as with normal tickets, season fares need to be differentially priced through the day according to demand. There also needs to be a carnet type ticket for those who need to travel regularly but not daily, e.g. ten or twelve trips a month.

 

I'm doing my bit by not going anywhere near London by train or road if I can possibly avoid it.

 

John

[jjb1970]

This is one of those stories that can probably be spun any way you like. Are some people being persuaded to find alternative employment or move home because of the cost of rail travel? I'm sure they are (although based on anecdotal evidence I have heard the biggest cause of such changes in recent times has been the Southern trains dispute, not season ticket price hikes) but it is only one part of a much more complex story and I suspect in the overall scheme of things is not what has caused season ticket sales to drop. Within the Greater London area contactless payment seems to have pretty much replaced conventional ticketing (I honestly can't remember the last time I bought a "ticket" to make a journey within the Oyster/contactless zone) and there have been some pretty profound changes in the work place with work from home and flexi-time increasingly common. And is it a bad thing if less people need to travel? I have to say, the trains I use to commute don't seem to have got any less busy.

[robertcwp]

One factor relating to this in London is that the weekly price cap on contactless pay as you go is the same as the cost of a weekly Travelcard for the zones covered, so there is no longer any incentive to buy a weekly ticket if you are in the London Travelcard zone.  Oyster PAYG will have the same weekly cap soon too. Even for annual tickets, it's finely balanced. I don't commute enough days to justify an annual Travelcard but I still have one for two reasons: I use it a fair bit outside of work and it comes with a Gold Card, which gives one third off of off-peak fares in the South East plus I only pay from the boundary of Zone 4.  I think the annual ticket still works out dearer and will be monitoring this during 2018, which might well be my last year of having a season ticket.

 

There has been a huge change in the way people work in my profession in the last few years and I suspect that is true elsewhere too. The days of the regular 5-days a week commute for around 45 weeks of the year are long gone for many people.

[Ian Smeeton]

I think that the increase in flexible/home workin will eventually be the deathnof the annual season ticket.

 

The 'Carnet' or multiple journey ticket is surely the way forwards for those who stll have to travel in peak hours on a regular basis.

 

Regards

 

Ian

[jjb1970]

I think the editorial slant of the linked article is interesting as it is a good example of the way the media invariably reduces stories which are more complex than they appear on the surface to get a click bait headline. Usually in ways which aren't friendly to railways.

[RANGERS]

This is no great surprise considering the advantages offered by contactless. Ultimately the technology is already available, though not being universally applied, to ensure that contactless use can match the lowest fares, even if these are season ticket fares, assuming the usage requirements are met of course. Once a nationwide contactless scheme is in place, the annual ticket is likely to be thing of the past. The system will be capable of tracking your usage and ensuring you only pay the equivalent of the lowest fare. The assumption is that this starts out as the cheapest daily fare, is capped first at the weekly ticket level for usage in a seven day period, then a monthly and ultimately at an annual for a twelve month usage. Whether this is how it ultimately works will of course be a political decision, ensuring everyone pays the lowest fare rather than the present lottery is bound to reduce the revenue and will inevitably upset the financial model the railway is currently built on.

[jjb1970]

Whatever happened to that plan to develop a national rail version of Oyster? It was the future a few years ago. Although even Oyster is a bit yesterday.

[black and decker boy]

Whatever happened to that plan to develop a national rail version of Oyster? It was the future a few years ago. Although even Oyster is a bit yesterday.

DfT

 

By all accounts they didn’t want to pay for a nationwide licence of an Oyster type system so just mandated ITSO smart cards within individual TOCs at franchise renewal. They didn’t make it necessary or facilitate a common back office to link each of these TOC systems so we still have no UK smart card or contactless ticket system.

 

I think the major new regional transport powers, eg TfN & TfWM are looking at systems within their areas that will cover various TOCs. Whether they will link together is another thing entirely

[david.hill64]

Whatever happened to that plan to develop a national rail version of Oyster? It was the future a few years ago. Although even Oyster is a bit yesterday.

 

I think this in part fell foul of banking regulations. Whereas Hong Kong (Octopus), Bangkok (Rabbit), Taiwan (Easy Card) all have cards that are versatile and can be used for small purchases as well as rail travel the finance sector in UK perceived risks of allowing this additional currency in the system.

[david.hill64]

I think that this is confirmation of a trend that has been evident for many months. It is probably a consequence of stiff fare increases and unreliable services, particularly on Southern, as much as changing working patterns. As ghastly as peak time commuting is if you really still have a 9-5 City job, you don't have much alternative though I would be cringing if I had this year's increase to cope with.

 

The Sunday Times yesterday had its regular bleat about 75% of all services being late or cancelled (though they never differentiate between the two) because the 'investigative journalist' has looked at train performance figures and determined that anything that is more than a minute late at any point in the journey is a late train. I have given up responding to the articles even though some readers have liked the alternative explanation.

 

As jjb1970 remarked the other day, the era of fact and rational thinking seems to have passed. A commentator in the grauniad received many 'likes' for asserting that the 3% profit made by the TOCS in one year would be sufficient to electrify the rest of the network (in one year) if the railways were in public ownership.

 

Anyway given the overcrowding suffered by commuters, if these numbers are indeed falling, those that remain will be getting a better deal.

[jjb1970]

I tend to believe commuting is an example of the fact that life is about choices. I work in London because in my line of work nowhere else in the UK offers anything like the opportunities available in London. To find cities with similar opportunities you'd be looking at Singapore, Hong Kong and Hamburg. I live in Milton Keynes because I can afford a nice house and its oft derided roads and layout are great IMO. I could work somewhere else if I gave up the role I have in London. I could live in London if I accepted a very different home to the one I have. I actually had a job where I worked at home for three days a week and spent two days a week in Southampton but home work wasn't my cut of tea, I hated it. So commuting is the result of the choices I've made. I could avoid commuting by train but the work/life opportunities I have make commuting an acceptable part of life. Having made that choice I can't really whine about it. 

[The Stationmaster]

I think the editorial slant of the linked article is interesting as it is a good example of the way the media invariably reduces stories which are more complex than they appear on the surface to get a click bait headline. Usually in ways which aren't friendly to railways.

 

Don't worry - it's even worse in the Daily Mail (which I'm sure comes as an amazing surprise ).

[caradoc]

Regarding season tickets, an interesting snippet in the From the Archives section of this month's Railway Magazine; in 1918 the General Manager of the LB&SCR stated that 'season tickets are issued by railway companies only as an act of grace'. This was in response to an issue about the cost of seasons (nothing ever changes).

[njee20]

Season tickets just dont represent good value for money. I’ve commuted into London for 7 years and never bought one, by the time you factor in annual leave, days off, working from home, the inflexibility means it doesn’t stack up for me.

 

A ‘carnet’ type ticket would be fantastic, I’d definitely support that. I know Southern tested it, but it didn’t work out.

[SwissRailPassion]

I know people who have moved house from Sussex to Bucks in order to save their jobs due to Southerns meltdown. They were risking their chances of promotion by relying on Southern.

They have had to adapt to changes in their working practices too as have most people working in business. The RMT seem to think nothing should change and rail workers should have jobs for ever.

[Kris]

It's been a few years since I purchased a season ticket, at the time I was finding the monthly tickets were great for me. Whilst I could get a train to one of my work places, I don't, it would take me over an hour at best, and at worst would be nearly 2. (The car journey takes 25 minutes). 

[Dunsignalling]

I think this in part fell foul of banking regulations. Whereas Hong Kong (Octopus), Bangkok (Rabbit), Taiwan (Easy Card) all have cards that are versatile and can be used for small purchases as well as rail travel the finance sector in UK perceived risks of allowing this additional currency in the system.

The attitude of the "finance sector" would be reversed overnight if they were the ones who stood to gain from such a product.

 

Just another restrictive practice dreamed up by vested interests.

 

John

Edited January 2, 2018 by Dunsignalling

[njee20]

I know people who have moved house from Sussex to Bucks in order to save their jobs due to Southerns meltdown. They were risking their chances of promotion by relying on Southern.

I’d be stunned if that was the motivation for more than 10 people frankly, it’s hardly common. Makes for a good story though.

[The Stationmaster]

Season tickets just dont represent good value for money. I’ve commuted into London for 7 years and never bought one, by the time you factor in annual leave, days off, working from home, the inflexibility means it doesn’t stack up for me.

 

A ‘carnet’ type ticket would be fantastic, I’d definitely support that. I know Southern tested it, but it didn’t work out.

 

They represent good value provided you work 5 days a week consistently and thus use the ticket for at least 5days every week.  Leave only becomes a factor if you don't know about it in time to order your season ticket renewal to match your leave dates although odd days off and working from home do of course lose you value.  It all depends really on the level of discount the season gives compared with the alternative costs of travelling at the times of day at which you travel factored against the number of days per week on which you use it.

 

However if you don't travel daily than a carnet would be a good idea but I have a suspicion that it might not offer the same level of discount for peak period travel as a season ticket does. 

[hmrspaul]

One aspect mentioned locally is that it is not possible to purchase season tickets from the ticket machines which are breeding freely. {this info could be incorrect it is part of a campaign to keep a ticket office at York station, which appears to have been partially successful}

 

There was a carnet system on the East Coast mainline - I think in the National Express years. My ladies office found them very useful when they needed to regularly travel to London, without having much time to pre-order tickets and to travel on any peak time train. They may even still exist hidden away (and not of interest to use retirees )

 

Paul

Edited January 2, 2018 by hmrspaul

[royaloak]

If the sale of season tickets is so much lower why are the peak hour trains still as full as they ever were?

[caradoc]

When I sold tickets (some time ago now, to be fair), the price per day became lower as the period of the ticket became longer; A weekly season cost less than 5 separate tickets, a monthly season worked out less per day than a weekly, and similarly with a three-monthly compared to monthly, and annual compared to three-monthly. It was also possible to buy seasons for any period over a month, for which we had a large book giving the scale of charges, and therefore they could be fitted around passengers' individual needs. However, as Stationmaster says, these were all designed for people working Monday to Friday, and in today's world some form of carnet system is certainly needed.

[royaloak]

I know people who have moved house from Sussex to Bucks in order to save their jobs due to Southerns meltdown. They were risking their chances of promotion by relying on Southern.

They have had to adapt to changes in their working practices too as have most people working in business. The RMT seem to think nothing should change and rail workers should have jobs for ever.

Well done on getting the usual pro DOO rubbish in there, I just hope you are never on a DOO train when the driver is incapacitated, then you would see some of the value of a properly trained guard, but I suppose in your world all they dois check tickets or hide in the back cab!

[jjb1970]

One aspect mentioned locally is that it is not possible to purchase season tickets from the ticket machines which are breeding freely. {this info could be incorrect it is part of a campaign to keep a ticket office at York station, which appears to have been partially successful}

 

There was a carnet system on the East Coast mainline - I think in the National Express years. My ladies office found them very useful when they needed to regularly travel to London, without having much time to pre-order tickets and to travel on any peak time train. They may even still exist hidden away (and not of interest to use retirees

 

Paul

 

Ticket machines sell weekly tickets, but anything long than a week and you need to go elsewhere. Well, that's the way it works in the stations I use.