Government to scrap return tickets!!

[MyRule1]

13 hours ago, woodenhead said:

As always the devil is in the detail, we will have to wait and see what comes.

 

 

Exactly, this especially applies in the commuter area around London, taking Harlow Town as an example, for a return journey to Liverpool Street today I can buy:

 

Two singles @£15.10 each  - £30.20

Super off peak - £16.10

Off Peak (same day) - £16.20

Off peak (one month) - £22.30

Anytime day return - £23.30

 

plus a variety of Travel cards

 

In addition Greater Anglia, at the moment, are offering the Hare Fare return at £10.

 

I agree this is confusing but where do you set the new base figure for a single ticket?

 

 

Also I would be happy for a credit/debit card system but London Underground has shown that these don't work with railcards so, I have to have a Oyster Card for travel in London, i do this so infrequently that I have loaned TFL around £7 interest free for around 10 years! As a journey to London now involve changing onto the Central or Elizabeth line at Stratford I don't want the hassle of moving from one ticketless payment to another as I change trains.

 

but we need to wait for the details, which I guess might be after the next general election, broad statements get votes, the detail can lose them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[woodenhead]

5 minutes ago, MyRule1 said:

Exactly, this especially applies in the commuter area around London, taking Harlow Town as an example, for a return journey to Liverpool Street today I can buy:

 

Two singles @£15.10 each  - £30.20

Super off peak - £16.10

Off Peak (same day) - £16.20

Off peak (one month) - £22.30

Anytime day return - £23.30

 

plus a variety of Travel cards

 

In addition Greater Anglia, at the moment, are offering the Hare Fare return at £10.

 

I agree this is confusing but where do you set the new base figure for a single ticket?

 

 

Also I would be happy for a credit/debit card system but London Underground has shown that these don't work with railcards so, I have to have a Oyster Card for travel in London, i do this so infrequently that I have loaned TFL around £7 interest free for around 10 years! As a journey to London now involve changing onto the Central or Elizabeth line at Stratford I don't want the hassle of moving from one ticketless payment to another as I change trains.

 

but we need to wait for the details, which I guess might be after the next general election, broad statements get votes, the detail can lose them.

 

Given what they've said around £11 for a single, it's those off peak and travel card conundrums that we need to understand and ultimately what is driving the change.

 

Oyster doesn't have to be pre-pay, so no giving TFL anything upfront.

 

I did mine using my credit card and just flashed my contactless card at the barriers to entry/exit.

[The Stationmaster]

15 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Headline sounds worse that the reality though

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/return-train-tickets-scrapped-government-26161963#comments-wrapper

 

Sounds like a method to go with more Oyster fares where you pay for the journey undertaken not the whole trip.

 

The only concern might be if the new single prices begin to creep up.

I don't know who wrote that piece but it sounds moronic!  An ordinary return ticket always used to be double the single fare but that changed in the 1970s when market pricing came in, mileage based fares went and in many cases a return worked out cheaper than buying two singles.  So the whole piece could mean any one of several different things - such as an increase in ordinary return fares or a reduced price for some singles.  

 

Best thing is to ignore it and see if the Minsiter talks anything approximating to sense or reality (well you never know!!!)

[black and decker boy]

1 hour ago, Mike_Walker said:

Sadly there appears to be a general assumption within government and local authorities that everyone has either a smartphone or internet access.  

 

In our village we have a guy who refuses to have anything to do with such things and has a small gardening business.  This generates green waste that he needs to take to the local dump and because he's a "business" he has to have a license.  When we were still under a District Council he could go to the office in Wycombe each year hand over cash and get his license.  Now we are under the unitary Buckinghamshire Council he can only do it on line.  "But I don't do the internet" he protests. "Then you can't have a license" comes the reply.  In frustration he tells the council he will fly-dump it (no intention of doing so of course) which resulted in him being told if he did it was a criminal offence.  Protestations that he just wanted to be legal and have a license fell on deaf ears.  Eventually, he got a neighbour to do it for him.

 

It is this form of disenfranchising that will harm the railways if this plan goes ahead.  After all, a large proportion of those that don't have smartphones or internet are those that use the railways.

 

We live in a world where the politicians of all colours are totally divorced from the lives of the majority the purport to "serve".

I think the majority do have a smart phone OR an internet account. A very small minority won’t have either.

 

in my extended friends& family, only my wife’s 99yr old grandma has neither. All others, incl many 70 + have both. For anything needing a WWW connection, the family do it for her.

 

Tickets will be available at station ticket machines in some form too (detail awaited).

[Pete the Elaner]

"Among the changes, the price of two singles will equate to the price of a return on the same journey - meaning there will be no need for a return ticket."

 

What exactly does this mean? An ordinary return has simply been 2 singles for as long as I can remember. These are the tickets commuters have to buy for travel during peak hours. It is only when considering tickets like cheap day returns that things get cheaper.

So if considering ordinary returns, they are already the price of 2 singles.

[njee20]

15 hours ago, John M Upton said:

Don't get me started on the QR code tickets though, I said before they were introduced back when I was a Guard that they were going to provide an absolute field day for fare evasion, nobody listened, I was right....

 

Ignoring the fact that's irrelevant here. What's your source for that? I see both being checked, but paper tickets it tends to be no more than a cursory glance that you are holding one, whilst a QR code is actually validated.

 

2 hours ago, Mike_Walker said:

Personally, whilst I have internet banking via my computer at home, I refuse to have it on my phone in case I lose it or have it stolen.

Your phone is immeasurably more secure than your computer!

[JohnR]

Needless to say, a lot of ill informed media stories creating a lot of panic.

 

this has been trialled extensively on LNER since 2019. Evidence from the trial.is that passengers overall save money, and ridership has increased as a result. The system is essentially the European model, so singles that cost £1 less than the return are being scrapped and replaced with one's that cost half the price of the return.

 

while there remains much more work to be done in care reform, this should be welcomed, providing benefits to passengers and operators alike.

 

i suggest people read comments on this by actual experts, such as Mark Smith (aka The man in seat 61).

 

[The Stationmaster]

12 minutes ago, Pete the Elaner said:

"Among the changes, the price of two singles will equate to the price of a return on the same journey - meaning there will be no need for a return ticket."

 

What exactly does this mean? An ordinary return has simply been 2 singles for as long as I can remember. These are the tickets commuters have to buy for travel during peak hours. It is only when considering tickets like cheap day returns that things get cheaper.

So if considering ordinary returns, they are already the price of 2 singles.

Not necessarily.  An ordinary return e was only double the single ticket price until BR abolished mileage badsed fares back u in teh 1970s - c.50 years ago.  Market pricing replaced mileah ge based fares anfd effectively broke the relationship between single and return fares although there might still be instances where the ordinary return fare is twice the ordinary single fare.

 

8 minutes ago, njee20 said:

 

Ignoring the fact that's irrelevant here. What's your source for that? I see both being checked, but paper tickets it tends to be no more than a cursory glance that you are holding one, whilst a QR code is actually validated.

 

So what happens if - as on countless trains serbving unstaffed stations - the QR code isn't validated?  Revenue pritection on the DafT led railway is an even worse joke than it was in the very worst of BR days let alone the fact that some privatised TOCs regarded it as an irrelevance.    I travelled up to London a few weeks back and throughput both my outward and return journeys nobody asked to see my ticket and the only barriers I passed through were at Paddington and had been left open all day - presumably because staff weren't available to supervise them.

 

If DafT and their puppeteers want to get in more revenue on teh railway they could start by actually trying to collect and s ensure that passengers have valid tickets.

[woodenhead]

14 minutes ago, njee20 said:

 

Your phone is immeasurably more secure than your computer!

Whilst in your possession, whilst on a vpn and subject to good security - facial logon is not the best unless you've set it up to not work when your eyes are shut!!

[Pete the Elaner]

2 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

 

If DafT and their puppeteers want to get in more revenue on teh railway they could start by actually trying to collect and s ensure that passengers have valid tickets.

 

Revenue protection is getting more difficult with the increase of driver only operation & reduction of station staff (& therefore nobody to supervise barriers), which are a large part of what the current strikes are about.

[Reorte]

2 hours ago, MyRule1 said:

Also I would be happy for a credit/debit card system but London Underground has shown that these don't work with railcards so, I have to have a Oyster Card for travel in London, i do this so infrequently that I have loaned TFL around £7 interest free for around 10 years! As a journey to London now involve changing onto the Central or Elizabeth line at Stratford I don't want the hassle of moving from one ticketless payment to another as I change trains.

 If it ends up as being part of a move so that everything is on the same ticketless system that would be a definite positive. Just as long as existing options aren't removed.

[Mike_Walker]

1 hour ago, black and decker boy said:

Tickets will be available at station ticket machines in some form too (detail awaited).

As someone pointed out to me recently, ticket machines don't offer the whole range of tickets including Eurostar for example.  Presumably you are happy to bar those who do not have a smartphone or internet access from using the railway and other services.  Your family might be 99% connected but a larger "minority" than you might think aren't for various reasons, not always just personal choice.

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, Mike_Walker said:

Personally, whilst I have internet banking via my computer at home, I refuse to have it on my phone in case I lose it or have it stolen.

I have the same concerns, coupled with difficulty due to my age in entering data on a small touch screen, and I don't trust these biometric "safeguards" like face recogniition, which in my experience has trouble recognising me.

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, MyRule1 said:

but we need to wait for the details, which I guess might be after the next general election, broad statements get votes, the detail can lose them.

 

I think this is likely the case, what we will get is a woolly announcement.  Implementation deferred while some committee sits on the details.  Change of government at a General Election and another completely new policy announcement from the next lot, probably equally vague.

There is a good chance we will see more of the Great British Railways branding though - it's easier to change letterhead, repaint stations or rolling stock than to revise the fare structure.

 

Cynic?  Moi?

[Michael Hodgson]

52 minutes ago, njee20 said:

Your phone is immeasurably more secure than your computer!

 

That's because its battery is flat again.

[Reorte]

24 minutes ago, Mike_Walker said:

As someone pointed out to me recently, ticket machines don't offer the whole range of tickets including Eurostar for example.  Presumably you are happy to bar those who do not have a smartphone or internet access from using the railway and other services.  Your family might be 99% connected but a larger "minority" than you might think aren't for various reasons, not always just personal choice.

In my limited experience of them they're also slow and unreliable, if they're working at all. I've had one refuse to sell me a valid ticket - next train arrives in five minutes, and it's the last peak time train, so it's decided it can't sell me a ticket for that one, only the first off peak one, which of course wouldn't be valid on the train I need to catch. Fortunately the guard (so far) never seems to care about such things and will happily sell a ticket still on the train, no questions asked. For now.

[Arun Sharma]

I assume that the driver for all this process is to so simplyfy the fare/ticketing system that a simple machine in the station selling a very small range of ticketing types will enable the displacement of all ticket office staff into redundancy or reallocation to new duties. 

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by Arun Sharma

[Mike_Walker]

1 minute ago, Arun Sharma said:

I assume that the driver for all this process is to so simplyfy the fare/ticketing system that a simple machine in the station selling a very small range of ticketing types will enable the displacement of all ticket office staff into redundancy or reallocation of new duties. 

 

Perhaps but even if the range of tickets offered is restricted, I doubt if a machine would enable you to buy a ticket to ANY other station on the network which you can do at a ticket office.

[Michael Hodgson]

43 minutes ago, JohnR said:

The system is essentially the European model, so singles that cost £1 less than the return are being scrapped and replaced with one's that cost half the price of the return.

 

 

I think we'd be happy if our fare levels were essentially the European model. 

It would suit the green lobby's wishes as ridership would increase and emissions would drop

 

However the government's finances can't really support that either now or in the foreseeable future.

Even though in the longer term we'd not need to spend as much on new motorways, car parks, and failing to fill in potholes and the NHS would spend less on patching up survivors of car crashes.

Radical reform can only be achieved through a massive leap of faith, such as Ken Livingstone's Fares Fair policy (while it lasted).

[woodenhead]

10 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Fortunately the guard (so far) never seems to care about such things and will happily sell a ticket still on the train, no questions asked. For now.

In other news pertaining to on train crew..........

 

Tirrrrrkits pleazzzze

[Nick C]

1 hour ago, njee20 said:

Your phone is immeasurably more secure than your computer!

Is it? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64240140

 

30 minutes ago, Arun Sharma said:

I assume that the driver for all this process is to so simplyfy the fare/ticketing system that a simple machine in the station selling a very small range of ticketing types will enable the displacement of all ticket office staff into redundancy or reallocation to new duties. 

 

 

27 minutes ago, Mike_Walker said:

Perhaps but even if the range of tickets offered is restricted, I doubt if a machine would enable you to buy a ticket to ANY other station on the network which you can do at a ticket office.

They're already planning to get rid of all the ticket offices - that's part of the 'modernisation' they're forcing through at the moment...

[njee20]

13 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

So what happens if - as on countless trains serbving unstaffed stations - the QR code isn't validated?  Revenue pritection on the DafT led railway is an even worse joke than it was in the very worst of BR days let alone the fact that some privatised TOCs regarded it as an irrelevance.    I travelled up to London a few weeks back and throughput both my outward and return journeys nobody asked to see my ticket and the only barriers I passed through were at Paddington and had been left open all day - presumably because staff weren't available to supervise them.

Exactly the same thing as happens with paper tickets? There are QR code scanners on the barriers, but if it's unmanned and there are no barriers no one is validating the paper ticket either. This is the same logic as "Chip and PIN isn't any better than signing because someone could just watch you enter your PIN".

 

11 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

Whilst in your possession, whilst on a vpn and subject to good security - facial logon is not the best unless you've set it up to not work when your eyes are shut!!

No idea what you're talking about! If you lose your phone then they can be locked and wiped remotely. If someone does manage to break in (they're of course not impenetrable) then most banking apps are more locked down than banking websites anyway. IMO it's a false sense of security (no pun intended) to assume your phone is inherently less secure.

[Wickham Green too]

39 minutes ago, Mike_Walker said:

... I doubt if a machine would enable you to buy a ticket to ANY other station on the network which you can do at a ticket office.

Ditto a ticket FROM any other station - such as the boundary of my Travelcard.

[Nick C]

and on the subject of barcode tickets, I've just found this elsewhere on the web:

 

https://eta.st/2023/01/31/rail-tickets.html

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

Revenue protection is getting more difficult with the increase of driver only operation & reduction of station staff (& therefore nobody to supervise barriers), which are a large part of what the current strikes are about.

Revenue protection has nothing whatsoever to do with Driver Only Operation and never has - not a thing.  Revenue protection staff need not be trained as Guards and that has been the case as dar back as I can remember - and goes a long way further back that.  Lack of barrier supervision is a different issue and d9es indeed need staff to carry out but on the other hand what percentage stations are nowadays 'open' stations and have been so for years - again well back into BR days.  The intermediate stations on my local branchline became open stations back in the mid 1960s while our local branch terminus has been an open station for just over 50 years. 

57 minutes ago, njee20 said:

Exactly the same thing as happens with paper tickets? There are QR code scanners on the barriers, but if it's unmanned and there are no barriers no one is validating the paper ticket either. This is the same logic as "Chip and PIN isn't any better than signing because someone could just watch you enter your PIN".

 

When barriers are left open the type of ticket you have, or don't have, is totally irrelevant because there is no check what so ever on any sort of ticket - not even on mine (which contains a coded magnetic strip)