Government to scrap return tickets!!

[andyman7]

6 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Back in 1997 I undertook a brief consultancy for ATOC - now RDG - to look at the costs and savings in having one-piece return tickets, since APTIS was designed to issue one ticket per leg. The savings didn't justify the cost of change. 

I remember that piece of work. The cost to move to one piece paper returns now would be astronomical given the proliferation of different systems post-APTIS, all of whom would want their pound of flesh to make the change. However, the move to digital (that is people by themselves migrating, not being forced to) is rapidly overtaking events

 

5 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Whether purchasing on line or at a ticket office - remember them ? - it's always been simpler to buy a return ticket as one transaction rather than two ..................... this'll only make rail less attractive to 'optional' users.

 

Return travel will still be sold. It's some Government wag that has somehow unhelpfully coined 'abolishing return tickets'  when dealing with a back office process that derives return tariffs from single ones rather than both existing side by side in fares systems. But obviously that is a much more boring headline.

 

5 hours ago, John M Upton said:

They tried about ten or twelve years ago to simplify the ticket types and names, all they wound up doing in a classic "Exercise by Committee" move was rename a couple of the ticket types and wound up making it even more of a complicated mess than when they started...

Having been heavily involved in this, yes it was an exercise by committee, and didn't succeed in trimming off-peak ticket types. However it did manage the standardisation of Advance fares including allowing Railcards to be used with all of them. That was actually a pretty colossal achievement and supercharged the enormous growth in that ticket category.  

 

The thread has pivoted off into the merits or otherwise of digital ticketing. However the fare calculation process doesn't of itself force this. However, done properly it makes the choosing and buying of the best value return fare easier because you don't have to juggle so many fare types - for example day and period returns or paying for a full fare return if you are travelling off-peak in one direction. 

[John M Upton]

It's just I remember when I was a Guard, telling a trainee to look on the machine at fares from Gatwick Airport to London and there were dozens and dozens of them!!  When the ticket simplification "plan" came in, we expected the numbers to be significantly reduced, in fact it increased.

 

It's is complicated nonsense like that which really needs targeting.

[SM42]

The strangest comment I read on this from an industry expert was that it would mean only having one ticket per journey and thus be simpler.

 

I suppose if you are going to buy (or be forced to buy) tickets at your point of departure on each leg  then that would be true.  But  surely most  would buy a ticket for each leg of the return journey before departing on their outward .

 

As a concept I see no problem with it and you will have two separate tickets instead of an out and back portion (two tickets). 

 

If by making this change there will be just one or two tickets available for each journey (peak and off peak perhaps) then surely it is a good thing.

I may be expecting too much there though and a part of me can't help but feel that there is some scheme to relieve you of more cash in the offing

 

As for electronic tickets, I'm old fashioned and like to have a printed ticket. The risk of a flat battery or technology failure is smaller with those.

 

Andy

[APOLLO]

Four of us went down to London from Wigan last year. Booked online and picked up tickets at the machine at Wigan NW

 

4 Wigan to London tickets

4 Seat reservations for above

4 London to Wigan tickets

4 seat reservations

1 receipt.

 

I thought the ticket printing (slow) was never going to end. A queue was forming.

 

I don't travel enough to use the mobile app. Daughter uses it daily on her mobile phone, the young have no problems like us old gits !!

 

Brit15

[APOLLO]

From the Independant

 

There will just be three kinds of tickets:

Anytime singles, which can be used on any train and are generally expensive

Off-peak singles, which is what this measure is largely about

Advance singles, which as always are for specific trains and sold more cheaply than off-peak tickets

 

Will fares go up or down?

Mostly downwards, with single fares almost halved – to exactly half the current return fare. People who routinely make return journeys should notice no difference (except the annual fare increase, this year 5.9 per cent).

The move is hoped to be “revenue-neutral,” ie the total raised from travellers remains the same – or “revenue-positive” if, as hoped, more people are attracted to the railway.

But there could be some circumstances where fares go up as a result of removing anomalies.

For example, between London and Didcot Parkway, the current one-way off-peak single is £29.90 for 53 miles. From Didcot to Bristol, the fare is £25.50 for 65 miles. People on the same train are paying 43 per cent per mile more for the first part than for the second. While the UK will certainly not go for a fixed price-per-mile, smoothing to remove perceived unfairness could lead to some passengers paying more.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/rail-fares-return-train-ticket-b2276510.html

Edited February 6, 2023 by APOLLO

[black and decker boy]

I suppose a question to those saying technology is going to deprive people of using the train. How do these people find out train times these days? There is no printed GB timetable and many stations don’t have facilities for the little booklet versions. Any posters on display would just be for that local line.
 

 

[3rd Rail Exile]

3 minutes ago, black and decker boy said:

I suppose a question to those saying technology is going to deprive people of using the train. How do these people find out train times these days? There is no printed GB timetable and many stations don’t have facilities for the little booklet versions. Any posters on display would just be for that local line.
 

 

Judging by overhearing conversations whilst waiting in the ticket office queue at Didcot Parkway, "these people" still ask for train times at ticket offices.  Which, of course, they won't be able to do if all the ticket offices get closed...  

 

For whatever personal reasons, there seems to be a surprisingly large number of people who are very unwilling to join the herd-like rush towards compulsory technology, or at the very least will do it to their own level of comfort/security, and at their own pace. And that's in addition to those for whom modern technology poses very genuine difficulties in use. 

 

I know people who think a smartphone is just something else they are likely to get mugged for, and that's without it having banking apps, train tickets and the like on it.  Also, it only took one sudden catastrophic battery failure to convince me of the need to carry printed out backups of tickets wherever possible... 

[Dunsignalling]

20 hours ago, APOLLO said:

If this is true it is frightening

 

Return train tickets expected to be scrapped in UK rail shake-up

The often discounted rate is to be replaced with two singles costing the same as the present return fare

 

Return tickets will be scrapped and new digital ticketing introduced under reforms of the British rail system expected to be announced this week.

The two-way tickets, which offer a discounted rate, will be replaced by “single-leg pricing” which will mean that the price of two singles will be the same as the current return fare, according to the Telegraph. The idea was trialled by London North East Railway (LNER) in 2020.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/05/return-train-tickets-expected-to-be-scrapped-in-uk-rail-shake-up

 

Brit15

 

Day Return, or Monthly Return? 

[Dunsignalling]

The thought occurs that this might have one glaring unintended consequence.

 

Ticket splitting at intermediate stations where fares change from peak to off-peak during the journey....

 

John 

[Nick C]

How do the phone apps work when there's no reception? There's plenty of bits of line, even down here on the south west main line, with little or nothing...

[Michael Hodgson]

3 minutes ago, Nick C said:

How do the phone apps work when there's no reception? There's plenty of bits of line, even down here on the south west main line, with little or nothing...

Do you need reception when checking tickets - can't the app store the ticket on your mobile when you buy it? 

I suppose that wouldn't work if you bought it on another device such as a home PC?

 

I also can't help wondering how people who are blind or have some other disabilities will manage if they have to use this technology.  But there again I've been amazed at some of the hair=raising things I've seen done by the disabled - like a blind man walking briskly along the edge of an Underground platform tapping it with his white stick as the train comes in.

[SZ]

22 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

So no off peak returns? Will singles come down in price to reflect this? And no paper (or card, I assume) tickets? So how does that work without a nasty mobile phone?

Smartcard, but try getting a refund if your train doesn't even run. Believe it or not you need to have a receipt to get a refund.

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, black and decker boy said:

I suppose a question to those saying technology is going to deprive people of using the train. How do these people find out train times these days? There is no printed GB timetable and many stations don’t have facilities for the little booklet versions. Any posters on display would just be for that local line.

I look up the times online; I've got a computer (obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be posting here), and I usually have a copy of the timetable for my local line knocking around somewhere. But that doesn't get me a ticket, which, for local travel at least, without any advanced tickets available, I just go and buy at the station. Rather easier than having to faff around buying one online and printing it out at home just to go in to town.

 

I find this obsession with technology as a permanent fixture of basic tasks, and the desire to remove our fellow human beings from everything we do, frankly weird. It's gone way beyond just using it for interesting stuff we couldn't do before in to a world I find bizarre and more than a little disturbing.

[APOLLO]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

I find this obsession with technology as a permanent fixture of basic tasks, and the desire to remove our fellow human beings from everything we do, frankly weird. It's gone way beyond just using it for interesting stuff we couldn't do before in to a world I find bizarre and more than a little disturbing.

 

Very disturbing indeed. Wait till AI really kicks in, it won't be just ticket office clerks who loose their jobs.

 

Brit15

[black and decker boy]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

I look up the times online; I've got a computer (obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be posting here), and I usually have a copy of the timetable for my local line knocking around somewhere. But that doesn't get me a ticket, which, for local travel at least, without any advanced tickets available, I just go and buy at the station. Rather easier than having to faff around buying one online and printing it out at home just to go in to town.

 

I find this obsession with technology as a permanent fixture of basic tasks, and the desire to remove our fellow human beings from everything we do, frankly weird. It's gone way beyond just using it for interesting stuff we couldn't do before in to a world I find bizarre and more than a little disturbing.

The world marches on. The millennials and subsequent generations are digitally enabled pretty much from birth. My son could operate an iPhone age 1, not that he was allowed too but if he sneaked a hold of it, he could access it and find the kids apps & ceebeebees cartoons.

 

next generation shoppers don’t need actual shops, happy to bury online fir home delivery and return fir full refund if they don’t like it or it doesn’t fit.

 

my son at 7 cannot fathom terrestrial TV. He wants to watch what he wants at a time he chooses.  So streaming is what he wants. Being beholden to a fixed programme timetable puts him right off and he’ll go and do something else (not always a bad thing).

 

Rail is changing in similar ways, driven not be technology but by DfT / Treasury desire for cost reductions. There aren’t that many staffed ticket offices compared to number of stations as many have already gone or staff stand at gate line with a mobile ticket machine. DfT seem less bothered by fare evasion than cost cutting.

 

Roads are similar, way less traffic police  so an increase in speeding & dangerous driving is clear to those who drive alot. Smart motorway cameras are of little deterrent.

[BernardTPM]

The ticket offices are also needed for selling Railcards. I have tried buying online, but didn't have the appropriate IDs. No problem at the ticket office: birth certificate and credit card, job done.

[Nick C]

1 hour ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Do you need reception when checking tickets - can't the app store the ticket on your mobile when you buy it? 

I suppose that wouldn't work if you bought it on another device such as a home PC?

 

I also can't help wondering how people who are blind or have some other disabilities will manage if they have to use this technology.  But there again I've been amazed at some of the hair=raising things I've seen done by the disabled - like a blind man walking briskly along the edge of an Underground platform tapping it with his white stick as the train comes in.

That was my thinking - easy enough to store it if bought on the app, but if you buy it from home, then need to get it on your phone halfway through the journey...

 

There's a lot of changes that sadly don't consider the needs of the disabled - I've got a friend who has cerebral palsy. He relies on his phone as his main form of communication, but can't use a touchscreen - so has trouble when physical keyboards go out of fashion. Worse is when a change tries to help, but fails, such as the PRM rules for rail replacement buses - great for wheelchair users and the partially sighted, but worse than before for some other disabilities such as Chron's. 

Edited February 6, 2023 by Nick C

[Reorte]

52 minutes ago, black and decker boy said:

The world marches on. The millennials and subsequent generations are digitally enabled pretty much from birth. My son could operate an iPhone age 1, not that he was allowed too but if he sneaked a hold of it, he could access it and find the kids apps & ceebeebees cartoons.

 

next generation shoppers don’t need actual shops, happy to bury online fir home delivery and return fir full refund if they don’t like it or it doesn’t fit.

 

my son at 7 cannot fathom terrestrial TV. He wants to watch what he wants at a time he chooses.  So streaming is what he wants. Being beholden to a fixed programme timetable puts him right off and he’ll go and do something else (not always a bad thing).

 

Rail is changing in similar ways, driven not be technology but by DfT / Treasury desire for cost reductions. There aren’t that many staffed ticket offices compared to number of stations as many have already gone or staff stand at gate line with a mobile ticket machine. DfT seem less bothered by fare evasion than cost cutting.

 

Roads are similar, way less traffic police  so an increase in speeding & dangerous driving is clear to those who drive alot. Smart motorway cameras are of little deterrent.

I know that. It doesn't mean I like it, or have any sort of positive opinion of it. And I'm, well, not someone who had access to computers from birth, but at least from when I was about five years old. This isn't stuff I'm unfamiliar with and don't understand.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Reorte

[Pete the Elaner]

6 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Revenue protection has nothing whatsoever to do with Driver Only Operation and never has - not a thing.

It should be an issue. It would be a very strong argument.

 

When I get my ticket checked on a train, who checks it? The guard.

Once I see him/her enter the carriage, they take ages getting to me. Why? Because they are issuing tickets to others who don't already have them. If those passengers without tickets did not get checked, they would walk off the train & straight out of the station (because the barriers, if present, would be open because there was nobody to supervise them).

The official reason for keeping a guard is for safety. While this is a factor, the larger reason is for job protection.

DOO welcomes passengers to dodge fares & a guard checking tickets can easily recoup their daily wages with 30 minutes of ticket checking.

[John M Upton]

The QR code tickets are brilliant for fare evading, for example, within a couple of days of them being introduced I heard about and or encountered:

 

Made in MS Paint pictures of a random QR code presented as a valid ticket

The same image of a QR code ticket on the phones of everyone in a  group (i.e. one had actually bought one and then shared it with the rest of the group)

People rushing to buy a ticket online as soon as the Guard appears in their carriage, getting it checked and then promptly applying for a refund on said ticket as soon as he was gone (and that was often the cheapest shortest single they could get away with)

"My ticket is on my phone but my battery is flat" which misfortune occured amazingly to both persons present at exactly the same time just seconds earlier when they were talking loudly on said phones.

 

Stick with proper paper tickets, far less fraudulent!

 

Glad I don't do all that anymore!!

 

[andyman7]

35 minutes ago, Pete the Elaner said:

It should be an issue. It would be a very strong argument.

 

When I get my ticket checked on a train, who checks it? The guard.

Once I see him/her enter the carriage, they take ages getting to me. Why? Because they are issuing tickets to others who don't already have them. If those passengers without tickets did not get checked, they would walk off the train & straight out of the station (because the barriers, if present, would be open because there was nobody to supervise them).

The official reason for keeping a guard is for safety. While this is a factor, the larger reason is for job protection.

DOO welcomes passengers to dodge fares & a guard checking tickets can easily recoup their daily wages with 30 minutes of ticket checking.

When you get your ticket checked on a Southern or Gatwick Express train, it is by an On Board Supervisor, not a guard, and the operational duties (door control, despatch etc) are handled by the driver.

The DOO issue is about operational issues such as door control. It doesn't necessarily no second person, but the two issues get conflated. The reason why it is such a hot issue is that where a Guard is safety critical (i.e. they have operational duties) it means the train cannot run without them. Views on this vary - some may be happy with this; then again, if it is late at night and you are on a lonely platform waiting for a train you may have a different view should it be cancelled because of 'no guard'. 

[jjb1970]

8 hours ago, John M Upton said:

It's just I remember when I was a Guard, telling a trainee to look on the machine at fares from Gatwick Airport to London and there were dozens and dozens of them!!  When the ticket simplification "plan" came in, we expected the numbers to be significantly reduced, in fact it increased.

 

It's is complicated nonsense like that which really needs targeting.

 

I think this is where the ticketing system becomes problematic for many. When this is raised there's a tendency to deride people who can't figure out ticketing and which trains to use as a bit thick and it's all perfectly straightforward. Among RMWeb users I expect most of us probably do have a good awareness of how the system works and the various options available.

 

However I have a lot of friends and colleagues who arrive in the various airports serving London and whose first exposure to British rail travel is trying to figure out which train to take and which ticket to buy. We may think it's all obvious, but imagine flipping things and arriving in somewhere like China and facing an array of choices with an expectation you know what it's all about.

 

I remember a few years ago I attended a meeting at Interlaken in Switzerland, when I bought my ticket to Geneve airport the ticket office was closed and the machine offered a ticket 'via somewhere' sorry I can't remember where. That immediately begs the question, what routes are there and is the ticket valid on any route? I found a guy in SBB uniform and asked about said route and whether that was the best route and got a rather rude response to the effect of 'well what other way are you going to go?'. Well, why word the ticket in a way which presents that question?

 

I get an awful lot of complaints from foreigners looking in at our system on the matter of ticketing. Which is sad as in other respects most of the comments are a lot more positive (train frequency, ease of getting around, general condition of trains) than many might assume when we see the general negativity about British trains.

[MyRule1]

 Now reporting that today's announcement is just an extension of the LNER trial

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64548794

 

Interesting choice of photo, feet of passenger seem to be on seat

[jjb1970]

52 minutes ago, MyRule1 said:

 Now reporting that today's announcement is just an extension of the LNER trial

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64548794

 

Interesting choice of photo, feet of passenger seem to be on seat

 

Looks like the perfect example of a passenger, feet up, bag on seat next to her and a table full of her stuff😉

[njee20]

9 hours ago, John M Upton said:

The QR code tickets are brilliant for fare evading, for example, within a couple of days of them being introduced I heard about and or encountered:

 

Made in MS Paint pictures of a random QR code presented as a valid ticket

The same image of a QR code ticket on the phones of everyone in a  group (i.e. one had actually bought one and then shared it with the rest of the group)

People rushing to buy a ticket online as soon as the Guard appears in their carriage, getting it checked and then promptly applying for a refund on said ticket as soon as he was gone (and that was often the cheapest shortest single they could get away with)

"My ticket is on my phone but my battery is flat" which misfortune occured amazingly to both persons present at exactly the same time just seconds earlier when they were talking loudly on said phones.

 

Stick with proper paper tickets, far less fraudulent!

 

Glad I don't do all that anymore!!

 

I’m prepared to wager actual fraudulent use of paper tickets is more rife. I see far more people nonchalantly asking to buy a ticket if the OBS checks them (probably 5% of journeys). There are no barriers at my station, so these people are presumably just hoping not to buy a ticket at all.

 

Fake/reused QR codes - they’re physically scanned now, if the scanner literally just goes ‘beep’ and doesn’t actually read anything then the TOCs are idiots and fully deserve to be scammed. How do those people get out at the barriers though? This is analogous to passing a paper ticket under the table, and then having to push through the barriers together.  

 

Buying a ticket for a short journey - see above, this is no different to people asking to buy a ticket only when asked. It’s miraculous how many have only just got on the train.   

 

“My phone is flat” - ok, buy a new ticket  now, and claim a refund upon proof of a valid fare. This is identical to when you forget a paper ticket. I was made to feel a right criminal when I did this at London Bridge with my season ticket!

 

Some corking confirmation bias in your posts. 

 

13 hours ago, Nick C said:

How do the phone apps work when there's no reception? There's plenty of bits of line, even down here on the south west main line, with little or nothing...

Well you need a signal to buy the ticket, then you download it to your phone, doesn’t matter thereafter. I forgot to buy my ticket last night, realised as I was in bed. Took less than 90 seconds to actually buy one (and I use a stupid two-stage split ticket because it saves me £12 a day!) and have it downloaded to my phone. I don’t need to factor in queues at the machines or the ticket office (which takes longer than the machine). 
 

It’s an interesting point if you live at a station with no signal and buy from a machine how you’d then get the ticket. They’ll have to solve for that though. Local wifi hotspots or something (cue: “what if it’s not working?!” Cries. Answer: same as if the ticket machine doesn’t work. Meh.). 
 

11 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

The ticket offices are also needed for selling Railcards. I have tried buying online, but didn't have the appropriate IDs. No problem at the ticket office: birth certificate and credit card, job done.

And people for whom that’s the case are erm… ‘dwindling’, shall we say. Ought we keep water towers too, for the odd steam excursion? 
 

Dragging us back on topic and away from the curmudgeonly luddites (on an internet forum, the irony!), if they genuinely half the current return fares itll be very interesting. Can’t see how that’ll be anything approaching revenue neutral, I’m sure there’ll be some sneaky ‘re-baselining’ of prices. My London commute is utterly anomalous, i buy a ticket to a station I go nowhere near (and another one to cover the bit from an intermediate station into London) but is half the price of some of the stations along the route, that’d better not change!

Edited February 7, 2023 by njee20