Government to scrap return tickets!!

[Reorte]

Quite honestly I don't understand why having to look up a timetable is regarded as any great hassle. I've generally found 1 tph adequate for a short distance service, and never felt much point in having more than 2 tph (from my perspective rather than being able to shift enough people in the general area); my local line is 2 tph at peak these days. Now admittedly I don't use it that often, but that's down to laziness (I'd have to get up earlier, and that's with the current timetable that has a train that means I'd manage to get to work at the latest possible anyway).

 

Anyway the point is that this sounds like another case of people shouting out about the most trivial inconveniences as major hassle. Although I suppose as much as that makes me roll my eyes service providers, including railways, are stuck with dealing with how people are no matter how daft.

[Mike_Walker]

26 minutes ago, Tom Burnham said:

This should be one of the key advantages of trains and why I think it's odd that rail ticketing has been and is being made more like air travel with having to book for a specific time. If you are heavily penalised for getting a different train from the one you're booked on, it significantly reduces the effective speed, as you'll need to arrive at the station much earlier than you otherwise might. I guess that will increase the turnover of retail units at the station anyway!

Turn up a travel tickets are always available and always will be.  Journey/train specific tickets are advanced purchase tickets available at a reduced cost and are a way by which the operators seek to sell otherwise unused capacity much in the same way that airlines do.  They are confined to long-distance services and not on the busiest/most popular trains, you won't find such tickets available for local or commuter services.

[Nick C]

50 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Anyway the point is that this sounds like another case of people shouting out about the most trivial inconveniences as major hassle. 

Probably the same people who get on Twitter to complain if their Amazon delivery doesn't arrive within 30 minutes of ordering...

13 hours ago, andyman7 said:

The costs do not spread evenly over all rail services. London - Birmingham - Manchester is an economic powerhouse and that route generates enormous benefits. The same cannot be said of hundreds of miles of rural and semi rural routes for which the cost/benefit ratio is much poorer.

Which is why "cost/benefit ratio" is a terrible measure for public services, and accountants shouldn't be allowed anywhere near them. Public services are there to serve the public - the full benefits frequently aren't tangible or measurable. It used to be the case that cross-subsidy would be used, with the profitable services used to offset those that will never make anything - Now all the profitable bits have been hived off to make someone at the top richer, and people wonder why the essential stuff needs so much public money.

 

It's the same with the mail - intercity parcels are profitable, taking a letter from Penzance to Kirkwall isn't - but the latter is essential for the functioning of those communities. It used to be paid for by the profits from the former, but now most of the parcels are taken by commercial couriers (who won't touch anything complicated, or if they do will charge a lot extra), and people wonder why the RM is doing so badly...

[Reorte]

4 minutes ago, Nick C said:

Which is why "cost/benefit ratio" is a terrible measure for public services, and accountants shouldn't be allowed anywhere near them. Public services are there to serve the public - the full benefits frequently aren't tangible or measurable. It used to be the case that cross-subsidy would be used, with the profitable services used to offset those that will never make anything - Now all the profitable bits have been hived off to make someone at the top richer, and people wonder why the essential stuff needs so much public money.

 

It's the same with the mail - intercity parcels are profitable, taking a letter from Penzance to Kirkwall isn't - but the latter is essential for the functioning of those communities. It used to be paid for by the profits from the former, but now most of the parcels are taken by commercial couriers (who won't touch anything complicated, or if they do will charge a lot extra), and people wonder why the RM is doing so badly...

And even if you don't ever need to send a letter from Penzance to Kirkwall there are always the odd times when these generally unprofitable services are very handy to have for all of us. I'll happily be subsidising them most of the time for the very odd occasion I really need them. Obviously there have to be some limits (no point in running a service that gets one person a year using it), but the extra cost in general is very worth it, and produces a rather better country overall than everything for a few overcrowded parts and nothing anywhere else.

[The Stationmaster]

14 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

The lost revenue is pretty easy. Massive decline in peak time travellers (and rise in off peak), massive loss of season tickets, loss of business travellers in 1st class.

 

fare evasion might be up a bit but not to the tune of

 

strikes clearly contribute currently too.

 

this quote is from Rail Minister last week

Unsurprisingly, and you don’t need a chartered accountant like me to tell you this, the impact on the industry’s bottom line has been stark. Revenue is around £125-175 million lower each month and costs keep rising year on year.

"Any other industry would have collapsed years ago but the railways have only survived because of the taxpayer and the public purse. The source of over 70% of income over the past 2 years at a cost of £1,000 per household. I won’t mince my words: operating the railways is currently financially unsustainable and it isn’t fair to continue asking taxpayers to foot the bill.

I wonder what that Minister has to say about the NHS which if looked at in the same way would also be unsustainable (it is actually but no politician is ever going to say so)?

 

Any way to come back to where the loss is occurring -and without seeing the numbers - there some very simple answers. 

1. If you try to do away with Season Tickets then revenue they generate will drop - own goal.   Bit like officially discouraging people from travelling to work - own goal especially in the state sector where productivity (whatever that means?) has collapsed because too many Civil Servants are still WFH.

2. Reduced peak period travel.  Well there is a simple answer to that because any railway managers worth their salt knows full well that peaks increase costs disproportionately to the (often steeply discounted) revenue they bring in.  So reduce peak period operating costs - but not all day operating costs if those are the times when leisure travel is doing well).

3.  To what extent has 1st Class travel declined I wonder?   While I don't travel on the GWML during the peaks on those trains which still have 1st Class accommodation at the time s of day I make my occasional trips the number of passengers in 1sr Class seems little reduced from pre-pandemic times.  And don't forget that the overwhelming majority of shorter distance, and some longer distance, peak period trains didn't have 1st X Class accommodation any way and haven't for quite long while.  Plus of course use of 1st Class usually drops during periods of financial pressure in the business world and that is nothing new but is cyclical along withe the state of the economy.

 

As long as you get idiot politicos and ignorant (Un)Civil Servants messing about with something they don't understand you will get a mess - as they've repeatedly proved over many decades.   And as the daft 'Great British Railways' thing goes to show where some of its ideas show a remarkable lack of joined up thinking between two different aspects of managinga railway network in its widest sense.

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

I thought that the Government/DFT wanted to expand Oyster style travel in the South East - that is very much turn up and go style so it would not require pre-booking any specific train.

 

Would it be just longer distance and cross country services that can become very full that such specific ticketing would be targetted at.

Simple answer is they  might have that sort of idea but they don't understand how it would work.   Our local station recently acquired a couple of 'tap in' type card readers.  The only time I;ve seen  anyone try to use them was a couple pf foreign turists and they wa;ked away shaking their heads - regulat r traveelers - if they know the machines are (they're not well sited) simply ignore them.  these things have presumablt been somebody's bright idea of how to replace a booking clerk or on-train conductor.  

 

Problem is that unless there is some way of physically preventing people from getting onto a station platform unless they 'tap in' then nobody will bother to use these machines.  Not at all like the situation on TFL where in most places 'tapping in' physically opens a barrier to let you in.   Our branch junction has three different ways of walking onto one of its platforms - plus arriving at that platform off a branch train the platform.  The next busiest platform can be accessed via two different (wholly legitimate) routes, one of which is directly off what amounts to a public right-of-way (by usage) over the footbridge).  You'd need an awful lot of barriers, plus someone on hand for when they don't work correctly, to control access there.

[Nick C]

38 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

...in the state sector where productivity (whatever that means?) has collapsed because too many Civil Servants are still WFH.

What it means is, The legions of middle-managers (of which, I under stand, the civil service has even more than most industries) can't spend all day looking over the shoulders of their staff micromanaging them - and so suddenly don't have anything to do. The staff, on the other hand, are much more productive as a result...

[APOLLO]

2 hours ago, woodenhead said:

in your flying car 😄

 

Of course, they can't nick the wheels off that !!!

 

Brit15

[APOLLO]

Regarding tapping in / out up here I pay £10 / year for Greater Manchester area train / tram add on to my OAP bus pass. Tap in / out of the Manchester trams is quick and easy. I also tap in at most Manchester stations, and some other stations that have barriers. (Wigan Wallgate has barriers and security, Wigan NW nothing, just a check occasionally). There are revenue protection squads on the trams with scanners checking tickets and cards. Woe betide any fare dodgers / or failure to tap in. The system works well.

 

There is talk of an oyster type scheme for Greater Manchester, rail, tram & bus.

 

Brit15

Edited February 9, 2023 by APOLLO
typo

[jjb1970]

The problem isn't cost-benefit, it is inappropriate application of cost-benefit.

 

Cost-benefit is just a tool, it doesn't make decisions (or shouldn't). If spending money it should always be considered what benefit that spend is expected to achieve. However, to be meaningful both costs and benefits need to be understood and have some link with reality. 

[Reorte]

10 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

The problem isn't cost-benefit, it is inappropriate application of cost-benefit.

 

Cost-benefit is just a tool, it doesn't make decisions (or shouldn't). If spending money it should always be considered what benefit that spend is expected to achieve. However, to be meaningful both costs and benefits need to be understood and have some link with reality. 

 

I've always had an issue with the idea that you can boil things down to a cost-benefit assessment then go on as if that alone decides everything worth deciding. Like you point out it's a tool (and a tool anyone planning anything needs a good grasp of), but both costs and benefits can be very significant whilst also being very subjective, and thus not meaningfully representative in monetary terms. Comparing apples with oranges is robust in comparison, but it can create the illusion that that's not the case.

[jjb1970]

Cost benefit is like any quantification process, it quantifies but it does not tell you whether the benefits are sufficiently attractive or the costs too high or too low. Some may say 'yes it does, it includes a scoring matrix that tells you that!', but such a decision tool is a separate assessment which is derived from value decisions which are entered into a model and which can be adjusted. 

 

Cost-benefit is one part of a process, it doesn't initiate projects, doesn't make decisions, doesn't say whether a proposal is good or bad but it does help you understand what you will get for your money and if you have a finite budget with a lot of competing demands it helps identify where you will get most value.

 

However, ultimately it is for the responsible decision makers to do their job based on a whole range of information, assessments and analysis.

[Michael Hodgson]

5 hours ago, APOLLO said:

There is NO shortage of money in Liverpool for "men" kicking around a bag of wind !!!!!!

There's no shortage of money for windbags in Westminster either.

[andyman7]

1 hour ago, jjb1970 said:

The problem isn't cost-benefit, it is inappropriate application of cost-benefit.

 

Cost-benefit is just a tool, it doesn't make decisions (or shouldn't). If spending money it should always be considered what benefit that spend is expected to achieve. However, to be meaningful both costs and benefits need to be understood and have some link with reality. 

 

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

 

I've always had an issue with the idea that you can boil things down to a cost-benefit assessment then go on as if that alone decides everything worth deciding. Like you point out it's a tool (and a tool anyone planning anything needs a good grasp of), but both costs and benefits can be very significant whilst also being very subjective, and thus not meaningfully representative in monetary terms. Comparing apples with oranges is robust in comparison, but it can create the illusion that that's not the case.

This is what the Treasury 'Green Book' evaluation process is supposed to do; however the whole 'Levelling Up' agenda highlighted the feedback loop that occurred if the evaluation consistently produced better outcomes for more prosperous areas. 
The irony is that regardless of what the inputs are, a well built piece of infrastructure will often drive its own benefits. So, for example, 'Metroland' built suburban railways out into the green countryside, enabling them to develop and retrospectively justify the investment.

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, andyman7 said:

The irony is that regardless of what the inputs are, a well built piece of infrastructure will often drive its own benefits. So, for example, 'Metroland' built suburban railways out into the green countryside, enabling them to develop and retrospectively justify the investment.

Something which wasn't entirely beneficial. You can certainly argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides there, but increasing urban sprawl and the development of green countryside is a very definite negative.

[andyman7]

11 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Something which wasn't entirely beneficial. You can certainly argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides there, but increasing urban sprawl and the development of green countryside is a very definite negative.

Nothing is ever 'entirely beneficial'; there are always trade-offs. (Greater) London in general worked OK because the Green Belt legislation stopped an endless sprawl happening, but our present housing crisis would be very much worse without the enormous housing stocks added during the 20s and 30s; and unlike so many modern toytown housing developments, it was supported by a proper public transport infrastructure that was in place at the outset.

Edited February 9, 2023 by andyman7

[Reorte]

4 minutes ago, andyman7 said:

Nothing is ever 'entirely beneficial'; there are always trade-offs. (Greater) London in general worked OK because the Green Belt legislation stopped an endless sprawl happening, but our present housing crisis would be very much worse without the enormous housing stocks added during the 20s and 30s; and unlike so many modern toytown housing developments, it was supported by a proper public transport infrastructure that was in place at the outset.

 

Personally I suspect that they rather feed in to each other. At any rate I do regard the large scale development from the last century onwards as a very serious negative, even if it can be argued a necessary evil. Point taken about doing a good job about supporting it though.