Constant rising prices

[DeanGoods]

Does any here think the same way as me when i say that train ticket prices are rising to unreal prices

[spartacus]

If they're unreal, are the realy rising?

[arabiandisco]

not really. You don't have to pay the full whack if you book in advance. And getting around is expensive these days. Petrol costs pretty much £1 a litre. It is now cheaper for me to take the train in a lot of cases than drive, and that's without taking into consideration the other benefits of trains (such as not having to concentrate on where we're going).

[DeanGoods]

But just look on http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/ ... &link=next and there is at least 10 pages on how prices have rised in the last few years

[arabiandisco]

If they publicised it, you could do the same for a loaf of bread, I'm sure.

2 years ago Unleaded Petrol was 73.9p/litre, I just paid 98.9p/litre to fill my car up, and that's from the cheapest place in Basingstoke that I could find (Morrisons). Rail is just as susceptible to rising oil prices.

Prices rise, some things more quickly than others - that's how a capitalist economy works.

[mattvince]

If you want to buy a Standard Open Return, then yes. But the SOR is based on the assumption that you will travel on the heaviest-loaded trains of the day - therefore they are priced to 'deter' a proportion of passengers onto off-peak services where Savers and Cheap Day Returns are available. Deterring passengers may sound an 'absurd' notion - but when every peak-hour train run is already full, reducing the fares will merely make the overcrowding worse. The Peak/Off-Peak divide needs to be clarified - Thameslink did this well with Peak trains shaded in the timetable (FCC have perpetuated this - but only on the TL side!). I'd also tidy up the names - Peak Day Return, Peak Period Return, Off-Peak Day Return, Off-Peak Period Return, and Peak and Off-Peak Singles.

The real solution is the airline/'Value' fares structure on long-distance services - matching demand and supply correctly by selling seats cheap when plentiful and expensive when scarce. The take-up of Value fares on Virgin is a good example of how the structure works as a means of increasing demand.

Smartcard ticketing is another solution, by applying fares specific to the service travelled on - however this will be extremely complex and DfT's notions of having it running by 2009 on the South Western are practically absurd. Personally I'd just use the smartcard to give discounts on the customer's next season ticket purchase - recording the discounts each time a shoulder-peak/off-peak service is used.

If the meeja would correctly report rail fares, then this wouldn't so much of an issue. London-Manchester starts at £25 (2 Values @ £12.50 each), whilst Saver Returns are available for £57.50. Only if you really want to travel on the heaviest-loaded peak hour trains should you need to pay £202.

[jpantera]

When you start paying 200 quid for a train ticket its almost worth buying an All Line Rover!

[DeanGoods]

Sorry i meant unresonable prices

[mattvince]

The other issue is that regulated fares are capped around the Rate of Public Inflation. In real terms, since Privatisation the fares have rised at RPI -1% - meaning in Real terms they are cheaper now than 10 years ago - as pay and the value of goods and services have increased more than the fares. It's worse on the buses - bus fares have increased directly equivalent to disposable income, meaning a bus fare is as expensive in real terms as it was 10 years ago. Rail fares are now cheaper than bus fares. Only in the last year or so have fares increased above the RPI.

Thus fares have gone up - but so has everything else, so the value of the pound has dropped. It's called Inflation. For all his faults, at least Mr Brown has kept inflation steady - I'll correct that: the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England has been allowed by Mr Brown to keep Inflation steady.

And if you book ahead, there are some really good deals to be had. The 'Two Week Rule' has been dead and buried for a year now, so if you hunt for them, the cheap fares are available up to 1800 the day before.

[166Driver]

One word. Yes.

We need to start again from scratch.

Straightforward, simple, value for money fares.

Fares priced by distance.

Sounds simple, but will never, ever happen.

[salopiangrowler]

When you start paying 200 quid for a train ticket its almost worth buying an All Line Rover!

£130 standard open return birmingham - london on a friday before 9

£576 First class all line rover for 7 days

[166Driver]

For someone between that gap between working and middle class, spending that much on train travel a week is unimaginable!

[mattvince]

166Driver - two more words: Demand, and Subsidy.

Distance is a fixed, calculatable number, but has no relevance to whether five people use the train, or five hundred. In the days before serious overcrowding, before commuting, a rate-per-mile was applicable. Then suburbia happened, and the companies realised that meeting the demand meant huge amounts of rolling stock sitting idle for 16 hours a day - the Off-Peak fare was born to encourage people to travel in the off-peak so that the companies were able to get a decent return on what always have been expensive assets, and hopefully encourage some peak travellers onto off-peak services. Applying flat rate per mile is the worst possible compromise - it means that those travelling on near-empty trains have no barrier to travelling on overcrowded ones, and those travelling on overcrowded trains no economic incentive to travel on less full ones. That's why we need demand-managed fares - empty trains sold cheaply and full ones sold expensively. As I've said above, smartcards and 'Value' tickets can be incentivised ways of controlling demand in a way which maximises bums-on-seats throughout the day, thus avoiding the problem of carting round fresh air in the off-peak whilst sardine-tinning them in the peak.

Which brings me to my next point - Subsidy. Trains carting round fresh air can never cover their costs, which means you have three options: Don't run near-empty trains, Cost Off-Peak losses against Peak profits, or go cap in hand to HM Government. The first is not an option if you have to run them (franchise requirement), and it means those expensive assets are sitting idle, rather than running around in the hope that enough people will board to make the off-peak trips viable. The second is viable - it's called Cross-Subsidy, but isn't any use if the losses outweigh the profits. The third is a problem, as it means HMG has to bail out a loss-making service. Unless there is very good reason to do so, it's politically unpopular - Politicians would rather spend it on vote-winners like Schools and Hospitals.

What we need is a fares structure which maximises the number of bums-on-seats, but limits overcrowding, and maximises the revenue so that subsidy is minimised. The only way to do that is to match fares to demand.

[166Driver]

I think the problem goes way further than the fares themselves.

People are unpredictable. Some of us really don't own a car. Not everyone uses a train to commute.

I think trains run far too frequent. It works well on a busy undergound system, but not on long distance services.

We have all travelled on trains, and seen that many people get on and off at certain stops, while few remain for the rest of the journey. Using your logic, how would you ensure that wouldn't happen, to prevent the train from carting round empty seats at a loss?

The only way to do that is to match fares to demand.

I do not disagree with your points, but I believe the root of the problem is that the train services themselves are not matched to demand.

If I'm wrong, then I still insist the services aren't being run as efficiently as they could be...

[salopiangrowler]

id like to know how the fare allocator does actually work out the fares there's only 10p difference between a return and a single between Shrewsbury and Birmingham.

£9.90 return, £9.80 single

And yet from telford its:

£9.60rtn, £9.50sgl

Yet Shrewsbury to Telford is

£3.50rtn £3.40single

Another Example is

Shrewsbury - Cardiff

27.80 rtn 27.60 sgl

Shrewsbury - Newport

18.75 rtn 18.50 sgl

Newport - Cardiff

£5.10 rtn £5 sgl

Newport - Cardiff Alt

Valley Rover £6 approx.

with 2 seperate tickets Shrewsbury - Cardiff can be acheived within £26 and you can have uniterrupted days travel on the valley lines aswell, Bargain.