GWR have recently increased many of the advance fares on their network.
True and indeed quite the understatement.
In effect, prices have increased massively across the board on the routes from S Wales and Bristol in a few short years.
Not that long ago it was routinely possible to easily pick up undiscounted tickets for return journeys Bristol-Paddington for £20, Cardiff-Paddington for £23, Chippenham-Paddington for £12. This wasn't just for one ticket on one train at 5am purchased 1 second after 3 months prior to travel - it was for most services outside the obvious busy times, often purchased not that far in advance of travel and there were clearly many available on each train.
Now the absolute minimum is £40.80 for Bristol and £53.60 for Cardiff - the latter an increase to 233% of the former fare. That's before taking into account obviously more limited quotas making it harder to obtain even these inflated prices.
I and colleagues continue to make some journeys on this route by train. As they are mostly either counter-flow (i.e. into London in the mid afternoon) or at quiet times late at night or early morning, the trains concerned are never full, usually nowhere near it. Well, except for the grim and now routine experience of their being short-formed for the nth time...
Overall the combination of unreliability, unpunctuality, frequent short-forming, price gouging and general inconvenience frequently tips the balance in favour of the car+tube alternative instead. This is a stupid outcome in my view, particularly in environmental terms, and I keep trying to use the train on the increasingly rare occasions when they're not on strike or the line between Reading and Paddington hasn't descended into chaos yet again.
Some price competition on parts of this route would therefore be very welcome. Even if none of the other problems with it can really be addressed, someone undercutting GWR might exert some pressure to get pricing under control.
