Theres no requiremnet to book both legs on the way out if you 're not sure when you're returning.
It is quite strange behaviour to travel long distance without a plan for how you're going to get home. When planning a long-distance trip, you get everything sorted out, and if you need flexibility, you grit your teeth and pay for it.
That psychology isn't going to change just because LNER's pricing department decides to stick its fingers in its ears and scream 'la la la' about how people talk about and imagine fares!
The chances of an Advance ticket being available on the day that would cost less in sum than the Off Peak Return level are very slim, yes absolutely. Also many trains, especially those to and from Edinburgh, will not have any Advance availability on the day at all. But then that's the predictable outcome generally with this.
Quite!
Neither is it feasible to make sure that (A-B) + (B-C) = (A-C) in all cases, so that split ticketing becomes irrelevant.
Why not?
I am unconvinced that single leg pricing has been the significant factor there. PAYG around London is much easier than having to buy a ticket in advance, and Advances have sometimes been cheaper than walk-up ticket. But you could do both of those things without needing to have single leg pricing.
Indeed. I think many Londoners just trust 'the system' to calculate their fares for them and would be pleasantly surprised if it gave them a discount for returning along the same route as they set out.
Highly unlikely contactless cards would be viable for long distance journeys - you’d need a “maximum fare” in case someone doesn’t tap out, so you’d put that at £185 just in case someone doesn’t tap out on a Manchester - Stockport journey, to cover anyone going to London?
ITSO might work in the Netherlands etc but they’re a 1/6 the size of our country and fares don’t tend to cost the Earth.
Couldn't we just allow people to load Advance tickets onto their cards?
We are moving in the other direction - for whatever reason, the powers that be seem to have decided that a national ITSO card is
so 2010s, and think that scanning PDFs of Aztec codes is somehow modern and sensible. But that isn't because ITSO cards force PAYGO.
Many won't let you out to buy a coffee, and if they do they won't let you back in.
Aside from one situation
in extremis at Hereford where they insisted rail replacement coaches were
just about to turn up, I have only ever even heard of this happening at Clapham Jn; certainly it's not 'many' gatelines who refuse to let interchange passengers access station facilities.
Your post complely ignores all those customers already buying two singles to make a return journey on Advance Tickets.
Long-distance journeys planned in advance are a different situation to local spontaneous journeys. No one, or very few people, would buy an Advance single for (say) an evening out in Plymouth returning to Exeter at a time which isn't pre-planned.