Request for help: LNER Fare Trial Ripoff

deltic · 23 Apr 2024

I am not clear what the outcome the OP is trying to achieve with this exercise. That all rail staff take a 20% pay cut so that rail fares can be reduced, that the rail service to Edinburgh is reduced so only trains that are 100% fully loaded continue to operate to bring down the cost of operating the service, that we close down the service to Edinburgh as its far cheaper and quicker to travel by air, that we get the taxpayer to subsidise a fairly affluent group of individuals who want to travel cheaply by train even more than they do now? LNER charge the fares they do because the government has told them to and because demand is there. Rail has around 30% market share between London and Edinburgh - its not clear rail could cope if all air passengers suddenly decided to switch to rail.

This sort of stunt just reinforces the message that all rail fares are very expensive, when in reality there are lots of opportunities to travel relatively cheaply.

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Fermiboson · 23 Apr 2024

deltic said:
I am not clear what the outcome the OP is trying to achieve with this exercise.

If nothing else, establish that LNER is lying to the public. Supporters of the railway do not have to stand with railway companies and their various commercial doings to the death for fear of tarnishing the name of the railway.

"Yes, we'll always support you, but as your standard-bearer, not your pall-bearer." - Sir Humphrey Appleby

Bletchleyite · 23 Apr 2024

deltic said:
This sort of stunt just reinforces the message that all rail fares are very expensive, when in reality there are lots of opportunities to travel relatively cheaply.

Have you actually looked at LNER Edinburgh-London fares post fare-increase trial? There are no opportunities to travel relatively cheaply. The fares ARE very expensive. They weren't that cheap before, either - for equivalent journeys LNER was still about 20% more expensive than Avanti.

There are two ways to travel relatively cheaply from London to Edinburgh now by rail. One is called Lumo, and the other is called Avanti, though I'm inclined to favour the orange one with wings. Except at ridiculous times of day, you're going to be paying a fortune now (though don't forget how much nicer Haymarket, Manors and Reston are

).

Even away from LNER, the railway IS expensive compared to driving in the vast majority of cases. Yes, you might get a cheap fare booked several months in advance (though likely not on LNER - bargain basement Advances are now mostly found on the likes of Northern, WMT, SWR etc), but these are headline fares which are nowhere near what most people pay.

Fermiboson said:
If nothing else, establish that LNER is lying to the public.

This absolutely needs calling out. I can't stand dishonest businesses. Even less so dishonest businesses that are basically an extension of a grossly dishonest Government.

yorksrob · 23 Apr 2024

deltic said:
I am not clear what the outcome the OP is trying to achieve with this exercise. That all rail staff take a 20% pay cut so that rail fares can be reduced, that the rail service to Edinburgh is reduced so only trains that are 100% fully loaded continue to operate to bring down the cost of operating the service, that we close down the service to Edinburgh as its far cheaper and quicker to travel by air, that we get the taxpayer to subsidise a fairly affluent group of individuals who want to travel cheaply by train even more than they do now? LNER charge the fares they do because the government has told them to and because demand is there. Rail has around 30% market share between London and Edinburgh - its not clear rail could cope if all air passengers suddenly decided to switch to rail.

This sort of stunt just reinforces the message that all rail fares are very expensive, when in reality there are lots of opportunities to travel relatively cheaply.

This is clearly not true.

First of all, the OP is not trying to get fares reduced, he's trying to stop a price hike.

The idea that he's trying to get a pay cut introduced or services reduced is also nonsense. He's trying to apply political pressure to those in power to stop the fares hike and prevent it being replicated elsewhere.

It's not a particularly affluent set of passengers who benefit from the off-peak fare. Lower income individuals sometimes have to travel at short notice and those who use advanced purchase fares benefit from the price cap provided by the OP fare.

What has 30% market share got to do with the price of fish ? If all those using affordable fares on the railway got turfed off onto planes, the price of air fares would soon go up.

deltic · 24 Apr 2024

Bletchleyite said:
There are two ways to travel relatively cheaply from London to Edinburgh now by rail. One is called Lumo, and the other is called Avanti, though I'm inclined to favour the orange one with wings. Except at ridiculous times of day, you're going to be paying a fortune now (though don't forget how much nicer Haymarket, Manors and Reston are ).

Even away from LNER, the railway IS expensive compared to driving in the vast majority of cases. Yes, you might get a cheap fare booked several months in advance (though likely not on LNER - bargain basement Advances are now mostly found on the likes of Northern, WMT, SWR etc), but these are headline fares which are nowhere near what most people pay.

You have just given examples of cheaper ways to travel between London and Edinburgh and made the point I was trying to make that headline fares often bare little resemblance to the average fares paid.

OP's type publicity often just reinforces a perception that all rail fares everywhere are very expensive when they are not.

yorksrob said:
This is clearly not true.

First of all, the OP is not trying to get fares reduced, he's trying to stop a price hike.

The idea that he's trying to get a pay cut introduced or services reduced is also nonsense. He's trying to apply political pressure to those in power to stop the fares hike and prevent it being replicated elsewhere.

It's not a particularly affluent set of passengers who benefit from the off-peak fare. Lower income individuals sometimes have to travel at short notice and those who use advanced purchase fares benefit from the price cap provided by the OP fare.

What has 30% market share got to do with the price of fish ? If all those using affordable fares on the railway got turfed off onto planes, the price of air fares would soon go up.

As the fares have already gone up it's not going to stop a price hike. Rail revenue either comes from passengers or tax payers, need a good argument why we should expect the latter to pay more to enable people to travel long distances more cheaply. There are cheaper options still available such as Lumo or coaches.

yorksrob · 24 Apr 2024

deltic said:
You have just given examples of cheaper ways to travel between London and Edinburgh and made the point I was trying to make that headline fares often bare little resemblance to the average fares paid.

OP's type publicity often just reinforces a perception that all rail fares everywhere are very expensive when they are not.

As the fares have already gone up it's not going to stop a price hike. Rail revenue either comes from passengers or tax payers, need a good argument why we should expect the latter to pay more to enable people to travel long distances more cheaply. There are cheaper options still available such as Lumo or coaches.

There have been plenty of good arguments, all through this thread and the other one. I've already mentioned the comments by former Conservative transport secretary and chancellor Philip Hammond various times, but to me these form the best argument for fares regulation - if we're to fund a railway system, it should be affordable to ordinary passengers as a public service.

Put it another way - Iam a taxpayer and I want my taxes to fund a railway that I can afford to use. I don't expect to be told to sod off and use a coach (especially not by a load of rich motorists in Whitehall and Westminster).

deltic · 24 Apr 2024

yorksrob said:
There have been plenty of good arguments, all through this thread and the other one. I've already mentioned the comments by former Conservative transport secretary and chancellor Philip Hammond various times, but to me these form the best argument for fares regulation - if we're to fund a railway system, it should be affordable to ordinary passengers as a public service.

Put it another way - Iam a taxpayer and I want my taxes to fund a railway that I can afford to use. I don't expect to be told to sod off and use a coach (especially not by a load of rich motorists in Whitehall and Westminster).

Comes back to the point that no-one can answer - how do you define affordability to the ordinary passenger? What is an affordable fare for a trip between London and Edinburgh, how is it determined, should that fare be available on all trains, if not what proportion of trains, should there just be some tickets available at that fare and if so how many etc.

yorksrob · 24 Apr 2024

deltic said:
Comes back to the point that no-one can answer - how do you define affordability to the ordinary passenger? What is an affordable fare for a trip between London and Edinburgh, how is it determined, should that fare be available on all trains, if not what proportion of trains, should there just be some tickets available at that fare and if so how many etc.

Well, you can define what changes are moving in the wrong direction. Getting rid of off-peak and hiking prices are definitely that as they are making fares less affordable.

By contrast, Scotrail are attempting to make their fares more affordable by removing peak fares

talldave · 24 Apr 2024

I'm a great fan of buying a ticket to somewhere you're not going, but I think you've got that covered.

What you really need, especially for your YouTube thumbnail, is an appropriately named stuffed toy for the airline option to rival LNER's Eleanor.

Watershed · 24 Apr 2024

deltic said:
Comes back to the point that no-one can answer - how do you define affordability to the ordinary passenger? What is an affordable fare for a trip between London and Edinburgh, how is it determined, should that fare be available on all trains, if not what proportion of trains, should there just be some tickets available at that fare and if so how many etc.

Regulated fares have been the backbone of the "affordable" walk-up railway, even if the restrictions that they carry can sometimes be onerous. I can see no justification for changing this long-standing position and removing all regulation of prices.

Bletchleyite · 24 Apr 2024

deltic said:
OP's type publicity often just reinforces a perception that all rail fares everywhere are very expensive when they are not.

Almost all of them are. You need to really know what you're doing to get good value in most cases.

I'm flummoxed as to why you would defend this.

BRX · 24 Apr 2024

deltic said:
Comes back to the point that no-one can answer - how do you define affordability to the ordinary passenger? What is an affordable fare for a trip between London and Edinburgh, how is it determined, should that fare be available on all trains, if not what proportion of trains, should there just be some tickets available at that fare and if so how many etc.

Well, you can relate it to the cost of travelling by other means, the most significant of which is probably private car. And cars are used on a "walk-up" basis. There are then arguments about the marginal vs "real"cost of a car journey but if you base it on something like 25p a mile then it's about £100 to drive from London to Edinburgh, which is in the same order as the off peak fare. Generally off-peak fares seem to be broadly comparable with the cost of one person driving. This of course breaks down when you have more than one person travelling. Once you start defaulting to Anytime fares though (which is the consequence of this trial), these generally have no hope at all of competing with driving, on cost.

I'd say that long standing expectations are also highly significant though. For a long time we've had the concept of regulated fares, which are reasonably steady in price. Of course there are incremental increases and they often exceed inflation, but there is never a sudden doubling or more in price (which is what is happening with this trial). People make various decisions, like where to live and work, based on certain assumptions about travel costs. In this case you could look at it in terms of affordability of life choices, made on an assumption that travel costs will remain broadly stable. So the travel costs are what they are - but people use these to make decisions about what is affordable to them.

Imagine what would happen if the cost of petrol was suddenly doubled overnight, as a "trial".

Bletchleyite · 24 Apr 2024

BRX said:
Imagine what would happen if the cost of petrol was suddenly doubled overnight, as a "trial".

This did close to happen a while back (reached £1.99/l for a while) and it was causing major problems for people.

deltic · 24 Apr 2024

BRX said:
Well, you can relate it to the cost of travelling by other means, the most significant of which is probably private car. And cars are used on a "walk-up" basis. There are then arguments about the marginal vs "real"cost of a car journey but if you base it on something like 25p a mile then it's about £100 to drive from London to Edinburgh, which is in the same order as the off peak fare. Generally off-peak fares seem to be broadly comparable with the cost of one person driving. This of course breaks down when you have more than one person travelling. Once you start defaulting to Anytime fares though (which is the consequence of this trial), these generally have no hope at all of competing with driving, on cost.

I'd say that long standing expectations are also highly significant though. For a long time we've had the concept of regulated fares, which are reasonably steady in price. Of course there are incremental increases and they often exceed inflation, but there is never a sudden doubling or more in price (which is what is happening with this trial). People make various decisions, like where to live and work, based on certain assumptions about travel costs. In this case you could look at it in terms of affordability of life choices, made on an assumption that travel costs will remain broadly stable. So the travel costs are what they are - but people use these to make decisions about what is affordable to them.

Imagine what would happen if the cost of petrol was suddenly doubled overnight, as a "trial".

There are plenty of trains running today with ticket prices of £70 or less and even under £60 on Lumo on the 12.18. While I'm not a fan of what LNER is doing this idea that there are no reasonably priced tickets available any more is not correct. Weekends have become the new peak period and hence ticket prices are often higher than weekdays.

Bletchleyite · 24 Apr 2024

deltic said:
There are plenty of trains running today with ticket prices of £70 or less and even under £60 on Lumo on the 12.18.

You must surely recognise that that's a quite massive increase from what the cheap end of the market was before this change.

You have, with respect, been had.

bakerstreet · 24 Apr 2024

Bletchleyite said:
You must surely recognise that that's a quite massive increase from what the cheap end of the market was before this change.

You have, with respect, been had.

Eg London KX to Leeds, August 2021.
Weeknight at 1933.

£18.50 with no railcard - bought on the day.

(Yes at the tail end of Covid but today on the same train £68.20)

Look at the cost of the 1948 tonight (also attached).

One for you @AlterEgo

BRX · 24 Apr 2024

deltic said:
There are plenty of trains running today with ticket prices of £70 or less and even under £60 on Lumo on the 12.18. While I'm not a fan of what LNER is doing this idea that there are no reasonably priced tickets available any more is not correct. Weekends have become the new peak period and hence ticket prices are often higher than weekdays.

I think the point is that you can no longer rely on reasonably priced tickets being available. The fact that there are some available now isn't much use to someone trying to make a decision, two days ago, about whether they have to commit in advance to traveling on a certain day/time in order to travel affordably.

Also, look at what happens now if you want to travel to Edinburgh after 3pm. Most times when I've looked, in the past few weeks, all trains for the rest of the day are expensive. This I think was already worsened when they removed the shoulder off peak fares a little while back. You could at least still travel on the last train, the 7pm one on an off peak fare. No longer the case. That'll be £199 if you want to travel today.

bakerstreet said:
Eg London KX to Leeds, August 2021.
Weeknight at 1933.

£18.50 with no railcard - bought on the day.

(Yes at the tail end of Covid but today on the same train £68.20)

Look at the cost of the 1948 tonight (also attached).

One for you @AlterEgo

View attachment 156980

View attachment 156981

I don't think this is relevant to the discussion about the removal of off peak fares. You were traveling on an advance.

bakerstreet · 24 Apr 2024

BRX said:
I don't think this is relevant to the discussion about the removal of off peak fares. You were traveling on an advance.

Thanks for this.

The whole purpose of removing off peak fares was to raise the price of advances above the off peak cap.

I am giving my own example of how much advances are now able to increase by and have increased by since I last travelled on LNER.

I’m not sure why you feel this is off topic but thanks for sharing your thoughts.

As an aside, I think both @deltic and @Bletchleyite are referring to the price of available advances in their recent posts that I was replying to.

Apologies if I’ve misunderstood.

DanNCL · 24 Apr 2024

deltic said:
I am not clear what the outcome the OP is trying to achieve with this exercise. That all rail staff take a 20% pay cut so that rail fares can be reduced, that the rail service to Edinburgh is reduced so only trains that are 100% fully loaded continue to operate to bring down the cost of operating the service, that we close down the service to Edinburgh as its far cheaper and quicker to travel by air, that we get the taxpayer to subsidise a fairly affluent group of individuals who want to travel cheaply by train even more than they do now? LNER charge the fares they do because the government has told them to and because demand is there. Rail has around 30% market share between London and Edinburgh - its not clear rail could cope if all air passengers suddenly decided to switch to rail.

This sort of stunt just reinforces the message that all rail fares are very expensive, when in reality there are lots of opportunities to travel relatively cheaply.

This has absolutely nothing to do with staff pay. Has this stealth fares hike seen staff pay go up by even 1p? No!

deltic said:
OP's type publicity often just reinforces a perception that all rail fares everywhere are very expensive when they are not.

Many of them are expensive. There’s a reason why BA are now filling up more seats than ever on their flights to both Edinburgh and Newcastle, and it’s not because rail is cheap…

bakerstreet said:
Thanks for this.

The whole purpose of removing off peak fares was to raise the price of advances above the off peak cap.

I am giving my own example of how much advances are now able to increase by and have increased by since I last travelled on LNER.

I’m not sure why you feel this is off topic but thanks for sharing your thoughts.

As an aside, I think both @deltic and @Bletchleyite are referring to the price of available advances in their recent posts that I was replying to.

Apologies if I’ve misunderstood.

The flow you’re looking at isn’t one where off peak fares have been removed. The only flows they’ve been removed from are London-Newcastle and London-Edinburgh.

Bletchleyite · 24 Apr 2024

BRX said:
I don't think this is relevant to the discussion about the removal of off peak fares. You were traveling on an advance.

It's absolutely relevant. The point of the scheme is removing the regulated fare cap so Advances can be priced much higher. They don't (well, some people in LNER do) have it in for people travelling flexibly, they just want to whack the prices up. And surprise, surprise, that's what's happened, with £130 being a very common price near to the date of travel for London-Edinburgh at times when Off Peak was previously valid.

You only have to read the quoted document to prove that there's one purpose for it - fare increases.

Starmill · 24 Apr 2024

deltic said:
There are plenty of trains running today with ticket prices of £70 or less and even under £60 on Lumo on the 12.18. While I'm not a fan of what LNER is doing this idea that there are no reasonably priced tickets available any more is not correct. Weekends have become the new peak period and hence ticket prices are often higher than weekdays.

The OP isn't arguing against any of this in their video ideas though are they? Have you actually read their posts? Can you give us a bit more information about your objections to their ideas please?

deltic said:
That all rail staff take a 20% pay cut so that rail fares can be reduced, that the rail service to Edinburgh is reduced so only trains that are 100% fully loaded continue to operate to bring down the cost of operating the service, that we close down the service to Edinburgh as its far cheaper and quicker to travel by air, that we get the taxpayer to subsidise a fairly affluent group of individuals who want to travel cheaply by train even more than they do now?

Your suggestions here are totally ridiculous, and I can't see where anyone has said anything that might give you these ideas? Can you explain what you're hoping to achieve by posting this?

bakerstreet · 24 Apr 2024

DanNCL said:
The flow you’re looking at isn’t one where off peak fares have been removed. The only flows they’ve been removed from are London-Newcastle and London-Edinburgh.

If LNER are not interfering with other flows too then why are they charging £165.90 on the 1948 with Anytime showing as the cheapest fare?

And the point is that they are whacking up the cost of advances even outside of the official trial.

Starmill · 24 Apr 2024

DanNCL said:
Many of them are expensive. There’s a reason why BA are now filling up more seats than ever on their flights to both Edinburgh and Newcastle, and it’s not because rail is cheap…

It worries me a lot that so-called supporters of the railway take the line that the customer is simply mistaken in their understanding of the price of rail tickets. It's a hilarious idea to me that people aren't capable of comparing prices like with like between the competing operators.

Bletchleyite · 24 Apr 2024

bakerstreet said:
If LNER are not interfering with other flows too then why are they charging £165.90 on the 1948 with Anytime showing as the cheapest fare?

That is I think happening because Grand Central and LNER use different quotas so no Advances come up for those journeys. Trainsplit, Trainline etc would sell a much cheaper split for that journey, not that I'd recommend going anywhere near "Grand Cancel".

Haywain · 24 Apr 2024

bakerstreet said:
If LNER are not interfering with other flows too then why are they charging £165.90 on the 1948 with Anytime showing as the cheapest fare?

That isn't an LNER service, it's Grand Central with a change somewhere.

AlterEgo · 24 Apr 2024

bakerstreet said:
Thanks for this.

The whole purpose of removing off peak fares was to raise the price of advances above the off peak cap.

I am giving my own example of how much advances are now able to increase by and have increased by since I last travelled on LNER.

It was a useful example and I'm grateful for it. This is really central to what I'm getting at - the off peak cap being removed, leading to inflexible tickets being able to be increased in price.

Haywain · 24 Apr 2024

Haywain said:
That isn't an LNER service, it's Grand Central with a change somewhere.

An Anytime Single being offered, probably because GC doesn't have availability for the Off Peak quota.

Bletchleyite · 24 Apr 2024

Haywain said:
An Anytime Single being offered, probably because GC doesn't have availability for the Off Peak quota.

Hadn't noticed it wasn't Edinburgh! The different quotas for different walk-up fares thing is very naughty.

robbeech · 24 Apr 2024

I think the crucial thing is to take it back to basics with info about ticket types and then in my opinion the key bullet points include but are not necessarily limited to :

The old super off peak fare being a maximum possible price they could charge for a journey as a cap.
The concept of simplification as they call it being nothing shy of a con, the Flex 70 concept is incredibly complicated when tying to find the best value.
The CONTROL element. This "trial" hands over almost entire control to the operator, they control how much you pay and indeed whether you can even buy a ticket for a train. If they chose not to sell tickets for a train then that train can run empty. This has a crossover with the compulsory reservations saga too.
The "loop holes". We need to get people to understand that the loop holes are NOT to be relied on as the trial rolling out will close all of those, Haymarket and Manors tickets for example will no longer work as they'll be included.
The spread. If this spread to lots of connections it will affect many people, not just London to ECML passengers, Connections like Bradford, Cambridge, Worksop, Hull, Middlesbrough could all be affected. (An example of this is a Worksop to London Any permitted is currently £52.20 each way, this will rise to £107.50 each way allowing the top 6 tiers of Advance singles to be offered instead of the bottom 6)
The TOC Restrictions. In order to get a ticket at anything less than twice the old price you now have to restrict yourself to one operator, conveniently LNER. This causes huge issues during disruption where previously you'd be able to hope onto a TPE / XC / GC / EMR / HT / Lumo / Or go a totally different route.

It's a dirty con from a dirty operator it seems and i feel sorry for the staff that have to deal with people's anger.

Other thoughts, possibly for the main thread thinking about it, how are Other TOCS dealing with this? I guess the trial doesn't really allow them (exc Lumo) to put up their advances as they don't run the routes. But are we seeing Lumo fail to offer the cheapest tier advances, cashing in on the whole scheme (from a business point of view you could hardly blame them). Afterall there is no point a Lumo ticket being £20 if the next cheapest is £120

deltic · 24 Apr 2024

Starmill said:
The OP isn't arguing against any of this in their video ideas though are they? Have you actually read their posts? Can you give us a bit more information about your objections to their ideas please?

Your suggestions here are totally ridiculous, and I can't see where anyone has said anything that might give you these ideas? Can you explain what you're hoping to achieve by posting this?

The OP is proposing a similar stunt that has been covered many times before that it can be cheaper to fly from somewhere in the UK to a destination in Europe and back to a final destination in the UK for less than the rail fare. Its not a new idea and it just reinforces the idea that all rail fares in the UK are unaffordable. When non-rail users are asked how much it costs to travel between A & B they tend to give a cost far higher than the actual fare. Hence the outcome of the stunt is not helpful to anyone except the airlines.

Rail revenue can only come from two sources, passengers or taxpayers or you reduce costs. If people want cheaper fares then the question that needs to be asked is how are you going to pay for it. Increased taxes or reducing costs and if the latter which costs. Everyone wants lower fares but no-one wants to cover the cost of them.

Request for help: LNER Fare Trial Ripoff

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