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As conceived in 1995 it was a price cap but in practice it was very quickly obvious that unless every TOC priced every regulated fare to the maximum level permitted, they'd never win a franchise bid, so it's semantics really. Pricing policy is now in the hands of the DfT, so it's been 5 years...

Not at market rates - the off-peak ticket has been regulated since 1995. That is effectively a subsidy. Please note I am not arguing for or against the policy but just trying to make the point that fares priced below what the market will bear are replacing money that would come from passengers...

Indeed - which is precisely why on longer distance journeys the simplicity of being able to use any train has a value. You can either price it in and realise that value and use the revenue to cross subsidise other products, or you offer it to everyone but reduce revenue (because there is no...

One of the things that the ORR report has finally blown wide open is the complete lack of consistency across TOCs. 10 years ago this would have probably been dealt with by a few 'commitments' and a 10-point-plan everyone forgot about after 5 minutes, but this report has landed as GBR is being...

I actually have a BR(WR) 1950s book of routes that I picked up some years ago but by 1987 (when I became a booking clerk) we no longer had any specific route publications until the privatisation routeing guide. Around 1989 the very first computerised Journey Planning tool was introduced for TEB...

Under British Rail there was no routeing guide. Tickets either had a geographical route (e.g. 'via London') or were valid via any reasonable route. The Routeing Guide came in during 1996 but was frankly unintelligible to staff on the ground. We have a paper copy in the archive. The biggest...

It's less the making a fuss and more the very blunt parameters that to me are an issue. Delay Repay is a contractual rather than a legal right - your legal rights are contained in legislation such as the UK Passenger Rights Obligations and the Consumer Rights Act. Delay Repay replaces genuine...

That's doable but with little slack. But given the level of overall disruption and the fact that the remedy has no direct cost for the railway I think it was the right call to allow travel. I've never been a great fan of treating customer service rules as a set of rigid provisos where 'computer...

I can't see from the OP when they actually turned up at East Croydon but if their original plan was to get to Euston at 14:25 it must have been around 13:45. Granted that isn't oodles of extra time but in normal circumstances that should be plenty - it's 16 minutes by fast train to Victoria and...

Whether it's an Advance ticket or Superfare, where the failure to make the connection is entirely down to the failure of connecting rail services then the passenger should be accommodated on a later service. There are various provisions in the PRO regulations as well as Code of Practice...

There was no functioning Thameslink service across London for most of yesterday. I'm glad that the OP was able (correctly) to argue the case for his girlfriend, the delays from south of the river were very severe in many cases and it is just this sort of thing which the ticket rules are supposed...

The routeing guide is not being done away with in the next NRCoT and the data (and the public link to it) will still be there

I'm actually trying to look forward here. I realise that the current crop of AI assistants are pretty ropey; What I was looking ahead to was a specifically configured AI application that would be more permissive on open tickets than simply refusing any specific route that wasn't programmed in...

The tickets referred to by the OP used to exist. British Rail allowed for the sale of an all stations Season Ticket, which for a 50% premium could be issued as a bearer pass. After privatisation the job of pricing this 'on application' fare fell to ATOC, where is had to be agreed by all the...

If your baseline is 'Any Reasonable' you don't need the 3 mile rule. Rules iike that create loopholes and gaming the system. These days, a standardised Journey Planner algorithm coupled with AI could probably manage 'Any Reasonable' quite successfully, letting a wide range of routes and journey...

These rates will have all resulted from British Rail applying a quality threshold to fares which was then frozen is aspic by Fares Regulation in 1995, baking in distortions that had decreasing relevance to the actual service provided. Incidentally the Government is responsible for fares policy...

It is of course the old Victoria - Portsmouth main line, but the growth of Croydon, Gatwick and Crawley resulted in the progressive diversion of through services. It was seriously considered for closure in the 80s. Although it avoided that fate it is never going to trouble the overcrowding...

You cannot get an Oyster PAYG fare in advance. If you want to split a fare which includes a PAYG component you're going to have physically get off the train and touch in and out to obtain it.

Non-safeguarded rail staff (those employed since April 1996) are not entitled to Residential travel except as may be provided by their employing TOC plus any owning group arrangements.

The TOCs are run as businesses, as GBR's operating arm will be. The Government is the shareholder but they are not 'run' by ministers (who have neither the bandwidth nor experience to run a business day-to-day). The only activity that doesn't follow this model is the NHS, which, however it has...