2025 fares from 2 March 2025 now in journey planners

[1D54]

Not sure that all the AP fares have actually been scrapped for the 10 minute journey from Leicester to Narborough, just the very cheapest tiers, which means that the cheapest price now seems to be £3.90 for an Advance Single (or £2.55 with a valid railcard).

A saving of about 30p between cheapest Advanced Single or Anytime Single.. As i said earlier £2.55 now and it was £1.10 on January 2nd.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

A saving of about 30p between cheapest Advanced Single or Anytime Single. As i said earlier £2.55 now and it was £1.10 on January 2nd.

Are you sure about the 30p saving you mention? Anytime Day Singles would seem to be £7.70 for Leicester to Narborough. (Or £5.10 with railcard discount). The scrapping of the very cheapest advance fare tiers by Cross Country seems to be the main issue.

 

[JonathanH]

It's shocking to see how the new government are actually worse than the old one for the bus and rail industries.

Are they? The old government would have had to put fares up too. 'actually no better' would be a fairer description.

The government's stated objective is economic growth. It isn't clear that paying more subsidy to reduce fares in real terms delivers that objective. The government essentially needs people to spend more in the economy, not the government to spend more on people.

 

[1D54]

Are you sure about the 30p saving you mention? Anytime Day Singles would seem to be £7.70 for Leicester to Narborough. (Or £5.10 with railcard discount). The scrapping of the very cheapest advance fare tiers by Cross Country seems to be the main issue.

Yep, not sure where i got the Anytime Day prices or why i mentioned them. I stopped using the bus because of the cap increase coupled with the halt to industrial action on the rail network. I might as well go back.

 

[arb]

A pair of GWR advances is often only a few pounds under the Super Off Peak (at a time when the Super Off Peak is valid), even booked months in advance.

This is something I've noticed. A mainstay of my long-distance rail travel over the last 10 to 15 years is Cambridge or Ely to either South Wales, Devon or Cornwall. The cost increase over the last few years is astronomical. Also not just the cost increase, but other niggles such as the reservable trains on the Great Northern/Thameslink leg that now reduce the journey flexibility further with advance tickets when crossing London (just as Crossrail made it easier to cross London for these journeys!).

I've now switched to the super-off-peak return instead of advances, and have become accustomed to the flexibility that this gives me. I'm happy to admit that I quite like it at the current price point, but I am close to breaking point. If GWR go the way of East Coast and ditch the (super-)off-peak flexible tickets so that they can increase the advances even more then I will be saying goodbye to the railway for the vast majority of these journeys. A younger version of me that did not have as much disposable income as I do now would very probably have never considered using the railway in the first place for long-distance journeys at today's prices.

 

[CyrusWuff]

It seems that Chiltern's website has decided that (some) Off-Peak Day Singles and Returns no longer exist for journeys within the Project Oval area.



Image shows a screenshot taken from the Chiltern website for a return journey from Marylebone to High Wycombe. The only Return fare being offered is an Anytime Day Return and Off-Peak Day Singles are only being offered for the High Wycombe to Marylebone leg.

Query URL: https://buy.chilternrailways.co.uk/...LS_1_4&ls=LS_2_9&p=PRICE_P_1_4&p=PRICE_P_2_39

Other retailers are offering an Off-Peak Day Return for the journey as expected. For example, from the (Beta) Forum Ticketing site: https://tickets-beta.railforums.co....false&adv:ob:MaxChanges=7&adv:ib:MaxChanges=7

 

[Mark J]

A pair of GWR advances is often only a few pounds under the Super Off Peak (at a time when the Super Off Peak is valid), even booked months in advance.

In some cases, a GWR off peak is cheaper than a super off peak!!

 

[boiledbeans2]

Do the DfT and rail bosses really think the way to grow passenger numbers is by continual above inflation increases?

[...]

Well, the railway staff are always threatening to strike if they don't get above inflation pay rises.
Where does the money for the pay rise come from?

And thus, the wage-price spiral.

 

[infobleep]

Don't forget has a railcard, almost a necessity to travel these days. Even gaming the system is getting harder, with cheap Advances withdrawn, route restrictions added, local services being reservable restricting through tickets and all fares going up, even if it's "just" 4.6%. Plus, if you start short/finish early, you have to deal with clueless gateline staff.

In fairness, I don't use XC which seems to be the operator where split ticketing is the most effective.

I mostly don't have issues finishing short or starting short, when I do it.

I've had the occasional issue with more obscure valid routes. Not that I do that too often.

 

[bakerstreet]

It seems that Chiltern's website has decided that (some) Off-Peak Day Singles and Returns no longer exist for journeys within the Project Oval area.

View attachment 175783

Image shows a screenshot taken from the Chiltern website for a return journey from Marylebone to High Wycombe. The only Return fare being offered is an Anytime Day Return and Off-Peak Day Singles are only being offered for the High Wycombe to Marylebone leg.

Query URL: https://buy.chilternrailways.co.uk/search?origin=GBMYB&destination=GBHWY&outboundTime=2025-03-26T10:00:00&outboundTimeType=DEPARTURE&adults=1&children=0&inbound=true&inboundTimeType=DEPARTURE&inboundTime=2025-03-26T17:00:00&railcards=[]&ls=LS_1_4&ls=LS_2_9&p=PRICE_P_1_4&p=PRICE_P_2_39

Other retailers are offering an Off-Peak Day Return for the journey as expected. For example, from the (Beta) Forum Ticketing site: https://tickets-beta.railforums.co....false&adv:ob:MaxChanges=7&adv:ib:MaxChanges=7

I’ve seen this on other flows from north London to project oval in the south.
by design or by error?
(Has a cap been placed on off peak availability?)

 

[Haywain]

Well, the railway staff are always threatening to strike if they don't get above inflation pay rises.

The strikes that ended after the election were after a 3 year pay freeze. But don't let the facts get in the way of your bias.

 

[CyrusWuff]

I’ve seen this on other flows from north London to project oval in the south.
by design or by error?
(Has a cap been placed on off peak availability?)

Doing some more digging it seems that LNER, TfW and Virgin Trains ticketing are also affected, so I'd suggest it's in error as other web retailers are able to sell them.

 

[redreni]

The government's stated objective is economic growth. It isn't clear that paying more subsidy to reduce fares in real terms delivers that objective. The government essentially needs people to spend more in the economy, not the government to spend more on people.

If people had to spend less on train fares it's unlikely much of the money saved would be hoarded or sent offshore. It'd probably be spent on something that doesn't enjoy a zero rate of VAT!

Money is often spent and/or earned in transactions that are enabled by the rail journey, but if you charge people higher fares then (a) some of them might not travel, so you lose the transaction on the rail fare as well as any and all transactions that depended on the journey, and (b) some of them will still travel and will pay the higher fare, which generates more revenue for the rail industry to offset the cost of providing the service but generates no VAT, and reduces the capacity of the people who pay those fares to spend (whether in transactions enabled by the rail journey or otherwise), since they must allocate a larger share of their disposable income to rail fares.

It's difficult to see how either of those possible outcomes contributes much to economic growth?

The state subsidising people to go places and do things seems like a perfectly orthodox form of economic stimulus to me. I know there's a school of thought that modal shift from train to car is a big win for the government and high train fares contribute to that. I'm not sure it is, necessarily, when the cost of building and maintaining roads and treating all the asthma and other conditions associated with poor air quality is considered.

 

[MikeWM]

This is something I've noticed. A mainstay of my long-distance rail travel over the last 10 to 15 years is Cambridge or Ely to either South Wales, Devon or Cornwall. The cost increase over the last few years is astronomical.

Seconded - to the degree that I'll be doing a period return from Ely to Didcot (with Gold Card discount) combined with singles to/from Swindon later this month, whereas in the past there were always sufficient cheap advances available to make using advances for this journey the obvious thing to do - but they all seem to have disappeared from GWR lately.

I've not tried to look in detail at the structure on brfares, but it feels similar to 8 or so years back when Virgin West Coast repriced all their advance tiers for Cambridge/Ely to Liverpool/Manchester/etc. and changed what was a spread of about £20 to £50 (depending on tier) to about £40 to £50, ie. doubling the cheaper fares overnight while not making a lot of difference to the more expensive tiers.

 

[Starmill]

Are they? The old government would have had to put fares up too. 'actually no better' would be a fairer description.

There are various things the other lot promised to do like the bus cap and some capital spending that have been ditched. In general they used an RPI formula because they didn't want to burn capital by insisting on RPI+1, which is something the new government has been far more comfortable with. They've also brought in a rail minister who has done significantly more damage to the industry than the tory one did. Now you can argue they wouldn't have done a good job either and you may very well be correct in that assessment, I probably share it, but we can only compare them in hypotheticals. I wouldn't disagree with your assessment of being no better, but I think there's evidence to support having been made slightly worse. Again, this is from someone who voted for and is a member of the party in government.

The government's stated objective is economic growth. It isn't clear that paying more subsidy to reduce fares in real terms delivers that objective. The government essentially needs people to spend more in the economy, not the government to spend more on people.

As ever, the only thing that would lead to growth would be productivity improvements. Spending more on consumption without it can only come at the effect of one off savings reductions, which produces only transient growth. Most people already spend all of the money they earn through work, either in the same year they do the work, or in the short few years afterwards when they buy property - except for doing things with it that they absolutely won't be persuaded to change, such as pension investments or offshoring it to avoid taxes. And there's no way to improve productivity without better infrastructure and public services. But that's quite off topic here.

 

[Joe Paxton]

This is something I've noticed. A mainstay of my long-distance rail travel over the last 10 to 15 years is Cambridge or Ely to either South Wales, Devon or Cornwall. The cost increase over the last few years is astronomical.

Seconded - to the degree that I'll be doing a period return from Ely to Didcot (with Gold Card discount) combined with singles to/from Swindon later this month, whereas in the past there were always sufficient cheap advances available to make using advances for this journey the obvious thing to do - but they all seem to have disappeared from GWR lately.

I've not tried to look in detail at the structure on brfares, but it feels similar to 8 or so years back when Virgin West Coast repriced all their advance tiers for Cambridge/Ely to Liverpool/Manchester/etc. and changed what was a spread of about £20 to £50 (depending on tier) to about £40 to £50, ie. doubling the cheaper fares overnight while not making a lot of difference to the more expensive tiers.

I do wonder what kind of historical record the railway has of what was actually offered in terms of Advance tickets over past years - it's easy enough to keep a record of walk-up ticket fares, but for Advances one would need to know about the real-world availability of the different tiers, and as things got more sophisticated at what point before travel (i.e. days/weeks beforehand) the availability of certain tiers may have been withdrawn, and indeed whether further availability of certain tiers was added at later stages.

I can kind of imagine that if there is a record of this, it might be scattered in different databases or spreadsheets across different TOCs rather than in any one single central accessible source. Or alternatively lost in time.

With the absence of hard data, one just ends up with 'anecdata' about the cost of train travel in years gone by.

[Edit - minor typo]

 

[redreni]

I do wonder what kind of historical record the railway has of what was actually offered in terms of Advance tickets over past years - it's easy enough to keep a record of walk-up ticket fares, but for Advances one would need to know about the real-world availability of he different tiers, and as things got more sophisticated at what point before travel (i.e. days/weeks beforehand) the availability of certain tiers may have been withdrawn, and indeed whether further availability of certain tiers was added at later stages.

I can kind of imagine that if there is a record of this, it might be scattered in different databases or spreadsheets across different TOCs rather than in any one single central accessible source. Or alternatively lost in time.

With the absence of hard data, one just ends up with 'anecdata' about the cost of train travel in years gone by.

Maybe someone with knowledge and expertise could comment? I'd always imagined the industry would use simpler metrics for its high-level understanding of how high or low they're setting the fares, such as simply looking at total revenue per train or per day, maybe broken down by class and fare type? And there could be other useful metrics, like load factors and average revenue per seat for individual train services. Understanding *how* the factors within the TOC's control such as those you mention (quotas at each tier, when and where they were made available, whether, when and how the availability of some fares was hidden through abuse of the 'reservations compulsory' flag, etc) play into those outcomes, when there will always be loads of confounding variables, must be extremely difficult.

But just understanding if fares have gone up or down overall and by how much should be fairly easy, no? Even a government-appointed regulator ought to be able to manage it, I would have thought?

 

[arb]

I do wonder what kind of historical record the railway has of what was actually offered in terms of Advance tickets over past years - it's easy enough to keep a record of walk-up ticket fares, but for Advances one would need to know about the real-world availability of he different tiers, and as things got more sophisticated at what point before travel (i.e. days/weeks beforehand) the availability of certain tiers may have been withdrawn, and indeed whether further availability of certain tiers was added at later stages.

Maybe booking confirmations from the retail side of things, rather than fares databases, would give this info?

For example I've just looked up a return journey I made in 2016 from Cambridge to Penzance where I paid approx £60 total using advance tickets, at 2 months notice, outward on a Friday morning (depart Cambridge 08:15-ish, London just after 10am), returning 8 days later on a Saturday afternoon.

If just adding 8.5 years of RPI to that, I'd expect to pay circa £90 now.

But in fact a similar journey, still at 2 months notice, has no advances at all at that time on a Friday morning, or £100 for travelling an hour later, plus £44 for the Saturday afternoon return leg, total £144. The super-off-peak return (only valid at the "one hour later" time for the outward leg) is £164, or the off-peak return for travelling at exactly the same times is £220.

(EDIT: And for completeness, £70 is currently the cheapest advance single at any time of day on a Friday 2 moths in advance).

 

[OscarH]

Doing some more digging it seems that LNER, TfW and Virgin Trains ticketing are also affected, so I'd suggest it's in error as other web retailers are able to sell them.

I'm guessing they're the flows that moved over to the replacement off peak ticket codes. Everyone has whitelists of ticket codes because the data is insufficient and bad things happen if you rely on the data you're supposed to, and this is just some people have forgotten to add DDR etc. I nearly forgot for us.

 

[MikeWM]

For example I've just looked up a return journey I made in 2016 from Cambridge to Penzance where I paid approx £60 total using advance tickets, at 2 months notice, outward on a Friday morning (depart Cambridge 08:15-ish, London just after 10am), returning 8 days later on a Saturday afternoon.

I've just looked up two journeys also from 2016 - the last year (I think) that there were 'cheap' advances between Cambridge and Liverpool via London and the WCML. Cambridge to Liverpool (middle of the day, Thursday before Easter) - £19.50. Liverpool to Cambridge (evening in August) - £21.00. And I clearly recall it wasn't especially difficult to get such fares on a decent range of trains.

By comparison, the *cheapest* tier of advances for this journey today (according to BRFares) is £52 (!) - and looking at a random day a couple of weeks from now, it is really hard to get anything below £75.

GWR appears to be a slightly different problem in that the cheap tiers still exist, but it seems significantly harder/impossible to actually get anywhere near to them. For example I have a Swindon to Cambridge in 2017 (early evening in February) for £18. The cheapest tier has only risen to £24, but the best I can find actually available to buy (on the same random day a couple of weeks from now) is £36.

 

[Richardr]

I think this is a very bad move by GTR.

On Saturdays there are five trains an hour between Cambridge and London via Stevenage, with a further two to Liverpool Street. My view is that Advance tickets should not be sold where there is a 'turn up and go' service which really s th case given the frequency of trains between Cambridget and London.

A Super Off Peak Day Return valid by any train on Saturdays costs £24.30 or £16.15 with a railcard (there is an even cheaper ticket valid only on Greater Anglia trains only). Thsi ticket can be purchased on the day of travel.

The railway considers this too complicated for passengers to understand and wants to offer Advance ticket, valid only on a speific train. Yes, it might be possible to get a return for £22, if you can buy the cheapest tier of ticket in both directions, but you'd better make sure you're on the correct train. I suspect many people will end up catching the wrong train home, espacially on the way home after a day out in London.

Advance tickets cannot be discounted with a Network Railcard so it will never be cheaper for a Network Railcard holder to buy an Advance ticket to travel to London at the weekend.

I suspect this is all part of the plan to remove the weekend Super Off Peak tickets. We've just seen an inflation busting increase int he Super Off Peak tickets, keep doing this for another couple of years while claiming to offer cheap Advance tickets. Then, just reduce the number of Advance tickets at the lowest prices.

Catching up on this late

It is in place for the destinations on the Bedford line at the weekend, including St Albans where I go into London from.

It presumably now means that KeyGo no longer gives the best fares, and makes life somewhat more complicated for those of us who use that without thinking, including at the weekend.

 

[Hadders]

Advance tickets between St Albans and London?

How the hell can Advance tickets be a suitable ticket option on a service that has ten trains an hour. At this rate we'll be getting Advance tickets to travel on the Northern Line....

 

[JonathanH]

Advance tickets between St Albans and London?

Yes, issued to a specific London station as well, rather than 'London Thameslink', as clearly they have to be for the specific booked journey. Price levels of £5.80, £6.00 and £6.50 single.

Three Bridges has them on the other side of London, but not the stations further in. They don't exist at Crawley, Ifield and Horsham but then those stations didn't have the super off peak day returns.

 

[yorksrob]

If people had to spend less on train fares it's unlikely much of the money saved would be hoarded or sent offshore. It'd probably be spent on something that doesn't enjoy a zero rate of VAT!

Money is often spent and/or earned in transactions that are enabled by the rail journey, but if you charge people higher fares then (a) some of them might not travel, so you lose the transaction on the rail fare as well as any and all transactions that depended on the journey, and (b) some of them will still travel and will pay the higher fare, which generates more revenue for the rail industry to offset the cost of providing the service but generates no VAT, and reduces the capacity of the people who pay those fares to spend (whether in transactions enabled by the rail journey or otherwise), since they must allocate a larger share of their disposable income to rail fares.

It's difficult to see how either of those possible outcomes contributes much to economic growth?

The state subsidising people to go places and do things seems like a perfectly orthodox form of economic stimulus to me. I know there's a school of thought that modal shift from train to car is a big win for the government and high train fares contribute to that. I'm not sure it is, necessarily, when the cost of building and maintaining roads and treating all the asthma and other conditions associated with poor air quality is considered.

Are they? The old government would have had to put fares up too. 'actually no better' would be a fairer description.

The government's stated objective is economic growth. It isn't clear that paying more subsidy to reduce fares in real terms delivers that objective. The government essentially needs people to spend more in the economy, not the government to spend more on people.

The railway is an economic enabler. Transport is in general, otherwise why else would the Government spend billions upon billions of taxpayers money on suppressing fuel duty ?

Rail travel should be a good industry to subsidise from an economic point of view - it employs lots of staff - that's money back into the economy, lots of domestic industrial activity, lots of domestic retail activity. Foreign owned TOC's are mostly gone or on the way out.

It seems ludicrous that a cheap day return between Leeds and York - a local hop - is over twenty pounds. This seems inappropriate for a public transport system.

Unfortunately the current government seems to have little interest in providing value for money for passengers at the moment.

In fact, the more I think of it, the more it seems to be that the only way we'll get any meaningful fares reform in passengers favour will be if a government commits to some sort of big ticket "climate ticket" or other subscription ticket scheme.

Advance tickets between St Albans and London?

How the hell can Advance tickets be a suitable ticket option on a service that has ten trains an hour. At this rate we'll be getting Advance tickets to travel on the Northern Line....

The modern railway is a one trick pony. There's been a lot of talk about "innovation" in the industry over the past thirty years, but really this seems to amount to little more than forcing everyone onto advanced purchase, whether its in anyway suitable or not.

There are various things the other lot promised to do like the bus cap and some capital spending that have been ditched. In general they used an RPI formula because they didn't want to burn capital by insisting on RPI+1, which is something the new government has been far more comfortable with. They've also brought in a rail minister who has done significantly more damage to the industry than the tory one did. Now you can argue they wouldn't have done a good job either and you may very well be correct in that assessment, I probably share it, but we can only compare them in hypotheticals. I wouldn't disagree with your assessment of being no better, but I think there's evidence to support having been made slightly worse. Again, this is from someone who voted for and is a member of the party in government.
.

Whilst this is true to an extent, it's perhaps a little pessimistic. I don't think you can overstate the benefit as a passenger of not having to negotiate year on year of continual industrial relations problems - and around here, we had over a year of it before the pandemic, let alone afterwards.

 

[Hadders]

Yes, issued to a specific London station as well, rather than 'London Thameslink', as clearly they have to be for the specific booked journey. Price levels of £5.80, £6.00 and £6.50 single.

It is ridiculous to have Advance tickets where there is a turn up and go service. Passenger expectation on this sort of service is they just take the first train.

What happens when there’s (minor) disruption in the Thameslink core. Are passengers expected to wait for their booked train on the narrow platform at Farringdon or St Pancras, causing more overcrowding?

Once again, the railway says it wants to simplify ticketing but ends up making it more complex.

You couldn’t make it up.

 

[JonathanH]

It is ridiculous to have Advance tickets where there is a turn up and go service.

It is also ridiculous to have advance fares, Contactless PAYG, and a completely different 'paper' structure all on place for the same flow.

I thought that near universal application of Contactless PAYG was the way forward for journeys in the area immediately round London. Are these advance fares going to be removed, admittedly in favour of more expensive PAYG fares, when Project Oval deals with the previous Contactless extensions?

 

[MrJeeves]

Yes, issued to a specific London station as well, rather than 'London Thameslink', as clearly they have to be for the specific booked journey. Price levels of £5.80, £6.00 and £6.50 single.

Three Bridges has them on the other side of London, but not the stations further in. They don't exist at Crawley, Ifield and Horsham but then those stations didn't have the super off peak day returns.

I think it would have been sensible for GTR to disable reservations between Finsbury Park and Elephant and Castle/London Bridge. Of course they haven't.

 

[Hadders]

It is also ridiculous to have advance fares, Contactless PAYG, and a completely different 'paper' structure all on place for the same flow.

I thought that near universal application of Contactless PAYG was the way forward for journeys in the area immediately round London. Are these advance fares going to be removed, admittedly in favour of more expensive PAYG fares, when Project Oval deals with the previous Contactless extensions?

St Albans isn’t part of Project Oval, it’s had contactless for several years.

GTR have only recently introduced Advance fares between St Albans and London, probably part of their strategy to remove the weekend super off peak fares (introduce some cheap Advance fares, limited availability to make it look like you’re still offering cheap fares etc while at the same time Penalty Fare passengers travelling on the wrong train to increase income further).

It just complicates what should be a simple fares structure.

 

[JonathanH]

St Albans isn’t part of Project Oval, it’s had contactless for several years.

Yes. The point I was making is that at some point there is going to have to be some form of alignment for the stations such as St Albans which sit in the Contactless zone between the Zone 6 boundary and the Project Oval zone, consistent with what happens at actual Project Oval stations.

Luton, for example, has the new advances, but is in the next wave for Project Oval, which elsewhere has seen the complexity of different structures removed.

 

[Haywain]

It presumably now means that KeyGo no longer gives the best fares, and makes life somewhat more complicated for those of us who use that without thinking, including at the weekend.

That simply depends on whether you want flexibility. If the Advance tickets are not sold on the day, the decisions about what to use are easier. And, from a quick look, it appears that the difference between two Advances and a Super Off Peak Day Return are quite small, it's only for one way trips that there's a real saving.