• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Cross country sold out Jun 14th Birmingham Exeter am Off Peak

Status
Not open for further replies.

323235

Established Member
Joined
8 Dec 2007
Messages
2,076
Location
North East Cheshire
But that would then result in revenue abstraction.

Take a passenger who knows they will get one of three services on their line of route, say 18:00, 19:00 or 20:00, but won’t know which one until shortly before travel. Advance fares are available for all three. At the moment, the passenger might buy a flexible ticket. Or they might buy an advance for the last one and change it to the flexible ticket if they end up travelling earlier, paying the £10 fee.

Under your proposed system, the passenger will always buy the advance for the cheapest/last journey and change it if needed, as the most they’ll spend is the cost of the flexible fare in any event, so the railway will lose out on the possible sale of a flexible ticket at the outset.

The fee should be called a change fee.

You ignore the fact that the industry view of the TOCs who offer widespread advance singles is that they would rather passengers buy a counted place advance single, than a flexible ticket to manage demand. The RDG have make great fanfare of the high percentage of people who buy advance single tickets in the past, compared to those that buy flexible tickets.

They can't have it all. This is a fair compromise for the allegedly small trivial number of people (pre/post-covid) who would need to do this.

I don't think you can really call it revenue abstraction either on the basis of a £10.00 admin fee, where a passenger is using identical trains regardless.
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

WesternLancer

Established Member
Joined
12 Apr 2019
Messages
6,999
Can you just buy a shorter ticket and excess it at the moment you get on the train, to work around the capacity limit? This is what passengers do in China.
I'd not suggest it is advisable to base your ticketing decisions in the UK on what people can do in China.
 

Watershed

Veteran Member
Associate Staff
Senior Fares Advisor
Joined
26 Sep 2020
Messages
11,954
Location
UK
But that would then result in revenue abstraction.

Take a passenger who knows they will get one of three services on their line of route, say 18:00, 19:00 or 20:00, but won’t know which one until shortly before travel. Advance fares are available for all three. At the moment, the passenger might buy a flexible ticket. Or they might buy an advance for the last one and change it to the flexible ticket if they end up travelling earlier, paying the £10 fee.

Under your proposed system, the passenger will always buy the advance for the cheapest/last journey and change it if needed, as the most they’ll spend is the cost of the flexible fare in any event, so the railway will lose out on the possible sale of a flexible ticket at the outset.

The fee should be called a change fee.
There are already websites that will let you change Advance tickets FOC, e.g. CrossCountry.

I don't think the change fee should be anything more than a nominal £1/2 to represent the true costs of administering the sale and refund.
 

AlterEgo

Veteran Member
Joined
30 Dec 2008
Messages
20,038
Location
No longer here
Is this commonly done in the UK for passengers to get around capacity restrictions?
No, and capacity restrictions are a recent thing anyway. Expect that if you start it as a trend that excesses of that sort will simply be unavailable.
 

miklcct

On Moderation
Joined
2 May 2021
Messages
4,327
Location
Cricklewood
No, and capacity restrictions are a recent thing anyway. Expect that if you start it as a trend that excesses of that sort will simply be unavailable.
Another evidence where the UK railway is worse than other countries. In China, excesses of that sort is available for "humantarian reason" because, if you can't get on the train, you are very likely stuck in a city unable to get home (tickets in China are normally sold on reserve-only basis, with limited standing tickets sold on ordinary trains, and no standing tickets sold on high-speed trains - and the demand always exceed supply in peak periods)! Excesses are only stopped when the train is overloaded to the extent that the train is overloaded to an unsafe level, forcing the captain to offload passengers to the next train, and on those lines, trains normally come within every 15 minutes.

There are a few tricks to get you a valid ticket for travel, circulated among the public, in short, by all means get onto the train first:
- buy a ticket longer than the journey and use it partly (revenue management may mean there are limited tickets for short-distance passengers, reserving enough capacity for long-distance travel)
- buy a ticket shorter than the journey and excess it
- buy a platform ticket to get to the station (becoming less available in recent days), and excess it on the train
- split the journey into different parts and buy multiple tickets (the system refuses to sell ticket if a seat is not available for the through journey, using this method you can have a seat for a portion, another seat for the remainder)

If an off-peak train can be fully loaded, this is simply bad revenue management.
 
Last edited:

GoneSouth

Member
Joined
17 Dec 2018
Messages
746
I’m wanting to travel on XC and the trains I intend to use are from Derby to Penzance are usually HSTs.
Are they? Can’t count how many times I’ve been down to Cornwall in a 4 car Voyager! Having said that I haven’t been since Covid arrived, I hope you’re right and XC are sending HSTs down to Penzance.

Or you could sit in an unreserved seat/coach.
Which coach is unreserved these days, it’s been a while since I’ve braved the voyager?

I bought a ticket for a XC journey recently and was told by the GWR ticket office staff that they weren’t allowed to make seats reservations!

So I need a reservation because XC say I do, I couldn’t buy a ticket on the app because, well nobody really knows why not, and then I’m told they aren’t allowed to make a reservation on a compulsory reservation train. Help!

Are XC enforcing seat reservations and not allowing people to board? But then XC don’t have platform staff so it would be GWR or Northern staff responsible for stopping people boarding, what a chuffing mess.

Driving isn’t an option so grateful for any advice on how best to approach this.
 
Last edited:

Watershed

Veteran Member
Associate Staff
Senior Fares Advisor
Joined
26 Sep 2020
Messages
11,954
Location
UK
Are they? Can’t count how many times I’ve been down to Cornwall in a 4 car Voyager! Having said that I haven’t been since Covid arrived, I hope you’re right and XC are sending HSTs down to Penzance.
There are still only a handful of HST diagrams a day, so the vast majority of services are Voyagers. You can get an idea of allocations from Real Time Trains.

Which coach is unreserved these days, it’s been a while since I’ve braved the voyager?

I bought a ticket for a XC journey recently and was told by the GWR ticket office staff that they weren’t allowed to make seats reservations!

So I need a reservation because XC say I do, I couldn’t buy a ticket on the app because, well nobody really knows why not, and then I’m told they aren’t allowed to make a reservation on a compulsory reservation train. Help!

Are XC enforcing seat reservations and not allowing people to board? But then XC don’t have platform staff so it would be GWR or Northern staff responsible for stopping people boarding, what a chuffing mess.

Driving isn’t an option so grateful for any advice on how best to approach this.
Honestly, don't worry about it. The only circumstance where there would be any attempt to 'enforce' reservations would be if the train is ram-packed. In which case you probably want to get off (or not board), even if you do have a reservation!
 

GoneSouth

Member
Joined
17 Dec 2018
Messages
746
Honestly, don't worry about it. The only circumstance where there would be any attempt to 'enforce' reservations would be if the train is ram-packed. In which case you probably want to get off (or not board), even if you do have a reservation!
I have actually experienced that several times with XC, they wouldn’t move the train until some passengers unloaded, the problem was they left it to the passengers to decide amongst themselves who would surrender their space which ended in a 40 minute standoff! That was not the happiest of Christmases!

Thanks for the advice, I’ll hopefully have a straightforward journey
 

trebor79

Established Member
Joined
8 Mar 2018
Messages
4,435
I got on an XC at Bristol yesterday for a short trip to Taunton to retrieve my bag (don't ask!). Didn't have a reservation, just sat in an empty seat. There was no checking of who was in what seat.
 

ChrisC

Established Member
Joined
7 Oct 2018
Messages
1,595
Location
Nottinghamshire
Are they? Can’t count how many times I’ve been down to Cornwall in a 4 car Voyager! Having said that I haven’t been since Covid arrived, I hope you’re right and XC are sending HSTs down to Penzance.
According to RTT the 0925 departure from Penzance to Newcastle is a HST as is the 2047 arrival in Penzance from Newcastle. I may be wrong.
 

AlterEgo

Veteran Member
Joined
30 Dec 2008
Messages
20,038
Location
No longer here
According to RTT the 0925 departure from Penzance to Newcastle is a HST as is the 2047 arrival in Penzance from Newcastle. I may be wrong.
Are you looking at the unit allocation or making the mistake of looking only at the timing information?
 

ChrisC

Established Member
Joined
7 Oct 2018
Messages
1,595
Location
Nottinghamshire
Are you looking at the unit allocation or making the mistake of looking only at the timing information?
Well I did say I may be wrong. I never fully understand RTT.
It does say Pathed for high speed train rather than Pathed as Class 220/221 DMU. I therefore presumed that it would be a HST.
 

WesternLancer

Established Member
Joined
12 Apr 2019
Messages
6,999
Well I did say I may be wrong. I never fully understand RTT.
It does say Pathed for high speed train rather than Pathed as Class 220/221 DMU. I therefore presumed that it would be a HST.
Never assume that. Also RTT XC service info includes a pic of the train to be used at the head of the page - so that can help.
 

HST274

Member
Joined
3 Mar 2020
Messages
710
Location
Worcestershire
According to RTT the 0925 departure from Penzance to Newcastle is a HST as is the 2047 arrival in Penzance from Newcastle. I may be wrong.
In the end both were supposedly a single super voyager to/from Plymouth (aka the part before Plymouth on the 0925 and after Plymouth on the 2047 arrival into penzance). Both gained/lossed a voyager at Plymouth
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top