LNER to pilot removal of Off-Peak tickets

[Bletchleyite]

As it's close to Panto season, Oh no they don't

Wonder how busy the unreserved coaches are on the fast Edinburghs now then...

 

[alistairlees]

Yes I agree that ticketing needs reform, but look at Scotrail and TFL who are trialing the extension to remove peak fares and just use a standard off-peak fare. This measure is simply to increase revenue, LNER can't hide it, this article is just another piece of evidence. LNER's MD even praised TFL's trial of removing peak fares on Fridays, after LNER announced this. The 70 min flex should be extended to effectively be an all day round off-peak ticket, it's simple.

This will reduce revenue, not increase it - at least in the immediate term. So far the actual results are fairly close to the model of how revenue would change.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Wonder how busy the unreserved coaches are on the fast Edinburghs now then...

Less than half a coach now as far as I know

 

[Bletchleyite]

This will reduce revenue, not increase it - at least in the immediate term. So far the actual results are fairly close to the model of how revenue would change.

ScotRail is a bit different to LNER, to be fair, in that it has lots of excess capacity to sell, so hopefully it'll get, in the long run, more revenue as more people travel. If LNER did that the effect would probably be severe overcrowding.

Bit of a shame a certain project that was intended to increase the capacity from London to Edinburgh has largely died a death...

 

[Wallsendmag]

ScotRail is a bit different to LNER, to be fair, in that it has lots of excess capacity to sell, so hopefully it'll get, in the long run, more revenue as more people travel. If LNER did that the effect would probably be severe overcrowding.

Bit of a shame a certain project that was intended to increase the capacity from London to Edinburgh has largely died a death...

Don't tell me they're not doubling the A1 in Northumberland?

 

[Peakrider]

LNER is to pilot the replacement of Off-Peak and Super Off-Peak tickets on certain flows (Kings Cross to Newcastle, Berwick and Edinburgh) with a new '70-minute Flex' ticket. During the trial there will be only three fare types available: Anytime, 70-min Flex, and Advance.

From https://www.lner.co.uk/news/lner-launches-pioneering-pilot-to-further-simplify-fares/:


If Flex tickets are priced competitively, then I would consider buying them over an Advance. But they are surely much less useful than the Off-Peak types they are replacing.

Oh dear.

If removal of the off peak/super off peak returns (and loss of the valuable overnight break of journey option and flexibility as to when you'd return) wasn't bad enough, they are now removing the vaguely affordable off peak option altogether!

Not all of us lead pre-booked lives. Going away on a whim is no longer affordable. Neither is stopping off on the way back. The 70 minute flex option of course just pours petrol on the fire of complexity.

Ironically if a 70 min flex ticket on the 13:00 train is more expensive than the 70 min flex fare on the 14:00, just buy the ticket for the 14:00 and travel at 13:00 - utter madness!

Apparently that's simplification! Really?

Now in order to break the journey the only option is the top dollar Anytime ticket!

For me this change is an even bigger deterrent to LNER travel than the awful Hitachi ride quality and back breaking ironing board seats!

Whilst I'd always enjoyed rail travel above all other modes - my car has sprung seats, is economical and affordable, doesn't require pre-booking, and allows unlimited breaks of journey. Not to mention deviations on a whim.

I'll get my fix of train travel abroad instead.

I'm out.

No, they are required to offer the cheapest appropriate ticket for the specific journey requested, so if you don't go in there and ask for a ticket to London from Haymarket, you'll be sold one from Edinburgh. That's not to say that there won't be a searching question or two about where exactly you are going in London alongside the questions about which train(s) you wish to use. Bear in mind that there are direct trains to London operated by 3 different companies during daytime, as well as the sleepers.

Impartial retailing does not extend to selling splits or tickets from other stations even if valid. So no, they wouldn't sell that unless you specifically asked for it, and I bet some wouldn't even if you did. No worries, though, just buy it online.

Yes or drive!

After a lifetime of rail travel, I'm so done with the hateful advance fares, ironing board seats and gestapo agency gateline bouncers, I'm out.

 

[AdamWW]

Yes or drive!

After a lifetime of rail travel, I'm so done with the hateful advance fares, ironing board seats and gestapo agency gateline bouncers, I'm out.

But...but...the whole idea is to increase ridership by attracting all the people who don't use trains at present because the fares are too confusing. Apparently.

Maybe some of us are just the wrong type of passenger.

 

[yorksrob]

But...but...the whole idea is to increase ridership by attracting all the people who don't use trains at present because the fares are too confusing. Apparently.

Maybe some of us are just the wrong type of passenger.

They've more or less given up on growing the business. Fleecing more money out of existing passengers is the Governments only strategy.

 

[Bletchleyite]

They've more or less given up on growing the business. Fleecing more money out of existing passengers is the Governments only strategy

There's not a lot of scope to grow LNER without more or longer trains to Edinburgh. The existing ones are very busy.

 

[yorksrob]

There's not a lot of scope to grow LNER without more or longer trains to Edinburgh. The existing ones are very busy.

There are still quieter times. I've been one of a handful of passengers in a carriage on a few occasions over the years.

But my point is that this their strategy for the whole railway, not just the ECML that is sometimes quite busy.

 

[Peakrider]

They've more or less given up on growing the business. Fleecing more money out of existing passengers is the Governments only strategy.

Yes definitely their strategy, that and spending the bulk of the alleged savings from HS2 to Manchester on roads.

 

[A S Leib]

For most longer journeys on LNER there's coach and plane. And Lumo or Grand Central. They've got quite a lot of competition, really.

They have but I believe they've already said they intend to apply this to all their flows and I think it would be dangerous to assume there is no intention for this "simplification" to become the norm across the whole UK rail network, where in many cases there's no practical alternative by coach, air or open access operator.

And neither coaches nor planes offer regulated fares that cannot sell out anyway.

Such as GWR intercity services; flying from London might work for Newquay, but not really for Swansea, Carmarthen or Hereford. Not many rail alternatives west of Oxford either apart from SWR for Exeter, Grand Union when / if it starts for Carmarthen and via Birmingham for Worcester / Hereford.

 

[AdamWW]

Such as GWR intercity services; flying from London might work for Newquay, but not really for Swansea, Carmarthen or Hereford. Not many rail alternatives west of Oxford either apart from SWR for Exeter, Grand Union when / if it starts for Carmarthen and via Birmingham for Worcester / Hereford.

And of course air is generally little use for journeys that don't have London at one end, and the coach network can be not much better.

E.g. York doesn't seem to be served by Flixbus or Megabus. National Express appear to have a rather limited service to London. Going North they do offer service to Newcastle...via the service bus to Leeds.
Not much of an alternative really.

 

[BRX]

If we are talking about affordable alternatives available at short notice, air doesn't offer that.

And while coaches might, they aren't really an equivalent when they are much slower - something that certainly applies along the core LNER route.

 

[AlterEgo]

It comes back to a point I made earlier in the thread that I've seen no evidence that off-peak is responsible for packing out the trains as it is (its not as though they're dirt cheap to most people).

If they are having overcrowding at particular times, they could offer fewer AP instead, but that wouldn't enable them to remove the off-peak price cap.

How many times do you need to be told this isn’t about overcrowding but instead about juicing revenue from trains where demand outstrips supply? LNER’s own analysis suggest that only 11% of their customers use off peak tickets anyway.

Nobody is wanting empty trains. The cap has been removed so passengers who want or need to travel and who will pay more than the off peak fare will do exactly that. This is such a simple concept to grasp.

 

[Krokodil]

Of course there was a time when the idea was to match provision of seats to demand rather than the other way round, though I appreciate that's not so practical with a railway that's bursting at the seams at busy times.

If only we had a project that would have added an extra 1,000 seats per hour to Newcastle, and another 1,000 seats per hour to Edinburgh (to say nothing of the 500 extra to York in addition to York's share of the Newcastle seats). Maybe we could even knock half an hour off of the journey times and make it more competitive with air travel.

Oh wait, we did have such a project and the government scrapped it.

Nobody is wanting empty trains.

BR used to say that they would sooner have one passenger paying £1000 than 999 passengers each paying £1 (or words to that effect). This isn't a new concept.

 

[Bletchleyite]

BR used to say that they would sooner have one passenger paying £1000 than 999 passengers each paying £1 (or words to that effect). This isn't a new concept.

The outrageous £350 Manchester-London Anytime Return fare (only fifty quid less than Anytime Singles for a return trip Edinburgh-Kings X but half the distance!) exists on exactly that basis.

 

[AlterEgo]

BR used to say that they would sooner have one passenger paying £1000 than 999 passengers each paying £1 (or words to that effect). This isn't a new concept.

No, that's not what that means at all! You shouldn't take that literally.

The point of yield management is to ensure people are paying the most they will tolerate where supply (in this case, capacity) is fixed. The trial is not here to make trains emptier whatsoever. There are 611 seats on an Azuma; the goal is to fill as many of them as possible, but without hamstringing what you can charge by having a false "cap" at the Off Peak rate.

There is basically zero additional cost to transporting 611 passengers as opposed to 490, or 550, so the example of "one person paying £1000" isn't literal; what that saying means is you mustn't cannibalise your market in order to fill the train. The era of the super cheap advance is practically over; there is much more demand than supply.

If you fill 611 seats with £10 advances, and there are no seats left, you cannot then sell highly priced £200 tickets to less price-sensitive people who have booked late for a multitude of reasons. I find it a bit staggering that these concepts still need to be explained at this point in the thread; it's yield management 101. This is NOT about "trains are too busy" this is about juicing revenue.

 

[Krokodil]

The outrageous £350 Manchester-London Anytime Return fare (only fifty quid less than Anytime Singles for a return trip Edinburgh-Kings X but half the distance!) exists on exactly that basis.

I think that I'll start a thread in an appropriate section comparing cost-per-mile across a number of countries.

 

[thedbdiboy]

Whilst I'd always enjoyed rail travel above all other modes - my car has sprung seats, is economical and affordable, doesn't require pre-booking, and allows unlimited breaks of journey. Not to mention deviations on a whim.

I'll get my fix of train travel abroad instead.

Presumably avoiding the numerous services abroad that require compulsory pre-booking on to specific trains

 

[Bletchleyite]

Presumably avoiding the numerous services abroad that require compulsory pre-booking on to specific trains

They might, but other than Thalys/"Eurostar Red" (which is bad in about every possible way) the prices tend to be rather more reasonable.

 

[yorksrob]

How many times do you need to be told this isn’t about overcrowding but instead about juicing revenue from trains where demand outstrips supply? LNER’s own analysis suggest that only 11% of their customers use off peak tickets anyway.

Nobody is wanting empty trains. The cap has been removed so passengers who want or need to travel and who will pay more than the off peak fare will do exactly that. This is such a simple concept to grasp.

We all know this is about fleecing passengers as I've said many times before.

I don't understand why you seem to be continually missing this.

No, that's not what that means at all! You shouldn't take that literally.

The point of yield management is to ensure people are paying the most they will tolerate where supply (in this case, capacity) is fixed. The trial is not here to make trains emptier whatsoever. There are 611 seats on an Azuma; the goal is to fill as many of them as possible, but without hamstringing what you can charge by having a false "cap" at the Off Peak rate.

There is basically zero additional cost to transporting 611 passengers as opposed to 490, or 550, so the example of "one person paying £1000" isn't literal; what that saying means is you mustn't cannibalise your market in order to fill the train. The era of the super cheap advance is practically over; there is much more demand than supply.

If you fill 611 seats with £10 advances, and there are no seats left, you cannot then sell highly priced £200 tickets to less price-sensitive people who have booked late for a multitude of reasons. I find it a bit staggering that these concepts still need to be explained at this point in the thread; it's yield management 101. This is NOT about "trains are too busy" this is about juicing revenue.

But they're not getting rid of cheap advances, they're getting rid of pricey but not extortionate off-peak tickets.

Presumably avoiding the numerous services abroad that require compulsory pre-booking on to specific trains

I'm personally not fussed what they do abroad, I'm more concerned about the railway here being properly run.

Unfortunately this abysmal government is driving the railway in the wrong direction in every way

 

[AdamWW]

But they're not getting rid of cheap advances, they're getting rid of pricey but not extortionate off-peak tickets.

And in the process removing the price regulated cap on cheap advances that the existance of off peak ticket provided.

 

[yorksrob]

And in the process removing the price regulated cap on cheap advances that the existance of off peak ticket provided.

Exactly. The move is entirely malevolent to passengers.

 

[ainsworth74]

They might, but other than Thalys/"Eurostar Red" (which is bad in about every possible way) the prices tend to be rather more reasonable.

Quite.

Tomorrow morning for instance it would appear that if I want to be in London before shortly before midday from Newcastle with LNER the cheapest you can do it £72.20, now that's not too bad as the SSS of course was only a tenner or so more than that. Though the majority of trains are £89.50, more than the SSS would have been.

Meanwhile, also tomorrow, if you would like to travel from Bordeaux to Paris (a longer journey to be fair but even so) with compulsory reservation SNCF you can do it for around €50, if you're willing to have a much longer journey you can actually do it for €25! The TGV that you will travel on (as these are prices for full fat TGVs not their cheap brand) will, of course, be far more comfortable and pleasant than the LNER Azuma that you'd have over here. You could actually arrive in Paris before 9am if you'd like for about €50. LNER meanwhile would like £192.80. Though I admit that those prices aren't effected by this trial as the SSS would not have been valid then anyway.

So yeah, compulsory reservation on the continent? Bring it on. At least the price and product make it worthwhile trading the flexibility.

 

[AdamWW]

Exactly. The move is entirely malevolent to passengers.

And yet presented as if we should all be grateful for "simpler" fares.

 

[Kite159]

One post from the Man in Seat 61 on Twitter using the 8th Feb for London to Edinburgh:

"Last week, you could always have taken the 19:00 London-Edinburgh using an £87 Super Off-Peak fare. Well, fares have been simplified: Tomorrow night there's just ONE easy-to-understand fare on the 19:00, £193, take it or leave it...,"
"LNER have replaced the £87 Super Off-Peak fare (refundable, good for any train weekends, any off-peak train weekdays, break of journey allowed) with a new Advance fare, only good for a 2h20 time slot, non-refundable, no break of journey. Which isn't even available on the 19:00."
"Until this 'trial' is extended, book from London to Haymarket instead as the £87 Super Off-Peak remains available for this destination, break of journey allowed so you can simply get off in Edinburgh. A 55% saving."

https://twitter.com/seatsixtyone/status/1755220966689353736

Yes the train will likely be fully booked (probably due to the cliff face pricing for the likes of York/Darlington) but there is coach C for those without a seat reservation

 

[800001]

One post from the Man in Seat 61 on Twitter using the 8th Feb for London to Edinburgh:

"Last week, you could always have taken the 19:00 London-Edinburgh using an £87 Super Off-Peak fare. Well, fares have been simplified: Tomorrow night there's just ONE easy-to-understand fare on the 19:00, £193, take it or leave it...,"
"LNER have replaced the £87 Super Off-Peak fare (refundable, good for any train weekends, any off-peak train weekdays, break of journey allowed) with a new Advance fare, only good for a 2h20 time slot, non-refundable, no break of journey. Which isn't even available on the 19:00."
"Until this 'trial' is extended, book from London to Haymarket instead as the £87 Super Off-Peak remains available for this destination, break of journey allowed so you can simply get off in Edinburgh. A 55% saving."

https://twitter.com/seatsixtyone/status/1755220966689353736

Yes the train will likely be fully booked (probably due to the cliff face pricing for the likes of York/Darlington) but there is coach C for those without a seat reservation

Only around half of coach C, as they now allow tickets and seats to be reserved in that coach as well now

 

[AdamWW]

I wonder if it would be possible to persuade political parties currently not in power to make a manifesto committment to maintain off peak fares?

Or at the least not to make changes without a proper consultation?

Curious how the rules said that ticket offices couldn't be closed without consultation, but fare regulation has no such protection.

 

[thedbdiboy]

I wonder if it would be possible to persuade political parties currently not in power to make a manifesto committment to maintain off peak fares?

Or at the least not to make changes without a proper consultation?

Curious how the rules said that ticket offices couldn't be closed without consultation, but fare regulation has no such protection.

I'm sure any political party that has no chance of winning the election will be happy to make that commitment. Any party that might actually find itself in Government will not be willing to tie their hands when the public finances are in such dire straits and the rail industry is still costing billions more in Government funding than before COVID.

The 'rules' to which you refer are a complex set of contractual relationships created by lawyers in the 1990s. Fare regulation was regulated via the Franchise Agreement, which could be varied by the Franchising Authority (nowadays DfT in the case of LNER). Ticket Office opening hours were regulated via the Ticketing & Settlement Agreement and any variation had to be proposed by the TOC, who had to allow for objections to the statutory passenger body (nowadays Transport Focus). If objections were received, the Franchising Authority had to decide whether to allow them.

In both cases the Government is ultimately in charge but where fares are concerned it is a much more direct process.