Request for help: LNER Fare Trial Ripoff

[Bletchleyite]

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.

Once again, most of them are!

You may be one of those super-planners who know to the minute where they'll be three months in advance, and also time-rich so slower, cheaper options are viable. Most people aren't, and so most people will pay more for their rail fare than it would cost to drive an average family car on their own on a marginal basis (which is the only basis that matters, because once you've chosen to be a car owner the fixed or near-fixed car ownership costs are in effect a subscription you pay regardless of how much you use it).

This is expensive. I'm not sure what you're struggling with to understand that. Rail is too expensive. How we reduce the prices is probably one for another thread - there are lots of ways rail could be made cheaper, not all of them involving whacking operating subsidy.

 

[bakerstreet]

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

Is there an off peak quota?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Is there an off peak quota?

If you set compulsory reservations there need to be reservations available, and yes, they can be quotaed by ticket type (something I think is absolutely disgraceful and a gross abuse* of the system).

* Though knowing Grand Central and Arriva, it could well just be gross incompetence.

 

[bakerstreet]

If you set compulsory reservations there need to be reservations available, and yes, they can be quotaed by ticket type (something I think is absolutely disgraceful and a gross abuse of the system).

Thanks I did not know that.

 

[deltic]

Once again, most of them are!

You may be one of those super-planners who know to the minute where they'll be three months in advance, and also time-rich so slower, cheaper options are viable. Most people aren't, and so most people will pay more for their rail fare than it would cost to drive an average family car on their own on a marginal basis (which is the only basis that matters, because once you've chosen to be a car owner the fixed or near-fixed car ownership costs are in effect a subscription you pay regardless of how much you use it).

At the risk of going way off topic I'm not sure there has been a time when rail fares have been less than the petrol cost of a journey. Would be interesting to see such analysis.

 

[HurdyGurdy]

* Though knowing Grand Central and Arriva, it could well just be gross incompetence.

If you look at where GC are offering no quotas for Off-Peak etc, it's hard to accept it's not intentional. I think the gross incompetence is at ORR who have not picked-up on the practice.

 

[AlterEgo]

This is expensive. I'm not sure what you're struggling with to understand that. Rail is too expensive. How we reduce the prices is probably one for another thread - there are lots of ways rail could be made cheaper, not all of them involving whacking operating subsidy.

Thanks - I have asked the mods to tidy up this thread as it is merely a request for information and there have been a lot of off-topic and more general contributions which belong in the more general thread.

Once again, I'm keen to hear more from people who have experiences of the fares trial and have examples of fare rises - or, perhaps, some creative ways of saving money by staying on rail, that we haven't covered yet!

 

[Starmill]

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.

Please may I suggest that you re-read the OP's posts and then reconsider this? All of this seems to me to be a misunderstanding and you could have avoided it all by just having a closer look at the words the OP has used?

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.

I'm not sure this is immediately relevant to the point at hand about competition with non-subsidised modes. Insofar as it is relevant I don't think anyone is really arguing with it.

 

[BRX]

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.

London to Leeds is not included in the current trial - so off-peak fares are still available for that journey. The off peak fare is £70.20 so the £68.20 advance you are seeing is still capped by the off peak fare.

In other words, this is not an example of a fare rising due to the removal of that off-peak cap. The price difference is probably explained by the lower demand back in 2021 when we were still emerging from Covid.

 

[Bletchleyite]

London to Leeds is not included in the current trial - so off-peak fares are still available for that journey. The off peak fare is £70.20 so the £68.20 advance you are seeing is still capped by the off peak fare.

In other words, this is not an example of a fare rising due to the removal of that off-peak cap. The price difference is probably explained by the lower demand back in 2021 when we were still emerging from Covid.

Now have a look at Edinburgh fares and note how those are creeping way up - £130 is typical now.

 

[BRX]

If you look at where GC are offering no quotas for Off-Peak etc, it's hard to accept it's not intentional. I think the gross incompetence is at ORR who have not picked-up on the practice.

I'd not really realised that other operators - not just LNER - are doing this.

Quota-controlling off peak fares seems to be almost as bad as what's being done in the trial.

If this quota-controlling is allowed then TOCs need not bother withdrawing off-peak tickets - just reduce the quota of off-peaks to zero, and now you can charge all of your customers as much as you please (except those who know how to buy an off-peak ticket without getting caught in the trap).

Now have a look at Edinburgh fares and note how those are creeping way up - £130 is typical now.

I agree. I'm totally against this trial and can see (I've been watching) how it is affecting Edinburgh prices. I understand fully the problem of advance tickets (and the new semi-flex ones) being uncapped.

It's just that the example given - for a Leeds journey - I don't think is useful.

Firstly because the trial isn't being carried out on that route.

Secondly because even if it were, it would be hard to argue that the low £18 price in 2021 existed thanks to the off-peak cap. It's so much lower than the off peak price, that it was clearly being capped by demand rather than the off-peak price.

 

[robbeech]

An example.
In late January 2 colleagues did London to Berwick on the 1000 on a Friday and my records show we paid £37.70 each for them. Tickets were purchased at 0817 on the Wednesday so a few hours further away than my check just now.
If we use the London to Berwick example for this Friday we see that a direct train at 1000 or 1100 has an advance fare of £95.60 which is tier17 BUU advance. It is "coincidentally" the first advance tier ABOVE where the Super off peak Single would have been priced had it still existed. We see most trains that day between the £71.90 tier (BTS) and this £95.60 tier.
A week on Friday incidentally shows the 1000 at £117.90 (BXT tier)

So for the same flexibility (zero, booked train only) we see an increase from £75.40 for 2 people to £191.20. This is an increase of over 153%.
If I had booked them 2 super off peak singles that would be £88.10 each, £176.20 £15 cheaper than a fixed train now.

In this instance there was no return journey (They joined a tour bus at Berwick and continued up to Scotland) so we could have benefited from single leg pricing had we needed flexibility, but they seem to have essentially gone back on any benefit to this.

 

[Haywain]

I'd not really realised that other operators - not just LNER - are doing this.

Quota-controlling off peak fares seems to be almost as bad as what's being done in the trial.

We have seen a number of threads about GC doing this but because they have their own dedicated Off Peak fares it is only noticeable where a journey extends beyond GC services.

 

[BRX]

Maybe I am being pedantic but aren't the strongest examples the ones where previously an off-peak ticket could be bought, and now, for the same service, the cheapest ticket is some form of advance that is well above the old off-peak price?

The examples given above where previously a cheap advance (at a price well below the off-peak price) was available don't seem very compelling to me because:

1) if the previous price was well below the off-peak price then it's fairly clear that it wasn't the off-peak price that was constraining it in that case. If the off-peak price had been the constraint then the advance would have been priced just a little lower than the off-peak price.

2) one of the main harms done by the trial is that it removes the certainty of price for walk-up tickets. If the previously available, cheaper ticket was an advance ticket then it doesn't address this issue. If we are wanting to make a point about what is available on a walk-up basis then we should be comparing like for like.

 

[HurdyGurdy]

I don't think it pedantic to suggest criticism of the Fare Trial should be limited to analysing the effects of withdrawing some fares and introducing others which the Fare Trial represents.

Comparisons with other modes can be useful when wanting to illustrate levels of rail fares generally, but they have been done to death and are likely to confuse a message about what LNER are actually trialling here.

 

[AlterEgo]

I don't think it pedantic to suggest criticism of the Fare Trial should be limited to analysing the effects of withdrawing some fares and introducing others which the Fare Trial represents.

That is exactly what the conclusion of the video will do.

Comparisons with other modes can be useful when wanting to illustrate levels of rail fares generally, but they have been done to death and are likely to confuse a message about what LNER are actually trialling here.

This doesn’t make for good video content though, in and of itself! You do need to actually do something

 

[laseandre]

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.

We seem to have managed to cut rail fares up here in Scotland just fine...

 

[Haywain]

We seem to have managed to cut rail fares up here in Scotland just fine...

The Off Peak trial, if that is what you are referring to, is only a temporary measure at this stage.

 

[PG]

The Off Peak trial, if that is what you are referring to, is only a temporary measure at this stage.

Unlike the LNER  trial

 

[Haywain]

Unlike the LNER  trial

Is it permanent? I must have missed that announcement.

 

[robbeech]

Is it permanent? I must have missed that announcement.

People are (perhaps wrongly) using past experience of the railway to anticipate actions of the railway. Though this is all OT.

 

[greyman42]

People are (perhaps wrongly) using past experience of the railway to anticipate actions of the railway. Though this is all OT.

What is OT?

 

[kkong]

Is it permanent? I must have missed that announcement.

LNER's announcement stated that the "pilot" would last two years.

Perhaps they hope that memories will have faded by January 2026.

I would be very surprised if the situation reverted to how it was before the "pilot".

I would also note that "pilot" has a different meaning to "trial".

ScotRail's off-peak fares "trial" has a much larger scope (all journeys wholly within Scotland) and a much shorter duration over which its effectiveness will be assessed (c. 9 months).

Which makes you wonder why LNER require two years to assess only 3 (three) "trial routes".

 

[Watershed]

I would also note that "pilot" has a different meaning to "trial".

Indeed. "Pilot" suggests that they have already decided on their course of action but have merely begun the rollout at a small scale. There is nothing to suggest that they intend to revert the changes after the 2-year initial period. I suppose the only positive one might take is that the policy hopefully won't be rolled out further before the end of the 2 year period.

Which makes you wonder why LNER require two years to assess only 3 (three) "trial routes".

Quite. And they even admitted, following an FoI request, that they had not formulated any criteria by which the success (or otherwise) of the "trial" or "pilot" would be evaluated. How can you try something out without defining what success would look like?

It's obvious to anyone with even half a braincell that this is a complete charade of a "trial" and that data will be cherry-picked to match the assertion that it has been a "success" and should therefore be rolled out more widely. The outcome is as predetermined as a Russian election!

 

[kieron]

Once again, I'm keen to hear more from people who have experiences of the fares trial and have examples of fare rises - or, perhaps, some creative ways of saving money by staying on rail, that we haven't covered yet!

People have mentioned it in passing, but it may be worth suggesting that viewers check fares on the WCML. It can give cheaper fares than the ECML (but may not), but in order to see the fares you may need to do something like request journeys "via Nuneaton" (needed because it typically takes 30 minutes longer than the fastest ECML journey).

Specifying "via Nuneaton" excludes the through trains (which take an extra 50 minutes) but doesn't restrict you to trains which stop anywhere in particular. Other places I could suggest don't work in the same way.