Routes for season ticket - Bexhill to Sevenoaks

[stepurhan]

I have read the comprehensive guide at the top of this forum, but I am getting stuck part-way through the process. Hoping that someone here can guide me on the next steps so I can understand the answer fully.

I have a season ticket from Bexhill to Sevenoaks. Only restriction I can see on the ticket itself is not via London. I have managed to get as far as the routing points for the journey and they are St Leonards Warrior Square (Hastings Group) and Sevenoaks. Based solely on my understanding of the local network map, there would appear to be two available routes.

• Bexhill to St Leonards Warrior Square. Change at St Leonards Warrior Square for a train to Sevenoaks
• Bexhill to Ashford International (which passes through St Leonards Warrior Square). Change at Ashford International for a train to Sevenoaks.

I have, perhaps foolishly, assumed both routes were valid. Indeed, I have had to use the second route when there were issues causing significant delays with the first (landslip with replacement buses taking hours). A guard today told me only the first route is valid. Are they correct? If not, can someone guide me how to do the next step to prove both are valid.

Thanks for any help anyone can give.

 

[MrJeeves]

Only restriction I can see on the ticket itself is not via London. I have managed to get as far as the routing points for the journey and they are St Leonards Warrior Square (Hastings Group) and Sevenoaks. Based solely on my understanding of the local network map, there would appear to be two available routes.

Spot on!

Since the origin and destination are different routeing points, the next step after this is to look at the routeing guide yellow pages to see which maps can be used between these two stations. In this case, it's just map "SV".



If we look up map SV, this only includes the line from Hastings, up through Battle and Tonbridge towards London.



Looks like the guard is correct in this instance and your ticket isn't valid via Ashford International.

Season tickets have more beneficial permitted route validity rules than normal single/return tickets, as you can break journey at any point, switch direction of travel, and combine portions of multiple valid routes together to create an overall journey. As your ticket only has one real route it's permitted for travel on, this doesn't help you, but it's good to bear in mind.

A good example is Burgess Hill to Lewes. A standard ticket is valid via Burgess Hill to Haywards Heath, then down to Lewes. It's also valid down to Brighton/Hove and back up to Lewes. You can combine these two areas of validity to use it on trains from (for example) Wivelsfield to Brighton by combining the validity from Lewes via Haywards Heath to Burgess Hill and from Burgess Hill to Lewes via Brighton.

 

[stepurhan]

Thanks for the prompt and detailed answer. Obviously not what I was hoping for but I'd rather know the right answer.

Follow-up question, though I suspect the answer is the same. Ore station is situated on the edge of Hastings on the Ashford International line and is the main reason for asking. I assume that this still does not count as part of the SV map for the purpose of this journey.

Reason for asking. A season ticket from Ore is 66% more expensive than one from Bexhill. (about the same travel time on train, but Bexhill is more than double the distance) Even more insane, a season ticket from Eastbourne (about 12 miles and 20 minutes train travel further west from Bexhill, but otherwise using the same route) is only 15% more expensive. Anyone I can lobby about this ludicrous differential?

Guess I'll do more walking from Ore with the occasional treat ticket when the weather is bad.

 

[MrJeeves]

Ore station is situated on the edge of Hastings on the Ashford International line and is the main reason for asking.

Ore has both routeing points Hastings and Ashford International. The reason it's 66% more expensive could be because it was increased due to some tickets from there being valid via High Speed 1, and this was included by mistake, or it could just be a case of extortionate pricing by the rail industry!

Ashford to Sevenoaks is valid on map RA (hence so is Ore to Ashford), which I think is what you wanted.

I assume that this still does not count as part of the SV map for the purpose of this journey.

Reason for asking. A season ticket from Ore is 66% more expensive than one from Bexhill.

This comes down to the local journey rules, which define how you can travel from your origin station (the one on your ticket) to the origin routeing point station(s) (or the same with destinations).

Generally, you cannot double back (i.e. pass through the same station twice) within a routeing point group (in this case, Hastings Group which includes only Hastings and St Leonards) unless it is for interchange purposes. (There are also many other rules, too!)

"Interchange purposes" isn't strictly defined within the routeing guide as far as I know, but most take the approach that you can doubleback if you're doing so to change to another train. The rules around break of journey when doing this isn't clear, though. Theoretically, your ticket can be used from Bexhill to Hastings then to Sevenoaks, where you'd go through St Leonards twice. Trying to break your journey at St Leonards, however, could potentially present issues.

To answer your question, though, there's no way that travelling through Hastings to Ore could be valid on that ticket (unless this was explicitly permitted during something like engineering works). If you had a ticket from Ore, you would be able to travel to Hastings to enter the Hastings Group routeing point, then follow map SV to your destination routeing point though. Likewise, a ticket from Ore to Sevenoaks can't be used to travel to/from Bexhill either.

 

[paul1609]

The reason that Bexhill (and Eastbourne) to Sevenoaks are relatively cheap is that they are priced by Southern instead of Southeastern.
All fares priced by Southeastern were increased by RPI +5% rather than RPI +3% applied to the rest of the rail network in the years folllowing the opening of HS1 "to pay for the increased cost of operating of HS1 and the additional frequencies on the non HS1 network". This has been compounded ever since by the annual rises. Id imagine that complaining about the differentials to the rail industry will likely result in the transfer of the pricing to Southeastern (who provide by far the majority of the service) and a hefty price increase for the Bexhill ticket.
For many years there was a similar situation with the Thameslink interface which resulted in a Anytime Return route +not hs1 to St Albans being considerably cheaper than a not hs ticket to London Terminals from practically every station in Kent. Needless to say passenger numbers dropped considerably at St Albans when the loophole was fixed.