Hi There, first time posting so apologies if this is wrong section.
I commute weekdays for work between Morpeth and York on LNER services. I book these well in advance with a 26-30 railcard.
When my 26-30 railcard expires, I am considering a season ticket but when I look at the purchase options, there is no option for a Season Ticket valid only for LNER trains.
There’s an option for Transpennine only season tickets and an option for any regular service, but nothing for LNER only trains.
With seeing transpennine constantly cancelled on the route, and a full season ticket for any service being too expensive, is there an option for LNER only season tickets? And anyone know why there isn’t?
Many thanks!
There isn't an option for an LNER only season ticket on this route. In fact, I can't think of many, if any, routes for which there's an LNER only season ticket. The reason why there isn't one is that LNER are the company that set the Any Permitted fares (also known as "interavailable") for most journeys along the East Coast Mainline, including Morpeth to York.
The default rule, as established at the time of rail privatisation, is that interavailable fare setters cannot create fares that limit you to travelling on their own services (e.g. LNER only in this case). This is essentially to prevent anticompetitive pricing. Therefore LNER couldn't introduce an LNER only season ticket, even if they wanted to. Interavailable fare setters, such as LNER here, can still create cheaper Advance tickets which are valid only on the specific booked service(s).
It's possible that Advances will be the cheapest option for your travel - but it really depends on when and how often you travel. In some cases buying a combination of tickets, such as Morpeth to Newcastle and Newcastle to York, may also present a saving - this is known as split ticketing and there are sites that will calculate the cheapest option and sell it to you in one booking.
Unfortunately TPE's services are very unreliable at the moment and so in principle, I would not normally recommend buying a TPE only season ticket. However, for many months now they have had standing
ticket acceptance with other operators, including LNER on weekdays (excluding trains to/from Aberdeen and Inverness), in the event of one of their services being cancelled. This is generally only in place up until around 2 weeks into the future at any given moment, but tends to be extended on a weekly basis; this has been going on for over a year now.
Therefore, so long as you are willing to accept the inconvenience of being limited to TPE if one of their trains is merely delayed as opposed to cancelled, I think you could reasonably safely buy a TPE only season ticket and make use of the ticket acceptance where necessary.
If for any reason the ticket acceptance is no longer extended, you can then obtain a season ticket changeover to the Any Permitted route (you just pay the pro-rata difference) - or get a refund if you decide to switch back to daily tickets. So there isn't too much risk in buying a monthly or annual season ticket, both of which are cheaper per day than a weekly season (the latter particularly so, costing only 40x a weekly). You may be able to get a credit card that offers 0% interest on purchases to spread the cost of an annual season ticket.
