Why are Bristol to Cardiff tickets routed "via Newport"?

[LNW-GW Joint]

As stated in post #4, there has been a long standing project to remove Any Permitted and the alternative "." should only be used when there are no other routes. The Advance fares preclude that.

I've just bought a TfW-set Flint-Manchester Airport off peak return, "valid by any train, route .".
I'm pretty sure it's valid via any of the old "Any Permitted" routes which include via Warrington BQ and via Crewe (plus a few variations), on any operator.
I'm intending to use it out one way and back the other, anyway.

 

[Haywain]

I've just bought a TfW-set Flint-Manchester Airport off peak return, "valid by any train, route .".
I'm pretty sure it's valid via any of the old "Any Permitted" routes which include via Warrington BQ and via Crewe (plus a few variations), on any operator.
I'm intending to use it out one way and back the other, anyway.

The comment about 'no other routes' was referring to the fares data, although as I recall it also wasn't supposed to be used where there are distinct routes as you describe. In this case route "." shouldn't be used as there are also tickets routed "AP TFW Only". A more appropriate option for Flint to Manchester Airport would be route "via Chester".

 

[yorkie]

Ah. I may have put this badly in my later comments, but what I originally meant was that it should be possible to purchase an inter-available ticket for every route allowed in the routing guide, rather than one or more routes being only available with certain operators, or just one. This doesn't, of course, in itself, need an "any permitted" ticket to exist.

If the Avanti situation is permitted, it makes me wonder what else operators can get away with now.

Technically the term "inter-available" is a specific term relating to fares being valid on two or more operators (i.e. not a Dedicated fare), regardless of any route specific requirements, however I completely agree with the point you are making.

(For example London to Coventry route via High Wycombe is fully inter-available; if Avanti are diverted that way, Avanti can be used.)

 

[AdamWW]

Technically the term "inter-available" is a specific term relating to fares being valid on two or more operators (i.e. not a Dedicated fare), regardless of any route specific requirements, however I completely agree with the point you are making.

I was using the term to mean a ticket valid on any operator, (i.e. one with no operator mentioned in the route description) which is almost if not quite the same as you are saying.

I was suggesting that for every route that the routing guide permits, there should be an inter-available ticket that is sold that can be used on that route.

It does not seem right to me that there can be a route that the routing guide says that I can use, but I have to use a particular operator in order to do so.

It appears that there is now at least one example (the Avanti one) where this is not true. I hope that this is unusual.

 

[randyrippley]

I had a daft one recently:
Morecambe-Preston Off Peak day return "valid only via Lancaster"

what are the alternatives?

 

[Watershed]

I had a daft one recently:
Morecambe-Preston Off Peak day return "valid only via Lancaster"

what are the alternatives?

Well, precisely. It's useless guff that just serves to complicate and confuse matters.

 

[ExToC]

I rather see it the other way. I expected to see "Any permitted" on the ticket. Seeing "via Newport" when there is no alternative makes me think there should be another (more expensive) ticket that allows a different route.

I agree - its not an unreasonable scenario to go to Cardiff for the weekend and then come back via a few pints with my mate in Gloucester on the Sunday afternoon. Of course, single leg pricing could be the solution to that triangular conundrum….but thats a whole other topic…..

 

[kieron]

The Edinburgh example isn't ideal for this, as it's a botch that was badly done by Avanti when LNER introduced the first trial of single leg pricing. As others have suggested, the right thing to do would have been to have route via Carlisle instead.

Is this Avanti's fault? LNER withdrew the "any permitted" tickets in 2020. They have now removed almost all of their return tickets between Scotland and southern England without changing the route codes for any of the "any permitted" tickets.

Unless there's some crucial difference between a London-Edinburgh ticket and a London-Haymarket one which I'm just not seeing, they could easily have changed the former's route back to "any permitted" at the same time, and solved the problem at a stroke.

Incidentally, I think "via Carlisle" tickets would be a bad idea for this route. It would cost around as much as the "via York" ticket, so would give customers nothing apart from needless complexity. It's a better idea than "Avanti only" tickets, but not by much.

I was suggesting that for every route that the routing guide permits, there should be an inter-available ticket that is sold that can be used on that route.

It does not seem right to me that there can be a route that the routing guide says that I can use, but I have to use a particular operator in order to do so.

Perhaps it's a matter of perspective? To me, you can use the routeing guide (in combination with other data such as the timetable) to find out what you can do with an "any permitted" (or otherwise unrouted) ticket, and gives some information about how to understand tickets with other routes. If you want to work out the permitted routes you need the route code for a ticket, just as surely as you need the start and finish stations.

On that basis, the question of where an "any permitted" London-Edinburgh ticket can be used is moot. The flexible tickets all have "via York", "Avanti only" or "Lumo & Hull only" routes, so the permitted routes are based on one of those.

 

[AdamWW]

Perhaps it's a matter of perspective? To me, you can use the routeing guide (in combination with other data such as the timetable) to find out what you can do with an "any permitted" (or otherwise unrouted) ticket, and gives some information about how to understand tickets with other routes. If you want to work out the permitted routes you need the route code for a ticket, just as surely as you need the start and finish stations.

On that basis, the question of where an "any permitted" London-Edinburgh ticket can be used is moot. The flexible tickets all have "via York", "Avanti only" or "Lumo & Hull only" routes, so the permitted routes are based on one of those.

Yes I think we're looking it at this in different ways.

I think you're suggesting that it's sufficient that the validity of all existing tickets can be determined.

My view is that if the routing guide was set up to permit a given route, there ought to be a ticket available to let people use that route no matter which company they use.

I know that operator restrictions are implemented in the "route" information, but it seems wrong for me to the two to be mixed up and if a route is valid for one operator surely it should be valid for all?

I'd hope that in general an operator can't take a flow they control and decide that from now on it's only a valid route if you use their trains.

 

[Gaelan]

Is this Avanti's fault? LNER withdrew the "any permitted" tickets in 2020. They have now removed almost all of their return tickets between Scotland and southern England without changing the route codes for any of the "any permitted" tickets.

Unless there's some crucial difference between a London-Edinburgh ticket and a London-Haymarket one which I'm just not seeing, they could easily have changed the former's route back to "any permitted" at the same time, and solved the problem at a stroke.

Incidentally, I think "via Carlisle" tickets would be a bad idea for this route. It would cost around as much as the "via York" ticket, so would give customers nothing apart from needless complexity. It's a better idea than "Avanti only" tickets, but not by much.

Perhaps it's a matter of perspective? To me, you can use the routeing guide (in combination with other data such as the timetable) to find out what you can do with an "any permitted" (or otherwise unrouted) ticket, and gives some information about how to understand tickets with other routes. If you want to work out the permitted routes you need the route code for a ticket, just as surely as you need the start and finish stations.

On that basis, the question of where an "any permitted" London-Edinburgh ticket can be used is moot. The flexible tickets all have "via York", "Avanti only" or "Lumo & Hull only" routes, so the permitted routes are based on one of those.

Wow, are there really no longer London-Edinburgh tickets valid via both the ECML and WCML? That’s a huge change that I just completely missed. Is there a thread on this?

 

[Haywain]

Wow, are there really no longer London-Edinburgh tickets valid via both the ECML and WCML? That’s a huge change that I just completely missed. Is there a thread on this?

Only for the last 5 years or so.

 

[satisnek]

This explains why my regular Kidderminster - Willington Off-Peak Return now states "Valid only via Birmingham". Really?? What are the alternatives? Well, I've thought of two:

Worcester - Hereford - Crewe - Derby
or
Worcester - Oxford - Leamington Spa/Coventry - Nuneaton - Tamworth

Both are quite appealing but simply not possible on a Friday evening. So running the gauntlet of the noise and mayhem of Friday night Birmingham City Centre it has to be. But it's nice of National Rail to tell me that it's the only option

 

[Lewisham2221]

Well, precisely. It's useless guff that just serves to complicate and confuse matters.

I don't really see how it complicates or confuses anything tbh. It clearly, plainly states the valid route. It matters not whether there is an alternative route or not. Who in their right mind is going to lookup a fare/itinerary for a particular journey, then deliberately attempt to find more expensive fare valid via a far more long winded route, purely on the basis that they have, bizarrely, concluded that because the original fare is "valid only via xxx" there  must be an alternative option valid via ABC?

 

[thedbdiboy]

There was a project a while ago to replace Any Permitted with something more meaningful (and no I have no idea how . Is more meaningful )

Ah. I can see some logic to that (and it does sound vaguely familiar). But as I'm used to how things used to work, it just confuses me.

And I would have thought that even more meaningful would just be not to print either
"Valid via any permitted route"
OR
"Valid only via Newport"
on the ticket though...

Since there's no other logical route, why even mention routes on the ticket?

Indeed. It's part of the inane drive to "simply" ticketing by restating the bleeding obvious...

That 'project' was simply trying to revert to the APTIS-era logic of suppressing 'Any Permitted' where there was only one route and no possible option of going different ways. In such cases the statement 'Any Permitted' was both superfluous and potentially confusing. It has been identified as a simplification 'quick win'.
Unfortunately since the move away from a single industry-standard TIS, subsequent suppliers had coded in the need for their to be a route shown. Therefore the 'dot' suggestion was suggested as a way to feed the coding that needed to show 'something'. However the whole thing has become so convoluted that it is no longer a 'quick win'.
The root cause of these problems remains the ideological drive in the 1995 privatisation to rid the industry of any network level capability to mange fares and ticketing which has subsequently bitten back big time by making it so incredibly hard to manage smart/digital ticketing or any kind of network level fare restructuring. In the very original privatisation model proposed this might have made sense; but once the Railways Act made clear that interavailability and through ticketing would be mandatory, such a decision was very short sighted.

 

[reb0118]

Inter avaliable tickets from Edinburgh to Dunbar are routed "Not Via Newcastle".

 

[kieron]

Inter avaliable tickets from Edinburgh to Dunbar are routed "Not Via Newcastle".

Edinburgh-Dunbar was "any permitted" from at least 1996, changed to "." in 2017, and then to "not via Newcastle" in October last year.

Last October also sw Scotrail add cheap child tickets (with a "Scotrail only" route code) to the system. There were Edinburgh-Dunbar advance tickets before they changed the route from "any permitted", but perhaps having another route they priced themselves was too much.

There are "not via Newcastle" Alnmouth-Edinburgh tickets, which I think used to use the "direct" route. Perhaps that's why they chose that route code.

 

[jayah]

Exactly; however the Rail Delivery Group and Department for Transport have a very different idea of what constitutes "simple" to what is actually simple.

No more so than specifying 'via Newport' could be taken to indicate an alternative Routeing option is available, in my opinion!

It certainly doesn't help.

If you are not familiar with the geography it now forces you to check where the train goes, at least in this case they do all stop at Newport.

 

[AdamWW]

If you are not familiar with the geography it now forces you to check where the train goes, at least in this case they do all stop at Newport.

Yes that's a good point.

The idea that it's simpler does seem to be based on the assumption that everyone is familiar with the rail map for anywhere they go.

Someone unfamiliar with railway ticketing isn't going to think that it suggests there'e another valid route in the routing guide, but they might well assume that there are some trains that go via Newport and some that don't and they have to make sure they catch the ones that do.

 

[pinza]

One that has puzzled me for some time, is why an Exeter St Davids - Liskeard ticket is routed "Via Plymouth". Am I missing something ?

 

[Starmill]

One that has puzzled me for some time, is why an Exeter St Davids - Liskeard ticket is routed "Via Plymouth". Am I missing something ?

If you reread the thread it's the whole point that the routes are being stated when there's no actual choice.

That 'project' was simply trying to revert to the APTIS-era logic of suppressing 'Any Permitted' where there was only one route and no possible option of going different ways. In such cases the statement 'Any Permitted' was both superfluous and potentially confusing. It has been identified as a simplification 'quick win'.

Indeed the opposite has been achieved in that plenty of ticket machines, their print format on tickets, and retail outlets were already hiding the Any Permitted. Now they have to display the route of just a dot.

It either says nothing at all or just shows a dot which is, generally, barely visible.

On a printed ticket, yes. However it's very visible indeed in the other parts of the retail flow. For example here on LNER there's an information symbol and then just a dot with no information. LNER haven't tried to explain what the dot means.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Incidentally, I think "via Carlisle" tickets would be a bad idea for this route. It would cost around as much as the "via York" ticket, so would give customers nothing apart from needless complexity. It's a better idea than "Avanti only" tickets, but not by much.

Potentially works for me. A London->Edinburgh "route Carlisle" ticket, would enable passengers to, say, travel up to Carlisle on an Avanti train bound for Glasgow Central, and change onto a TPE service, if that resulted in a better overall journey time. Or even to stay onboard to Glasgow, and then transfer on to a Scotrail service across to Edinburgh. Guess that's no longer possible.

Just a thought, do Avanti retain all "route Avanti" fares for themselves? Maybe that's the reason?!

Inter avaliable tickets from Edinburgh to Dunbar are routed "Not Via Newcastle".

It'd certainly be a long journey if you did travel from Edinburgh to Dunbar via Newcastle. Presumably it's been done so as to prevent any thought of undercutting the Edinburgh -> Newcastle fare by using same to stop short at Newcastle?

 

[Starmill]

Just a thought, do Avanti retain all "route Avanti" fares for themselves? Maybe that's the reason?!

Yes, and it is...

 

[CharlieSpotted]

The "dot" routing really is a terrible hack, isn't it? Clearly absolutely zero thought was given to how it would appear in retail systems and on tickets etc and how confusing that would be for the customer!

 

[PeterC]

It certainly doesn't help.

If you are not familiar with the geography it now forces you to check where the train goes, at least in this case they do all stop at Newport.

In the, hypothetical and very unlikely, event of a non stop service being introduced how many passengers would think their ticket wasn't valid. Come to that how many ticket checking staff would think the same?

 

[Wallsendmag]

In the, hypothetical and very unlikely, event of a non stop service being introduced how many passengers would think their ticket wasn't valid. Come to that how many ticket checking staff would think the same?

Already exists on LNER with the Via Peterborough routing.

 

[AdamWW]

In the, hypothetical and very unlikely, event of a non stop service being introduced how many passengers would think their ticket wasn't valid. Come to that how many ticket checking staff would think the same?

Or indeed journey planners.

 

[Alex365Dash]

Already exists on LNER with the Via Peterborough routing.

It also exists on LNER inter-available tickets valid on Lumo services with the via York route!

Or indeed journey planners.

As long as Newport is a timing point on the passing service then it’s not an issue.

 

[Starmill]

In the, hypothetical and very unlikely, event of a non stop service being introduced how many passengers would think their ticket wasn't valid. Come to that how many ticket checking staff would think the same?

The use of a via point on a ticket for a journey which has through trains, but where most trains don't stop at is a fairly common one. In addition to the Peterborough example above, High Wycombe is the most obvious example but Barking or Upminster are others.

 

[wilbers]

interesting choice of trains to get from Liverpool to Manchester, making full use of the Any Permitted routing. Quite possibly the only person to ever undertake that precise journey.

 

[jayah]

In the, hypothetical and very unlikely, event of a non stop service being introduced how many passengers would think their ticket wasn't valid. Come to that how many ticket checking staff would think the same?

There are very many examples of routing via a station where not all of the trains stop.