Fare Dealer
RAIL fares expert Barry Doe says the rail industry is beset by poor-quality information.
MY annual Rover article appears on pages 68-76 of this issue. And compiling it this year brought home to me the poor state of information provision on the railway today.
As I mention in its introduction, much information regarding Rovers on the National Rail site is incomplete or out-of-date. The blame for this lies wholly with the operators, as it is their responsibility to update it.
I found cases where fares had risen last January, yet the prices shown remain 2017’s. In some cases, prices have been changed on the operator’s own website but the information is sketchy.
Hardly any explain what happens when you buy a Rover using a railcard. Which railcards may be used? Does it affect the time you can travel? (Two Together, for example, limits use to after 0930 on Mon-Fri). What prices apply for children when a railcard is used?
Yes, it’s complicated - my lengthy ‘Definitions’ panel on page 69 proves that, as does the room required to explain all the options with the All-Line Rover (see page 70). But whose fault is that? Entirely the industry’s, with no attempt made to make anything simpler. It needs spelling out, and websites generally fail abysmally.
Operators’ websites are a shadow of what they once were when it comes to information. Most are now merely sites that want to sell you tickets, and appear to add anything else reluctantly - and then make it difficult to find.
I do not wish to point the finger - as I prepared the piece I made my opinions clear to offending operators - so I’ll take a non-Rover example.
A reader told me he had discovered that TransPennine Express (TPE) was reintroducing Club 55 for outward travel from April 22 until May 19. Such a short period cries out for good marketing.
I tried to find out about it on TPE’s website. A week before it started there was no mention of it under ‘Offers’. I persisted, and clicked ‘Site Map’ that appears in tiny print at the foot of the Home Page.
This opened up sections and among them was Club 55. Clicking it brought up the relevant page, with a web address showing it is under ‘Offers’, but whoever manages the site had failed to make it appear from their main pages. This has since been rectified, but what a lost opportunity!
There is another aspect that I found to be of great concern, this time involving Transport for London (TfL).
A long-standing bar on the use of the AllLine Rover has been Heathrow Connect between Hayes & Harlington and Heathrow. From May 20, as I explained in RAIL 850’s The Fare Dealer, TfL Rail (Crossrail from later this year), takes over from Heathrow Connect.
National Rail says on its website that the AllLine is valid on TfL Rail services, so I asked my contacts at the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) what happens in May. Will it mean the All-Line becomes valid to Heathrow, not least with the incorporation of Heathrow into Oyster capping?
Well, it seems nobody knows. It has to be agreed with TfL because TfL owns Crossrail. Readers might recall that in RAIL 849’s The Fare Dealer, I explained how I found incorrect Oyster fares applying from Waterloo East to Finsbury Park because TfL had overlooked the new Thameslink services and “wasn’t expecting them until May”.
In other words, Thameslink 2000 was 18 years late but still took TfL by surprise! The same, I gather, is happening regarding future Crossrail ticketing arrangements with National Rail.
TfL has now announced its fares on the Heathrow-Paddington axis and has said that, aside from Heathrow itself, they will be the same as Tube fares. Hanwell to Tottenham Court Road will be the same as to Paddington, because both are Zone 1.
However, what happens nationally come December, when Crossrail starts running
through from Abbey Wood to Paddington, and a year later when it will run from Reading to Liverpool Street and beyond?
Yes, a ticket from Maidenhead will take you through to Liverpool Street at no extra cost, and ditto for Ilford to Paddington. But what of Bristol-London? Will tickets still continue to say ‘London Terminals’ yet be barred for use to Liverpool Street?
Are we really in for a continuation of the Thameslink nonsense, whereby tickets from the north take you to St Pancras and from the south only to City Thameslink?
With a ticket from Colchester to London you’ll be able to change at Stratford onto Crossrail, but won’t be allowed beyond Liverpool Street without an extra fare and ‘London Terminals’ won’t mean Paddington. How archaic, if true.
The industry has a golden opportunity to extend ticket validities to all termini by allowing use of the Tube, Thameslink or Crossrail to cross Zone 1 - just as happens already with cross-London journeys such as Swindon-Colchester. How much simpler it would be.
Yes, it would mean an increase in National Rail’s annual payment to TfL to cover the Tube, and that would need paying for, but the system has worked for several decades already so could surely expand.
Back to the All-Line, and the RDG admitted it had no idea if it will be valid to Heathrow next month, and even less as to whether it will be valid between Liverpool Street and Paddington on Crossrail come December.
It seems next month is far away for the everinefficient Transport for London. It’s tragic that over the years it’s been allowed to expand without being forced to tackle fares properly - all these things should have been sorted a year or more ago.