Glasgow train? Take your pick from 45 fares
RAIL passengers planning their Christmas journeys are having to choose between dozens of fares on popular routes. Anyone travelling from London to Glasgow is faced with a bewildering 45 ticket prices for the same journey.
The cheapest off- peak return fare with GNER costs just £ 27, while the same company charges £304 for a first class ticket.
Critics say the system is ‘ dreadful’ and impenetrable to all but the most experienced travellers or rail ‘anoraks’.
Rail timetable consultant Barry Doe said: ‘ Everyone I speak to says it has got far more complex because of the offers from different companies.’
There are now thought to be around 350 different types of ticket on sale.
The farce has turned the official rail fares manual into an unwieldy tome, say critics. In the late 1980s under British Rail, the notes to the manual ran to just six pages. Today they stretch to 202 pages.
Analysis of five popular routes from London shows the extent of the problem facing passengers.
Journeys to Glasgow had the most options with 45 different prices on offer from operators GNER, Virgin and ScotRail.
Next came London to Exeter with 36 options from operators First Great Western and South West Trains. Passengers even face 18 different fares if they want to take a short trip from London to Gatwick.
The vexed issue of fare structures is currently under investigation by MPs on the House of Commons transport select committee.
In recent evidence to the committee, GNER’s chief executive, Christopher Garnett, admitted it was far easier to find cheap fares on the website of budget airline easyJet.
He said passengers had to ‘ hunt’ for the low fares with GNER. Although the company was trying to make things easier, it was about a year away from being able to make the cheaper fares more accessible, he said.
Committee chairman Gwyneth Dunwoody said the whole ticketing system was ‘ absolutely chaotic’ and that passengers had to wade through pages of different fares.
Labour MP Clive Efford said a passenger travelling from Penzance to Birmingham could save £25 by booking two singles – one from Penzance to Cheltenham and one from Cheltenham to Birmingham.
David Mapp, commercial director for the Association of Train Operating Companies, told MPs that he accepted that, for long distance operators, there was a degree of over- complication in the number of tickets.
As well as the traditional ‘ full open’ fare and walk- on ‘ saver’ ticket, every major route now has several lower-priced fares flying under a variety of different names and brands.
Virgin’s reduced price fares, for example, are marketed as ‘value advance’. Many train companies have been moving towards what they term ‘airline- style’ pricing, where the cheapest deals are offered earliest to encourage a greater take-up on unpopular services.
An ‘open’ ticket, whether return or single, is the full maximum fare that passengers have to pay on a peak time train if they have not bought a cheaper ticket in advance and have not got a season ticket. It is fully flexible and can be used on any train. The return element is valid for three months. Open tickets can be first class or ‘standard’ class. A ‘ saver’ return is an off- peak walk- on fare. It is a turn-up and go ticket which passengers don’t have to buy in advance. The return element is valid for a month.
Passengers are also bracing themselves for inflation-busting fare rises in the New Year.
The highest increases will hit the East Coast Mainline run by GNER where prices will rise by an average of 8.8 per cent – or four times the rate of inflation.
r.massey@dailymail.co.uk