Barry Doe, RAIL Fares and Services Expert

In The Fare Dealer for this issue (pages 66-67), I mention the excellent South Western Railway Timetable Review, which has impressed me because SWR really listened and has made changes.

I fear most consultations set out to make it look as if someone’s listening when a decision has already been made. But I have discussed this fares paper with my RDG contacts, and I’m totally confident they will listen to opinions and effect change.

I shall write more in due course, but for now it’s important to say what it does NOT say, for a lot of the newspaper and TV headlines have been totally misleading.

This is not about abolishing normal season tickets, paper tickets, ticket offices, walk-on flexible tickets (including peak and off-peak versions), advance tickets or station barriers. Of course, over years some of these might change as technology moves on - but not yet.

However, new ways of buying tickets will appear. Had British Rail remained, it would be far ahead of where we are now in terms of ticketing, as it wouldn’t have been made to stick with a mid-1990s fare structure for over 20 years. BR innovated - today’s railway has not been allowed to.

Smartcards, smartphone options and flexi-seasons will overlay a fares structure that could be changed to get the same revenue from a simpler system, which might well include single-leg ticketing.

Few people today trust online or machine purchase, and I don’t blame them. The system needs to be far more user-friendly, and this can be achieved with industry agreement. The ideas would never come from government, so I hope all readers will participate in the survey. See www. britainrunsonrail. co.uk/fares.