Off-peak is off-putting

Could simpler Anytime and Advance relieve our fares headache?

blaming Advance fares for ticketing complexity, I think Philip Haigh lynches the wrong culprit ( RAIL 849).

The reason Advance fares account for just 15% of all UK ticket sales is because the vast majority of UK ticket sales are for commuter routes, where Advance fares are irrelevant.

Once you focus on a major inter-city route such as London-Manchester, you’ll find that Advance fares make up at least 40% of sales, to my knowledge. Indeed, it’s possible they now exceed 50% on some flows, making them the most important fare type of all.

Anytime and Advance fares are the simple ones: the former is valid any train, the latter only on the specified train - both easy concepts to grasp.

Advance fares are also simple because only one price is ever relevant for a given train and class - one train, one price, click and buy. If Philip found 77 different single fares between York and Newcastle on brfares.com, they are ‘behind-the-scenes’ price buckets of which 76 are irrelevant and will never be seen by the public - either they’re available for that train but more expensive, or cheaper but unavailable.

Advance fares are also simple because they are single-leg ticketed, as indeed are most Anytime fares. This means that there is a simple choice of train and price on the outward journey, and a separate and independent choice of train and price on the way back.

It also means that open jaw and circular journeys are just as easy and affordable as a round trip to and from the same place. And you can mix and match an Advance on the outward with an Anytime on the way back, only paying extra for flexibility when you need it.

The real culprit is the Off-Peak category, where the public have to grasp flexibility parameters that are often complex and not easily accessible in a concise and comprehensible form, and where there are multiple options all labelled Off-Peak - some with tighter time restrictions, some with easier restrictions, some valid for one day, some for one month, some interavailable (valid on any operator), some only on a specified operator, some by any permitted route, some only by a specified route.

The most troublesome feature of most longer-distance Off-Peak fares is that the oneway costs only £1 less than the equivalent return, a feature inherited from BR and now fossilised by Department for Transport fares regulation.

This means that the moment you choose an Off-Peak fare for your return leg, you may as well pay the extra £1 and buy an Off-Peak Return, using that for your outward journey as well.

But this complicates the buying process, because the decision you make for your return journey then interacts with the decision you make for your outward (with Anytime or Advance fares, the outward and return decision are simple, separate and independent).

It effectively makes it impossible to mix and match an Advance fare out with an OffPeak back, because even the cheapest Advance fare costs more than the £1 extra you need to buy an Off-Peak return rather than a one-way. The collateral damage of being priced into buying an Off-Peak Return, instead of an Advance for your outward and an Off-Peak for your return, is that you cannot now take the 1800 train from London that you originally wanted (even if there were some attractive Advance fares). You need to switch to the 1900, as that’s the first off-peak train.

Reflect for a moment on a fares structure where your choice of fare on your Sunday afternoon return trip changes the time of train you can take on your Friday night outward trip. No wonder people find it complicated!

And if you’ve ever wondered why operators can’t fill all the seats on the last peak trains out of London, even with £30 or £40 Advance fares, but the first off-peak train goes out loaded to the gunwales, that’s why!

The fact that an Off-Peak one-way is only £1 less than the equivalent return also penalises open jaw or one-way trips.

You could, of course, make creative use of the Routeing Guide - spotting that an Off-Peak Return from A to B can be used via point X on the way back, checking your Break of Journey conditions to confirm that you can indeed join at point X on the return, then adding a local ticket from point C to point X.

But contrast that decision process with simply clicking and buying an outward Advance fare from A to B, then clicking and buying an inward Advance fare from C back to A!

So, what villain would I put in the rail fares dock?

The first and major change that’s needed is for all UK fares to go ‘single leg’. This is crucial if longer-distance fares are to be easily sold online, and for shorter-distance fares to be easily and transparently sold by ticket machines and by touching in and out using smartcards. DfT committed to a trial several years ago, but to my knowledge nothing has yet happened.

Flexibility is one of the key selling features of rail, so there should always be a choice of flexible (Anytime), semi-flexible (Off-Peak) or inflexible (Advance) fares. But with single-leg ticketing, just one Anytime fare, just one relevant Advance fare on any given train, and a clearer explanation of a more sensibly managed range of Off-Peak fares, a much simpler fares system is indeed possible.

We already use the same three terms across all operators (Anytime, Off-Peak and Advance), so let’s build on that. But it won’t happen on its own - it needs determination from both DfT and operators to cut this Gordian knot.