Return train tickets to be scrapped

[Bucketheadbucketbum]

Yet more punishment for rail users

Back to the car for me!

In my area Stagecoach are doing a 3 month (I think) special where a single journey to the main city is £2, whereas the return journey is £7. Maybe the same in your area?

Link to find out about the short term bus fare cap

www.gov.uk/guidance/2-bus-fare-cap

If it's designed to see if price affects usage
It's a crap experiment as no one knows about it

It is an excellent experiment if you don't want to fund it long term, but claim you are doing something about it.

Well that's what they are planning to do (you won't pay more than current return fare) and you would know that if you bothered to spend even 2 minutes researching before posting.

JFC no wonder it is so bloody difficult to change things in this country when so many people won't even bother to read a news article but will make many judgements based on a headline.

Single tickets make so much more sense - why should you effectively get a discount by booking a return? It's been like this in any countries for a long time. Sometimes you only need a single ticket because you're getting a lift one way, sometimes you're doing a "triangular" route between 3 places.

I agree with pp though saying the fares need to be calculated fairly to avoid the ridiculous situation we have currently where multiple split fares can work out cheaper.

Apologies supposed to have quoted a poster above in my last post - was referring to the bus far cap.

As for rail tickets - as an occasional user I am constantly baffled by the price structure for rail tickets in the UK. Sometimes a return is cheap sometimes it is two singles that offer more value and don't get me started on this split journey thing where you can get to the same place for much cheap if you by tickets to and from an intermediate station for some reason.

Of course this system needs reform, but we all know that any reform cooked up by the rail industry and this government is just a way to make rail travel more expensive for commuters and nothing else. I am so glad I don't need to rely on the rail network for regular travel in this country.

In which article? The telegraph article linked on the first page on this thread doesn't say that, it just says that LNER did that when they trialled it in 2020. Could you link to where they (the government and/or the rail industry) say that it won't result in increases in effective fares on any route?

When 2 or more of us travel to London it is always cheaper to drive and pay to park than take the train. We went for a theatre trip. Train was going to be £170 advance return. We did it in the car for £76 including petrol, parking and tube fare.

I regularly travel between London and Newcastle, and two singles are generally cheaper than a return, so I'm not sure why this is big news.

Cross country trains in the north are atrocious at any price.

Currently a single ticket is generally only marginally cheaper than a return (for some unknown reason). If tickets genuinely will be the same price and the return price isn't going up then this will be better, there are some scenarios where you only want to travel one way on the train. As that would benefit users though I suspect it won't be the case. To be honest I used to love travelling by train as its more relaxing than driving, but now when I plan something I just plan to drive due to the strikes and rising prices etc.

No this isn’t always the case. A return is about £1 more expensive than a single for my regular commute. As I’m part time, a travel card is of no help, so it looks as though I will be paying almost double for the privilege of working, in an industry that Brexit has already decimated. I’m in my 50s so will probably take early retirement at this point. People like me will be further exacerbating the labour crisis I know, but I’ve got to look after my own interests.

I'm assuming all those voting YANBU are OK with the current system that's got dozens of ticket types and is so complicated it makes it almost impossible to get the cheapest ticket? Or are you just voting yanbu based on the OP without actually having a clue what she is on about (like she herself seems to be)?

I have no idea if these ticketing reforms will work (I don't trust this govt to implement anything) but trying to move to a simplified fare structure should surely be supported. We have no problem not having return fares on the tube so why so against this change in the rail network?

@Fruitfriend it applied to child fares in our area, must be a local operator decision. Regardless, I'd just buy an adult single for the kids if it didn't apply to kids fares here. DD is 16 so gets a 16-19 fare, which is capped too.

He can want that all he likes, but it's not how the wind is blowing. My daughter, her partner and my husband all worked in offices before Covid. Now all are working the vast majority of the time at home and all working well.

But Guildford is miles away from London

so you're comparing Sydney to Sydney, you mean a suburb to city? Not a fair comparison really.

I agree that train price systems are mad. This announcement will have a strong in the tail, prices or app only or some such.

Read the guardian article someone else linked to on the first page. It's right there.

And then perhaps you can then link to where they (the govt and/or the rail industry) say people will be paying double once return fares are scrapped. You won't find it because it doesn't exist. But that didn't stop the poster I was responding to from posting it.

@hryllilegur
Two singles are currently often cheaper than a return though. That’s been true for many, many years.

Is the outrage about this largely from people who haven’t booked train tickets in a long time?

Nope. I book every few weeks. For my journeys, two singles always cost about £10 each but a return is about £10.90.

Don’t assume your experience is the same as everyone else’s.

Is it so that people cannot use a return ticket more than once? Ie currently if you get on a train and the ticket barriers are open, the return is valid for a month
I know people who blag journeys where they can even when they don’t financially need to do so

You mean the guardian article that uses the telegraph article as a source for that claim? The same telegraph article that doesn't actually say that but just talks about what LNER did in a 2020 trial?

I can't see any commitment from either government or the rail industry that this reform won't lead to higher fares for passengers. If you think that the government only does stuff they explicitly and publicly state then you must have been living under a rock for the last 12 years at least. Without a clear and unequivocal statement that no passengers will face higher fares from government due to this change it is entirely reasonable, based on track record, that this could well happen.

The state of the trains in this country is atrocious - overcrowded, poor carriages and so expensive. A few years ago I went from Bristol to Birmingham. There were people in our booked seats refusing to move, the seat I sat on stunk of sick overlaid by Jeyes fluid smell, and a fortune for the privilege. Compare this to the trains in Europe and we've got a long way to go!

It needs to be made so much simpler somehow.

They might say that two singles are going to be the price of a return, but given that there are about 10 different return type tickets that you can buy at the moment, they might just make them half the price of the most expensive/least flexible one, and then claim it's true, when in reality, that means making it all much more expensive for the average user.

Some return fares are only a pound more than a single so how would the new pricing work.

I can't comment on the telegraph article because it is behind a pay wall and I refuse to pay for the torygraph.

Where do you think this story has cone from? They haven't plucked it out of thin air. It will have been briefed by ministerial teams ahead of the secretary of state making his announcement. This is common in politics.

My point is that people shouldn't be jumping to conclusions, particularly those that aren't based on the reports. Posters have no reason to be thinking they will be paying almost double with this policy but are getting irate about it anyway. Why?

And no I don't think the govt only does stuff they explicitly state but then, as you've pointed out, they haven't yet explicitly stated anything on this topic so why bring this up?

Are they getting rid of weekly or monthly tickets then?

Why is this even news? If you buy singles (and split them), they're often cheaper than an anytime return. The problem is you need to make sure you're on the timed train unless you buy an anytime ticket which defeats the object of buying a cheaper ticket!

More of a news thread is why are train timetables so crap these days? I used to commute to London, did it for 5 years I had 3 fast trains to choose from.

Now there's 1 an hour!

Until covid, slow trains used to cost £20-30 per leg, now it's nearly double that, yet staff haven't had parishes etc. Where's the money going? To shareholders?
So crap timetables and nearly 2x cost for me. It's pants!