Return train tickets to be scrapped

[Bucketheadbucketbum]

Yet more punishment for rail users

Back to the car for me!

100%

I've had to catch a train....4 times in the last year, each time there was a cancellation/delay.

My colleague got stranded one day which meant me going out to pick her up to get her home.

I go to London twice a month on average, and everytime I choose to drive.

Even at £200 to the company in fuel payback, it's still cheaper and more reliable than getting a train.

This. Without seeing the new pricing system, no-one can say whether it is better or worse.

Hopefully the new system will make using longer distance trains without having to specify a train months in advance in order to get a sensible price a viable option. Because it isn't currently on a lot of routes and that's a bigger barrier against using the train for a lot of people.

Having said that, LNER have introduced a fairly reasonably priced off peak flexible ticket for the East Coast main line. You can just buy the ticket at any time and is valid for any train outside a fairly narrow peak window, the main exclusion being that it can't be used to get to London from northern England for a working day. Both DP and I have used it to get to London for about £60 each way, either on the day or with a few days notice.

Before, it would have been likely double that, because you have to book 2/3 months in advance to get it significantly cheaper, and you have to go on a certain train or lose your money.

I just hope they make it so you can have a paper ticket if you want but all tickets can just be available on your phone. Really annoying when you get a sheaf of paper tickets. Eeven faffing around with loading a ticket via an app onto your key card (Southeastern) seems archaic to me. Just have a barcode on your phone like the East Coast line!

I can’t see how this will work in practice though. I commute a few days a week and get a return as I don’t 100% know which train I’m going to be coming back on. If I travel for work overnight I’ll get an open return as again can’t always predict which train. What I’d be worried about is losing any form of flexibility and having to book a set ticket for example. It doesn’t sound like the reforms are going to make my life any easier as a passenger.

This is exactly why I think it will be used to cut services. The end of flexible returns and booking a specific train means they can do exactly that. It's going to hit workers hardest...you won't know what time you are finishing, so you think you'll get a 7 or 7.30...by the time you go to book it, one or both trains will have vanished.

It is wild that often returns are only marginally more expensive than singles, but realistically I doubt this change is going to be something that benefits people- it never does.

A single from my local station into the city centre is £3 all day. An open return costs:

• £4.60 (peak)
• £2.70 (off-peak)
• £2 (super off-peak)

If you ask for a single ticket, the conductor generally advises you to get a return because it's cheaper. I don't live in an affluent area and most people will tell you they get the train because the buses are A) unreliable, B) much slower, and C) £5 for a day ticket. If they scrap return tickets without reducing the price of a single, it will make public transport around here prohibitively expensive for many.

It's all fine and well saying that two singles will be the same price as a return but will that apply to local lines with people travelling shorter distances for work and leisure? I really can't see them reducing a single ticket from £3 to £1...

I look at the telegraph so little I'm still on their freebie articles at the moment. The article says nothing about any claims that this will mean that prices will not rise. The only comment was about a trial by LNER in 2020 where they did indeed replace a return with two singles at the same price, but that says nothing about the new proposals. The guardian journalist clearly can't read either!

So, you are jumping to conclusions not me by ruling out a potential outcome without clear evidence. Even if this is some secretive briefing, it is not an on the record statement by a minister therefore I have no reason to believe it or trust that it will be the case in reality.

Why are you so invested in defending the department of transport or the rail industry here?

What the hell are they thinking? This is where you know this government is run by gaziillionaires who keep drivers to transport them anywhere they want rather than by normal people using public transport. And it shows clearly they aren’t even bothered to think about the rest of us. This will never affect them. It will drastically affect all of us.

It’s £1 more to get a return where I live. So train travel will be unaffordable for loads of people. Bus travel is overpriced and doesn’t work for long distances. Why on Earth are the disincentivising train travel? This makes me so angry. Not everyone has a car and even for those who do this is going to be awful for everyone.

We have very bad air pollution in the UK, I will never get the poor bereaved mother of little Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah out of my mind. That poor child could have been any of our children. Encouraging car use kills children, elderly people and anyone with breathing issues. Honestly it’s so wrong, it’s sickening.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56801794.amp

*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?
*
Ermmm because it's Tory policy and experience tells us it certainly won't be being done to help the average Joe.

THE. PRICE. OF. A. SINGLE. TICKET. WILL. BE. 50%. OF. THE. RETURN. PRICE.

I know everyone hates the government but why is everyone being so ridiculous and frothing when they haven't actually read the article?

'It means that two singles will equal a return – making return tickets redundant – having proved a success during trials with passengers.'

If they want people to use trains they have to be cheaper than driving, even if you aren't booking three months in advance. Where I live it is cheaper for me to use petrol to drop off my sister off in the city centre and then pick up (so four journeys in my car) than for her to get the train.

For longer distances - I needed to travel from Liverpool to Guildford for work. It was cheaper to travel by car the night before and stay in a holiday inn than to get the train. Time wise driving was about half of what the train would have taken.

What's Tory policy? To get people to pay double fares? Where have you read that?

CurrentHun "Why on Earth are the disincentivising train travel?"

well, cars are coming close to only being used by the wealthy....because we're all meant to live in a you know what. Or us mere mortals are.

this is another thing many of us said in 2020 and we got laughed at. No one is encouraging car travel.

I feel we are going back to the age that some landowners opposed railways because they feared it would be easier for poor people to travel and meet each other and develop political movements.

At the moment, in my neck of the woods, a single is the same price as a day return. I'm guessing most people buy and use a return (into London and other neighbouring towns) so in fact the people losing out are those who buy (and only need) a single. In principle I would be in favour of this change, however I can't believe the new system will result in anything other than a profit for the rail operators - this is going to be another sneaky, backdoor way of increasing fares without having to announce it as such.

I have always found buying 2 singles cheaper (but I am very tight!)

So two singles to cost the same as a “current return”.

Presumably they will be scrapping off-peak fares at the same time? Certainly off-peak singles don’t exist on the route I travel to work, don’t know if they are available on other routes.
My journey to work is (roughly) anytime single £5, off peak return £7, peak return £9.

Guessing it will just become single £4.50. So slight benefit to those who just travel one-way, no impact on peak time travellers (until the fares go up), more expensive for those who deliberately travel off-peak.

Posters have no reason to be thinking they will be paying almost double with this policy but are getting irate about it anyway. Why?

Because they have no reason to trust this government. Perhaps if they laid out their plan clearly in a free-to-access manner then fewer people would get the wrong idea. Perhaps they could use the government funded national broadcaster for making such announcements, or the dedicated government website. Or they can continue to leak to newspapers and people will continue to be poorly informed.

You are star. What a splendid idea.

For once luck is with me tickets booked 11th March £75 London return from Birmingham. And several trains to choose from.

You mean that the drift is towards tying passengers to a particular train with a loss of flexibility?

If you want to improve the ticketing system you could start with removing TOC-specific fares (because Avanti and TPE won't show up anyway), plus abolishing peak restrictions like Virgin did on Fridays and Scotrail is now doing. The price differential between peak and off peak is now ludicrous and results in some very quiet peak services and very busy off peak ones.

But the Treasury won't allow any cuts in prices (which is effectively what removing peak restrictions does), even if it should result in increased sales which would more than pay for the cut because they aren't business-minded and would prefer to have 10 passengers paying £400 than 100 passengers paying £200.

buying two singles is only cheaper if you commit to a specific train and want no flexibility or refundability. if you can't be exactly sure which train (but can commit to travelling off-peak) then the flexible singles are only a couple of pounds cheaper than the return for long journeys, or only a few pence cheaper for short ones.

can I still buy a round trip even if that means the computer issues two singles? If I have to buy in two transactions that'd be stupid

@Eleganz my issue is with people talking down a policy when they have no reason to. Why would anyone assume they wouldn't follow the trial but would instead create a policy doubling fares for a lot of people?

And as to being invested, its because I've worked on govt policy before and had it torn to shreds by people online who didn't know what they were talking about and were making things up. It's really bloody depressing. We wonder why things don't change in this country well this is one reason why. People are so negative and are so entrenched with whatever political party they support that they refuse to accept that not all changes are bad.

Oh and fares are inevitably going to rise. Not because of scrapping return fares but because train travel is no longer profitable. The train companies in the south used to turn a decent profit and the money made there was used to subsidise trains in the north. So this tinkering with rail fares will not do much unless Tory policy radically changes to put even more taxpayers money into the railways. Unfortunately I think it's clear from a lot of posts here people would rather stick to their cars

@Scienceadvisory I quite clearly said 'experience tells us', I didn't claim to have read it anywhere. I just don't believe a single thing the government tells us and therefore don't believe it won't result in increased fares. Not sure what's so hard to understand about that.