please empty your brain below
Fares designed so that it is unnecessary to buy a ‘split-ticket’

diamond geezer | Homepage | 05.06.18 - 12:03 a.m. | #

Abandoning split ticketing mybbe problematic, but there is an obvious workaround: technology. When buying a ticket, the ticketing system always identifies the cheapest ticket, even if internally it has split that en route.

Let's say A>B is £5 and B>C is £5, but A>C is £15. At the moment, one would have to split manually. What if the ticketing system recognised this and sold you an A>C ticket for £10? What decisions and splits it has made in the background is only of interest to the TOC, not the passenger.

robbaker292 | Homepage | 05.06.18 - 7:49 a.m. | #

Robbaker292: Often there are multiple routes available on a flexible ticket, and splitting at station B restricts which of these can be used, so the ticketing system would either have to weigh up the loss of flexibility, or wouldn't be able to apply many splits at all.

TimE | 05.06.18 - 9:10 a.m. | #

There are already websites that allow you to identify the money-saving split ticket options; I automatically use them first when booking tickets and it takes no more time then booking through a normal website.
https://splitticketing.trainsplit.com/default.aspx

Whiff | 05.06.18 - 10:09 a.m. | #

My niece travels Australia to London and back fairly frequently. She is a budget traveller. Each time she takes different airlines, different routes. When she arrives she writes her travel cost on the whiteboard. It is low.
The airlines operate on free market pricing. What chance have the railways stopping split ticketing ? The more the pricing is regulated, the more the opportunities for split ticketing.

coffin dodger | 05.06.18 - 10:50 a.m. | #

there's also the issue that with a Network Railcard (or other regional discount card), for trips crossing regional boundaries it presumably becomes mathematically impossible to avoid ALL split ticket savings.

ADS | Homepage | 05.06.18 - 10:57 a.m. | #

TimE: Or perhaps it could provide the passenger with the choice. Giving the ticket purchaser all the information to make an informed choice is the ideal situation. Not paying over the odds and not having to use other sites.

robbaker292 | Homepage | 05.06.18 - 4:23 p.m. | #

Can they avoid split if Oyster (or any other intra-city ticket) is involved? I mean, for example, if I am in a trip from Brighton to Stratford, surely it's cheaper to jump off at East Croydon, get out, and continue my journey with Oyster?

Patrickov | 05.06.18 - 4:33 p.m. | #

There are two other factors that add to the complications with split ticketing.

First are the special promotional fares that DG often takes advantage of For example, Southeastern are currently running special deals to 13 selected destinations. If you want to go to one stop past any of these it will almost always be cheaper to buy two separate tickets. Therefore, unless you ban these special promotional fares there will always be opportunites to benefit from split ticketing.

Thw second complicating factor are day rovers. In Devon, at least, tickets are capped so that a day return within Devon is always less than the price of a Devon Day Ranger ticket. For example, Plymouth to Axminster is ten pounds eighty. By contrast if you book a ticket from Plymouth to the first stop outside Devon, eg Crewkerne, the price of a return jumps by over twenty pounds. This anomaly means that money can be saved by buying one ticket to the Devon border and a seperate ticket from there. Again unless you get rid of day rangers it is hard to see how you can eliminate the potentinal benefits of split ticketing

whiff | 05.06.18 - 4:53 p.m. | #

whiff: I have a similar problem. Few Advance tickets Barnstaple to London, and they are the same price as Super off peak. I'm using your solution, Devon day ranger to Axminster from where there are lots of cheap Advance tickets. People who want a budget fare will always find it. Those who have not put the time into their GCSE railway ticketing will always pay over the odds.Plan B is Megabus, same journey £6 or £7 pounds, sometimes only £1.

coffin dodger | 05.06.18 - 5:14 p.m. | #

Of all the current anomalies mentioned, "split-ticketing" is by far the most inexplicable. However can such a situation possibly arise ?
Wherever are 'ordinary travellers' advised they can get a cheaper fare by using this crazy option ?.

prptram | 05.06.18 - 7:24 p.m. | #

Split ticket anomalies sometimes arise because the end-to-end journey has various possible routes, one of which may be quite circuitous (and generous) so the overall fare takes this into account. Split at somewhere on the more direct route and the fare comes down but you lose the option to go via the high-priced point. London-Aberystwyth was I think a case in point at one time, allowing travel via Newport as a permitted route, but split at Birmingham, use Chiltern from London and the price comes down hugely. It's a trade-off between price and flexibility, and the balance will vary from one journey to another.

Ralph Ayres | 05.06.18 - 9:38 p.m. | #

The Devon example is no different to someone with a Zone 1-6 travelcard asking for a fare from the boundary of Zone 6. There's no way to stop that, even assuming you wanted to.

Andrew | 06.06.18 - 9:38 a.m. | #











TridentScan v2.10.0 | Privacy Policy