Cheap train fares axed as rail operator claims it will ease overcrowding

From: Daily Mail

Cheap train tickets are being scrapped just months ahead of inflation-busting price increases, a leaked memo has revealed.

One of Britain’s largest operators has stopped selling its lowest-priced fares for Friday afternoons and Sundays to prevent overcrowding.

This is despite the fact that cheap advance tickets are used by rail companies to justify large price increases for their more  flexible fare options.

The move comes after passengers were told they would face price rises of up to 13 per cent in the New Year, and nearly 30 per cent by 2015, leading to the £10,000 season ticket. The cheap fares cull at CrossCountry Trains was uncovered by ticketing expert Barry Doe of Rail magazine.

CrossCountry carries more than 31million passengers each year, with more than 60,000 of its journeys each week made using pre-booked tickets.

However, a memo to staff stated that there would be ‘no cheap advance fares anywhere on our network’ before 9.30am on Monday to Thursday, after 12pm on Friday or all day on Sunday, following feedback from conductors.

A spokesman said only the ‘cheapest’ advance tickets had been scrapped, but would not confirm how many had been withdrawn from sale.

‘We know these trains will be very busy,’ he said. ‘Why sell very cheap tickets on a train which is already full?’

The move means further misery for those seeking more affordable fares.

Mr Doe said: ‘People spend hours trawling  the internet looking for the best deal. As a passenger, you never know how many of the cheap tickets are available, or even if it’s zero.’

Online train fare jargon ‘can make passengers pay too much’

Rail passengers may be paying too much for train tickets bought online, a consumer watchdog says.

Train companies that use websites to sell tickets must do more to ensure passengers are not overcharged, added Passenger Focus.

Operators and the sites themselves need to make clear the difference between tickets that are only for specific trains and those that can be used on any service, the group said.

Restrictions associated with the time of travel also need to be made clear, as well as the ‘permitted routes’.

Jargon on tickets needs to be cut and a range of improvements are required to make it easier for passengers to buy tickets on the internet, Passenger Focus added.

The watchdog’s chief executive, Anthony Smith, said: ‘It is too easy to pay over the odds simply through lack of familiarity with the fares system and its bewildering jargon.

‘Making sure passengers are not overcharged when they buy online may help improve passengers’ perceptions of fares and value for money on Britain’s railways.

‘As more and more tickets are sold online, it is vital this is got right.’

Gerry Doherty, leader of the TSSA rail union, said cuts in ticket office staff levels and opening hours had forced more passengers to book online. ‘Ministers must ensure that when they award longer rail franchises, they insist that ticket offices are kept open to ensure a fair deal for passengers,’ he added.

The ‘vast majority’ of the millions of rail passengers who travel each day were getting the right ticket for their journey, a spokesman for the Association of Train Operating Companies said.

‘We are continuing to work closely with the industry and Passenger Focus to ensure we make it as easy as possible for passengers to find the right ticket at the right price,’ he added.

A Skoda, Football Fans and a Shed

Two shifts for the price of one this week (Oh how I love overtime).

Friday

Pretty much an uneventful shift for once.  Once again working platforms 4-7 so should have been busy but, due to delays elsewhere, many of the trains we should have had were swapped to different parts of the station.  My Railway Enthusiast side reared it’s head as I made a quick dash over to platform 12 to help barrier the Mk3 “Pretendolino” set powered by Freightliner’s 90048 (Thank God for camera phones).

Freightliner Class 90 Locomotive 90048 on the Pretendolino Set

Saturday

Problems on my inbound journey saw me arrive at work with 10 minutes to spare (2 Hours to do a 45 minute journey, thanks London Underground).

After signing on and checking the plan for the evening, I realised that I would be “controlling” the team and it was my responsibility to make sure that we checked as many trains on our assigned platforms as possible.  A quick check of our daily orders showed that we would be fairly busy, which can be a blessing or a curse.

First half of the shift passed without incident and after a quick bite to eat it was back to the coal face for the second half.  News reached us that we were expecting between 400 and 1000 England fans returning from Wembley, luckily this is where planning came in and we heralded the arrival of extra staff from Birmingham and Manchester to make up the staff shortage we were suffering.

After the first train of our second half, the rail enthusiast in me kicked in again as we had a visitor.

EWS Class 66 Diesel 66183 after arrival at Euston

EWS Class 66 Diesel 66183 arrived on platform 16 with the return leg of UK Railtours Midland and Great Central No.2 Railtour. Cue me crossing the bottom of the platforms with my phone in hand to get a couple of shots before it vanished to Wembley Depot (this job does have its benefits).

A welcome break from the norm but it was back to work as the first fans arrived for their trains home.

A couple of trains passed until the first issue of the evening an old favourite of mine, adults travelling on child tickets.  After the usual questioning the “children” bought adult tickets and continued on their way with a flea in their ear about not doing it again.  The first batch of England fans came and went unusually happy after what was a poor showing by the team, some even offering to share their beverages with us(No dry trains tonight),an offer that we cannot accept.

In this job, you get used to dealing with the same problems on every shift with the most frequent being people on Advance tickets that have missed their booked train.  Tonight would be no different except for one passenger who tried to board an Anglo Scottish service 2 DAYS early!! A quick bit of friendly discussion about her options and she decided to buy a new ticket so I passed her on to the Train Manager rather than making her go back to the booking office and thus missing the train.

Football fans and trains passed and it finally became time for the last train of our shift and also the day.  Normally this is not a problem but the powers that be decided to board a semi-fast local service in the adjacent platform.  Cue revenue officers trying to differentiate between our passengers and those for the local and you can picture the chaos.  Luckily we managed to gain control and checked the vast majority of passengers right up to departure when a gentleman approached me with a ticket for a train that didn’t exist….

The gentleman asked me where his train was departing from and upon checking his ticket found out that he was travelling from Bournemouth to Wolverhampton routed via Reading on a CrossCountry Trains ticket.  Unfortunately we had no-one able to sell a ticket for him to continue his journey so he had to return to the booking office, all the time pleading with us to let him travel.

My only question with this passenger is, how did he get to us in the first place?  The routing of his ticket should have taken him from Bournemouth to Southampton and then via CrossCountry through Reading to Birmingham and change there for Wolverhampton.  For this passenger to be in front of us he would have had to miss Southampton, continue on to London, cross London and walk up to us, all the time with a ticket that should have been checked on the train from Bournemouth and also rejected at the ticket barriers on both National Rail and London Underground.

Luckily there were still services via another operator to Birmingham so I hope the gentleman managed to complete his journey with no further problems.  Anyway, for me that was the end of the shift and the commencement of a 1.5 hour journey home, thanks again London Underground.

The McNulty Report – Good News or Bad News?

The long-awaited McNulty value for money study of the rail industry has in my opinion fundamentally failed to put passengers’ needs at its centre.

Although the headlines for rail users appear to be fairness and tackling the complex fare structure, there are a lot of caveats buried in the detail of the report which could lead to a lower-quality, more expensive railway for passengers.

There is some good news, such as proposals for three-day season tickets that will provide benefits for part-time workers and also greater local control of the railways. The overall theme of the report is towards cutting the government’s subsidy and granting more flexibility to Train Operating Companies, while passengers’ needs – and a wider understanding of the social and environmental benefits of the railway are at serious risk of being sidelined.

Transport Minister Philip Hammond maintains that passengers will benefit eventually. But in reality, these rewards will happen beyond the life of the current government, and only if the rail industry as a whole rises to the challenge.  Meanwhile rail users are struggling with fare increases that far outstrip pay rises within the rail industry.

Media coverage seems to have focused on what will happen to off-peak fares.  Current fares are resulting in serious overcrowding just at the end of the rush hour period, when, unsurprisingly, regular rail users will wait to travel on a more affordable ticket. The McNulty report is proposing to change the current structure around the peak/off fares to make services less crowded by adjusting times and fares according to areas of heavy usage.  There are also fears being voiced that off-peak fares will be eroded by Train Operating Companies looking to make the most revenue from their services to cut subsidies from the Government.

Essentially, the majority of proposals regarding ticket prices boil down to avoiding costs associated with providing extra capacity, rather than making the option of rail more attractive to potential and existing users. There are also suggestions within the report that ticket prices could increase in areas where rail competes with other transport modes, which can only been seen as a backward step in encouraging more people to use rail as a greener mode of transport.

The other obvious concerns of the report include possible reduction of services on regional lines, the potential for frontline staff cuts meaning more unstaffed stations and the proposals to provide larger car parks which could create larger traffic problems around stations and risk turning passengers away, rather than encouraging more passengers and thus increasing revenue.people away from the train rather than increasing revenue.

Overall, the report leaves unanswered questions.  Namely, what are the railways for? Is the railway a public service, run for the benefit of passengers, Or are we moving towards a more commercial railway that suits the convenience of Train Operating Companies?

There is some good news as a result of the report.  Transport Minister Philip Hammond has committed to a fundamental review of fare structure. This needs to be structured to provide an easy to understand system that removes a lot of complex fares and is also fair to both commuters and occasional travellers alike.  The current fare structure is complicated to the point that even railway staff members cannot understand it and therefore cannot advise passengers properly.  The other opportunity of the fares review is that it gives the Government  a chance to ensure that the views, needs and importance of passengers are heard loud and clear.

To view Sir Roy McNulty’s report in full, you can download a copy from the DfT website.

Tales of the Unexpected (A quiet night at work)

Now that the weekend is over, I can finally tell you about my latest shift at work.

I arrived for work 45 minutes early, walking across the station concourse wondering where all the passengers were.  When I say that the station was quiet, I mean it was QUIET!!  Hardly anybody waiting for trains and none of the usual hustle, bustle and noise of a Friday afternoon.

After signing in, I picked up a copy of our daily orders (which show what trains will be coming into each platform) and  also checked our duty roster to find that I was rostered on platforms 1-3.  This was good news as platforms 1-3 are the busiest on the station and handle a departure every 20 minutes.

I wandered down to the platforms to meet up with the other staff I would be working with and we discussed a plan of attack for the night.  We try to check as many trains as possible but late platform alterations & set swaps can easily bugger up a plan and so it was to be today.

After checking our first train (lightly loaded and NO problems) we were informed that the set in Platform 1 had a defective door and that it would not be moving for a long while.  This meant that we were a platform AND a train down right at the start of our shift and that, if the situation continued this way, we would be in deep shit trouble later on.

Fast forward 5 trains (and a 10 minute fag break thanks to a platform alteration) without problems apart from the usual Advance ticket holders trying to get earlier trains to my first chance to assist a passenger.  Lady approaches me, hands over her ticket and I immediately see that it is routed via a different station and is therefore not valid.  I explained to the passenger what was wrong and that, if she wanted to travel from our station, she would have to go to the ticket office and get her ticket changed (Cue RPO waiting for the usual torrent of abuse).

To my amazement, the passenger apologised for her mistake, and promptly went to the ticket office, returning 20 minutes later to catch her train and thanking me for my help in the process (Why can’t all passengers be like this?).  Almost immediately a male passenger ran down the ramp to be told that he couldn’t board the train as the doors were being closed ready for departure.  Again, I waited for the usual torrent of abuse but all he did was call me a wanker rude name and walked off.

Now the fun was due to start.  The last off-peak service had departed and we prepared ourselves for the usual onslaught of people trying to blag their way onto trains with the wrong type of tickets.  With the exception of about 20 passengers trying to board with off-peak tickets or advances for later times, EVERYONE else had the right tickets for their trains (Some sort of record, surely) and there was absolutely no anger or profanity offered (OK, what’s going on?).

After our meal break, we got ourselves prepared for the second (busiest) half of our shift.  This is the part where we get the commuters and day trippers returning home, as well as people going away for the weekend.  Again, with the exception of a few arseholes passengers deliberately trying to deceive us into letting them travel earlier than their ticket allows, every train left on time with no major problems.

Come the end of the shift, it honestly felt like I had done very little (Is he mad I hear you cry) but I am one of those people who likes dealing with problems as it makes me use my brain (plus the fact I actually enjoy helping people).  So, off back home, only to be faced by signal and points failures on the Underground which meant my normal 45 minute journey home took an hour and a half (So much for investment TfL).

Oh well, only another few days till I’m back doing it all over again, although I doubt I will have another shift like this one for a while.

Overhaul of rail fares to simplify ticketing announced

A long overdue move to simplify the maze of fares faced by rail travellers will be announced tomorrow.

The government aims to save £1bn a year by the end of the decade in the biggest revolution of the network since the railways were nationalised.

Train Operating Companies will shoulder two-thirds of the proposed cuts and Network Rail the remaining third. However, the grim reality for passengers is more years of inflation-busting ticket price rises.

Greater emphasis will be placed on simple, flexible ‘airline-style’ ticketing, where passengers pay more when a train is full and less when it is empty.

The changes will follow the ‘value for money’ report of government trouble-shooter Sir Roy McNulty, who will present his report tomorrow.

Sir Roy is expected to heavily criticise escalating costs and partly blame trade unions’ demands.

His verdict could lead Transport Secretary Phillip Hammond into battle with RMT union boss Bob Crow. Mr Hammond will point to studies showing it costs 40% more to operate the UK rail network than systems in Germany, Holland and France.

There is also a likelihood that travel perks enjoyed by up to 500,000 former BR staff and their families will be targeted.

The Government is already committed to annual fare rises of Retail Price Index inflation plus 3% for the next three years. In response, Mr Hammond will announce the setting up of a ‘fares review’.

East Midlands Trains to run special charity train

In order to raise money for the Railway Children’s Charity and to support one of the preserved railways on its network, East Midlands Trains will be running a special High Speed Train service from St Pancras International to Dereham in Norfolk on Saturday 14 May.

Tickets, which are priced at just £47.50 return, are still available at through the UK Railtours website.  The train will depart from St Pancras at 07.42 and will call at Luton Airport Parkway, Kettering and Leicester.  It will then run via Peterborough through to Wymondham, where it will proceed down the Mid Norfolk Railway line through Wymondham Abbey and Thuxton to Dereham.

This is the first time that a High Speed Train has ever visited Dereham and it will be a unique, one-off experience for passengers.  There will be an opportunity to spend more than two hours in the pleasant Norfolk market town of Dereham before the train makes its return journey via Norwich.

David Horne, Customer Service Director for East Midlands Trains said:  “A number of our employees at Norwich are involved in the Mid Norfolk Railway, the preserved railway which runs to Dereham via a link at Wymondham on our Nottingham to Norwich route.

“Running a special HST from St Pancras to Norfolk seemed a great opportunity to support our staff and raise money for such a valuable cause at the same time.  Tickets have been selling fast, and we’ve already raised over £16,000 for The Railway Children, but there’s still plenty of tickets available and we’re keen to make sure we can raise as much as possible.

“It really will be a unique and special opportunity for passengers and we want to make sure people don’t miss out on this one-off trip!”

Katie Mason, Events Manager for the Railway Children, said: “We’re very excited to have this special train run in our honour. All the money raised will benefit vulnerable children living alone on the streets and will help us to provide the care, support and services they desperately need.”

East Midlands Trains will be donating all proceeds from the ticket sales to The Railway Children’s Charity.  A total of 19 East Midlands Trains’ employees will be helping out on the day in various roles and all of these employees will either be donating their days’ wages to the charity, or donating their time at no cost.

To further support the work of the Mid Norfolk Railway, once at Wymondham, the HST will become part of the special ‘Drags and Rescues’ weekend, with preserved diesel locomotives dragging the train through to Dereham and back to Wymondham.  This is the first time an HST has been ‘dragged’ by a Class 50 train since the early 1990’s and will mark a significant event for many rail enthusiasts.

Welcome one and all…

Please have all tickets and railcards ready for inspection…

 

Welcome to All Tickets Please.  This blog is my attempt to write about life working on the railways.  I currently work as a Revenue Protection Officer for a major Intercity operator.  My job leads me to deal with many interesting situations and I look forward to sharing some here.

As an aside to the main part of this blog, I will also be posting interesting news articles regarding UK railways as well as sharing my interests in both N Gauge Railway Modelling and Railway Photography.

Please feel free to comment on posts that appear on this blog as I always enjoy a bit of a chinwag or just a bit of banter swapping.

 

TheRPO (April 2011)