“However, it is important to preserve a walk-up railway. Great frequencies should be matched by the ability to pretty much turn up and go.”
Mark Smith would go for all one-way, Anytime, Off-Peak and Advance, and sees no reason to change the terminology: “This enables open jaw and circular journeys without the current penalty. It also mirrors the pricing structure of the main competitor, car, and for that matter, air. A one-way structure is far, far easier to present and sell online and on ticket machines.”
He points to a need to stop the choice of fare on the return influencing the choice of outward train.
“You find an outward advance fare at 1800, but there are no advance fares left and you’re not sure when you’re coming back, so you choose an off-peak fare. You’re now paying only £1 less for the return than an off-peak return, so you may as well pay an extra £1 for an off-peak return, but then you can’t use the 1800.
“The choice of fare has changed your travel time, and you wonder why the 1800 goes out with empty seats and the next train is packed. It’s better to mix and match, so the new system needs to display them separately and allow a clear decision.”
Railcards have generally been considered ‘a good thing’. But Mark Smith questions the principle of a general railcard that gives a discount to regular users and denies a discount to the one-off user, when commercially one should do opposite.
“Why not just lower fares? In Germany and Austria, children under 16 travel free with an adult and the best fare is always shown upfront, like the airlines. Although a Family railcard can be paid for in one trip, a sale can be lost unless someone is aware of Family card.”
Creating the new structure is going to require specialised IT expertise, coupled with experience of fares and pricing. Three years ago, BR Fares Ltd warned that privatisation had led to a loss of corporate memory through the dispersal of this experience and knowledge, so the formation of a competent team to devise and manage change is essential.
CONTINENTAL PRICES AND INITIATIVES
On the continent, there are two distinct pricing approaches. The French, Italians and Spanish price the train with compulsory seat reservation on inter-city trains, and fares are added so that a journey by TGV + TGV + regional train will be the sum of those trains. Changing trains often leads to a higher cost than a direct train.
The German, Swiss, Austrian, Benelux and British way is to price the journey, and not the train.
Mark Smith explains: “Paris-Munich starts at 39.90 euros [£34.50] on both systems using the once-daily direct train. On departures with a change at Stuttgart, the Germans can still sell a ticket at 39.90 euros, while the French sell you a ticket for the Paris-Stuttgart train (which also starts at 39.90 euros) plus a separate ticket for the onward train at extra cost. The French can’t access German fares, so they sell you a TGV ticket at about 50 euros for Stuttgart-Munich.
“This raises the question: should long-distance train reservation be obligatory?
At the moment, UK fares regulation preserves walk-on travel. Some say a compulsory seat reservation system gives everyone a seat, but it doesn’t. If 310 people want to travel on a train with only 300 seats, ten people get left behind.
The British system gives the certainty that you can get home, but then you risk complaints about overcrowding. And the operator can sell only a proportion of the train, to leave some capacity for those who turn up on the day.”
Anthony Smith sees the affordable walk-up railway as one of its key selling points, so argues strongly against a reservation-only system.
Post-pandemic, the greatest single challenge for railways across the world is increasing revenue, so it is instructive to look at what continental railways and governments are doing to increase ticket revenue and address wider societal challenges.
In Germany, a ‘9 for 90’ ticket was created for the three months from June to the end of August, allowing unlimited travel on buses, trams, U-Bahn and regional trains (only a few IC trains are permitted) across the whole country for 9 euros per month, budgeted at 2.5bn euros (£2.16bn).
Launched on June 1, the ticket racked up 6.5 million sales in the first week and 31 million by the end of the month. This had the effect of increasing demand, and 250 additional daily trains were introduced to meet that demand - a small increase to the 22,000 daily regional train journeys.
In June, journeys were 42% higher than in June 2019 (pre-pandemic), and one in five purchasers were not previously regular users of public transport. Road traffic congestion was down in 23 of the 26 cities studied, with congestion in Hamburg down by 20%.
However, the German government simultaneously spent 7.6bn euros (£6.6bn) reducing motoring fuel taxes - a counter-productive measure on several fronts and undermining DB’s ‘Strong Rail’ targets to reduce car trips by five million and domestic flights by 14,000 each day.
Some politicians called for the ‘9 for 90’ ticket to be extended until the end of the year, to be followed by a 365 euros (£315) annual public transport pass in 2023. Although this has been ruled out, the initiative has fuelled the debate over using fares to encourage sustainable travel choices.
Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing said: “Many states didn’t want the ticket at all and now they don’t want to get rid of it.”
