18.12.15
Our not so golden tickets
This probably comes as no surprise, but it’s been revealed that 69% of all train users either partly or entirely fail to understand the different types of tickets available to them.
A recent study by the Department for Transport, published today but conducted in February, found that only 31% of train users actually understand what they’re buying or what options are out there.
With non-users – those who haven’t caught a train in the last 12 months – this dropped to just 11% fully understanding tickets. No wonder most of them stay away from railways because they find it easier to use a car.
And you can hardly blame passengers for this. In my many experiences buying train tickets, it’s fairly difficult to assess and fully understand all the possibilities available and which ones actually represent good deals.
Advance tickets and railcard don’t inherently make travel cheaper, for example, despite sounding like they would. The cheapest tickets aren’t always available several weeks before the journey, when advance tickets are released – especially not during periods of high demand.
Several tickets have time or fare restrictions, some are cheaper if bought to stations slightly further away from your destination, and many are muddled with incomprehensible discounts.
Of course, retailers have been compelled to provide clear and unambiguous ticketing information to passengers since March of this year, when the rail regulator launched a new code of practice to overhaul the often complicated experience of travelling (although not operators seem to have taken this on board). But nowadays about 42% of passengers shop online or through a mobile app instead.
Thankfully for passengers, myself included, smart ticketing systems are slowly starting to spread – with, for example, the West Midlands introducing a flexible mobile ticketing scheme in September, Govia Thameslink rolling out a streamlined system in October, Tyne and Wear bringing smartcards to the north east in November.