This reminds me of the British Rail ticketing and fares system, where people try to find cheap tickets and travel at the times they want, and the railway operators try get people to pay for the trains they use and balance the people out between trains.
As a simple example of a mole, there are quite a few train routes A-B-C-D around the UK where a ticket from A-D is cheaper than a ticket from B-C, but still valid to do the journey B-C. (For example a ticket from Mortlake to Ash is valid to do the journey from Clapham Junction to Guilford, but is cheaper than the Clapham Junction to Guilford ticket)
There are also many other moles involving strange time restrictions, strange routeings, split tickets etc.
Recently, National Rail tried to fix the moles involving strange routeings by changing the rules about whether a route is valid to be based on computer generated itineraries rather than the 2000 page long routeing guide as an attempt at a refactor, but this has lead to more moles that I am aware of.
To me the main problem with respect to routeing seems to stem from break of journeys being allowed, and all the implications of that. My mole in the previous post stems from this, as without allowing break of journeys you would only be able to do the journey A-D with an A-D ticket, as the railways intended. Using just contactless payments for flexible travellers in conjunction with advance tickets as the only options available would be a way to solve this.
However with all the hardware being built around break of journeys being allowed, getting to the state I described above seems rather difficult. There are plans to introduce contactless in a few areas around the UK, but without a full refactor, those plans seem to just add more moles for people to play with.
I know nothing about the underlying price strucure, but I do know that if a journey contains a sub-jounrey, that charging less for the whole than for one of its parts cannot possibly make logical sense. I had this last year when buying a baby pushchair, buying just the chair I needed would have cost me more than a package deal that included that exact chair along with some other stuff I wasnt bothered about. I went for the package deal. The package can of course reasonably cost less than the sum of its parts, but it cant cost less than any one of its parts.
Targetting the ‘break of journey’ seems weird to me. I have never done it intentionally to get a cheaper ticket, but I have, for example been on a train into Bristol and been phoned up to say that some change of plan means its eaiser to meet me a station earlier (Parkway), so I get off one station early, rather than wasting time going in a circle. Banning break of journey would sort of be like that pushchair company continuing to have the package deal cheaper than one of the products it includes, but then sending someone around to force me to use the extra stuff included.
I am curious why it is a hard problem for the prices to emable people to spend less to buy more, and, if the prices do have that quirk, why its really a problem for customers to exploit it.
Often there are multiple valid ways to use a ticket, so the product you are being sold is something of the form “choose one of Pushchair Bundle, Powerbank, or Handbag” rather than just being a Pushchair Bundle. Railways need to price the tickets based on all the various available routes, and some routes end up containing parts that travel a longer/more valuable distance then the other routes, making it difficult to give fares that make logical sense with your definition. The rail industry sometimes has ways to fix this for specific journeys, but given the over 6 million origin destination pairs, this is not a winnable game of whack a mole.
Removing break of journeys turns the products the railways are selling from a choice of bundles into a single unified thing, making it much easier for the railway companies to deal with.
This reminds me of the British Rail ticketing and fares system, where people try to find cheap tickets and travel at the times they want, and the railway operators try get people to pay for the trains they use and balance the people out between trains.
As a simple example of a mole, there are quite a few train routes A-B-C-D around the UK where a ticket from A-D is cheaper than a ticket from B-C, but still valid to do the journey B-C. (For example a ticket from Mortlake to Ash is valid to do the journey from Clapham Junction to Guilford, but is cheaper than the Clapham Junction to Guilford ticket)
There are also many other moles involving strange time restrictions, strange routeings, split tickets etc.
Recently, National Rail tried to fix the moles involving strange routeings by changing the rules about whether a route is valid to be based on computer generated itineraries rather than the 2000 page long routeing guide as an attempt at a refactor, but this has lead to more moles that I am aware of.
I’m curious: Do you have a strategy in mind to fix the underlying issue?
To me the main problem with respect to routeing seems to stem from break of journeys being allowed, and all the implications of that. My mole in the previous post stems from this, as without allowing break of journeys you would only be able to do the journey A-D with an A-D ticket, as the railways intended. Using just contactless payments for flexible travellers in conjunction with advance tickets as the only options available would be a way to solve this.
However with all the hardware being built around break of journeys being allowed, getting to the state I described above seems rather difficult. There are plans to introduce contactless in a few areas around the UK, but without a full refactor, those plans seem to just add more moles for people to play with.
I know nothing about the underlying price strucure, but I do know that if a journey contains a sub-jounrey, that charging less for the whole than for one of its parts cannot possibly make logical sense. I had this last year when buying a baby pushchair, buying just the chair I needed would have cost me more than a package deal that included that exact chair along with some other stuff I wasnt bothered about. I went for the package deal. The package can of course reasonably cost less than the sum of its parts, but it cant cost less than any one of its parts.
Targetting the ‘break of journey’ seems weird to me. I have never done it intentionally to get a cheaper ticket, but I have, for example been on a train into Bristol and been phoned up to say that some change of plan means its eaiser to meet me a station earlier (Parkway), so I get off one station early, rather than wasting time going in a circle. Banning break of journey would sort of be like that pushchair company continuing to have the package deal cheaper than one of the products it includes, but then sending someone around to force me to use the extra stuff included.
I am curious why it is a hard problem for the prices to emable people to spend less to buy more, and, if the prices do have that quirk, why its really a problem for customers to exploit it.
Often there are multiple valid ways to use a ticket, so the product you are being sold is something of the form “choose one of Pushchair Bundle, Powerbank, or Handbag” rather than just being a Pushchair Bundle. Railways need to price the tickets based on all the various available routes, and some routes end up containing parts that travel a longer/more valuable distance then the other routes, making it difficult to give fares that make logical sense with your definition. The rail industry sometimes has ways to fix this for specific journeys, but given the over 6 million origin destination pairs, this is not a winnable game of whack a mole.
Removing break of journeys turns the products the railways are selling from a choice of bundles into a single unified thing, making it much easier for the railway companies to deal with.