Why am I so stupid? Train fares again

[jack]

It seems the fares the journey planner website displays are limited by the other journeys listed in the same query. As far as I can tell, return-off-peak and day-return-off-peak are valid on slightly different times of day, but there's no way to ask (either an English language terms-and-conditions, or a lookup query) which trains a certain ticket is valid on, the only option is to try those routes and see if a ticket with the same name is available or not.

I know I shouldn't be surprised any more, but I always feel so incredibly wool-headed when someone is yelling at me that I urgently need "foo" but they refuse to tell me anything about what foo is or what it costs.

Comments

[jack]

As far as I can tell, if you are forced to travel from Cambridge to London without knowing for sure what time you will return, you can buy:

- £40, two single tickets, valid anytime
- off-peak return, £30, valid outside 17:30 to 18:30
- off-peak day return, £20, valid outside 16:30 to 18:30

I think? Obviously they can't simply TELL you what times are valid, even just for London.

So, if you're sure you're going to travel IN 16:30 to 17:30 you should buy an off-peak return, and if you're sure you're NOT going to travel in 16:30 to 17:30 you should buy a day return (£20) and buy another single if you have to travel 17:30 to 18:30. But if you don't know, you have to gamble.

[seryn]

I think I'd buy the off-peak return and take myself for a drink or dinner or shopping for whatever with the spare 20 if I ended up in the peak timeslot.

[emperor]

You should be able to get an open return, as well. uk.railway would know in great detail, of course ;-)

[naath]

A non-day return is valid for returning tomorrow, or next week (I forget how long they are valid for). A "day return" of any kind is valid only *today*. There are non-off-peak return tickets ("Anytime" apparently); you should almost never need two singles.

If you don't know what time you will be finishing in London but need to get back at the latest on the 1815 then you should buy a peak ticket; if you could stand to wait for the 1845 buy the off-peak and wait. The peak trains are crowded anyway - also they (approximately) are no-bikes, so if you are travelling with a (non-folding) bike you probably don't want a peak time ticket.

If you go and ask at the ticket desk at the station you will get a plain English response to queries such as "what ticket do I need if I know I'm coming back at 1800" and "what about if I wait until 1900" and "is there a not-via-London ticket for this route?" and "do I need to book my bicycle for some/all/none of this trip" and similar things which apparently they find too hard to put online in easy-to-understand form.

[liv]

Bah, it's not you that's stupid, it's that train fares are a confusocracy in a big way. There's tension between the government putting pressure on them to have affordable fares, and their shareholders putting pressure on them to make as much money as possible. So they reconcile the two by having affordable fares, but you need to know the sekrit magic formula to be able to find them, whereas most normal fares that are convenient for people to buy are horribly expensive.

Searchable electronic databases for booking train tickets are great, but I really hate the way that it's not possible to see all the options side-by-side and make a decision based on all the information. OK, I'm glad that I don't have to trek to the train station during a two-hour window in the middle of the working day to be able to plan a journey, but I really want the complete information available in a human-readable form! But I suspect that not providing even a full timetable (rather than a "search for trains in this 4 hour slot") is part of a deliberate strategy to make it near-impossible to actually buy the cheap tickets.

[blue_mai]

It's my understanding (based on a fair amount of checking and travelling CBG <-> LKX/LST at varying times of the day) that these are your options:

If you're going before 9 and not coming back, get an Anytime Single £19.10

If you're making a daytrip and are going before 9 AND/OR want to be able to come back between 4 and 7pm, get an Anytime Day Return £32.50

If you're going after 9 and can wait until after 7 to come back, get an Off-peak Day Return £20

If you're coming back tomorrow or any other time in the next month, the Peak Return is £37, an Off-peak Return is £28.90.

If you can wait until after 10am to head to London, and making more than 4 journeys in the next year, it might be worth getting a Network Railcard.

I find the Check Fares option in National Rail journey planner quite useful, it automatically shows the cheapest fare, but lets you see what the other options are. It doesn't give you information about what the rules are, but it shows you what time trains the prices change.

[jack]

Thank you everyone!

[verazea]

Have a look at http://tickets.londonmidland.com/lm/en/JourneyPlanning/MixingDeck

Is fairly useful, in terms of working out ticket options, times and routes. If you don't enter specific times you can look at the times various tickets are valid for, and in the case of advanced singles what price each available train is. It also allows you to choose other routes, through an option on the left hand sidebar. I think this mostly does what you want?

It's not perfect, however as for some cheap routes you need to get the start and end station right. In the case of a city with many stations like London, some of the possible routes may not go to the station you expect so you might need to experiment. But then I am someone who will take the route with 3 changes that takes twice as long just because I can :)

If there's a better interface for playing with train routes and fares, someone please point me at it!

[verazea]

Something I forgot to mention is that if you want to go earlier or later than is shown, you can scroll up and down the list of trains and it will load earlier or later trains. This wasn't immediately obvious (to me) if the box with trains isn't full - if it only shows 3 trains but you want to see if there's an earlier one, scroll up and it will try to find earlier ones valid for your selected fare.