Apathy Sketchpad

For those of you outside the UK, here is how train prices in this country are calculated:

A day return costs a certain amount, depending on how far you want to travel, and whimsy. (Some trains are ridiculously cheap for no stated reason.) This ticket will allow you to go to a station and return that same day. A return valid for longer costs more, because if you pre-book it gives them more time to, er, do whatever it is they do. If you make the same journey using seperate tickets to go there and back, this will cost more again, except on some journeys, where it is by far the cheapest option, for no apparent reason. If I go from Leeds to Manchester and back that costs £16. If I go from Dewsbury to Manchester and back, and then excess it to Leeds that costs me £15.90. I’m not sure if this means that I can save 10p by setting off a station further down the line or if it means that I can save 10p simply by buying the wrong ticket and changing it into the correct one. Either way it’s ludicrous.

And return tickets only work on two-way travel. If you want to go from A to B and back then they’re great (except when it’s cheaper to get two singles) but if you want to go from A to B, then on to C and from there back to A then you’re screwed. There’s a good chance it’s cheaper to come home via B.

Also, you can buy a “railcard”, which makes all tickets cheaper, except before 9:30 in the morning, presumably because trains are more expensive to run early in the morning. Another way to get cheaper tickets is to buy them further in advance.

If you want to upgrade to first class, this costs £10, regardless of the length of the journey or whether first class will be any different in that train, except on some journeys, where it costs 5p. These journeys are chosen essentially at random.

And half the time they never check your tickets anyway. And when they do check your tickets there’s really no way for them to stop you staying on the train long past the stated destination. I could have saved loads of money by now by cunningly choosing not to pay.

I mean, why? What purpose does any of this serve? It’s not cheaper for the train companies to move me around if I bought my ticket the week before. It’s not cheaper for them to move me around in the afternoon. It’s not cheaper for them to move me around twice on the same day than twice on two different days. It’s certainly not cheaper for them to take be home via B. If they want people to use their service (which I assume they do) then they should make it so that the average commuter understands how to do so. If the government allows these morons to run the public transport network and price it in such a needlessly convoluted way then they really ahve no business telling people off for driving everywhere. Petrol prices might be extortionate, but at least people understand them. You don’t have certain roads that randomly need less petrol to drive along than others, or petrol that only lasts a certain amount of time before it vanishes, used or not.

It seems to me that there could just be one price for each possible leg. You’d pay, say, £5 to get from Leeds to Huddersfield, another £5 to get from Huddersfield to Stalybridge, and another £5 to get from there to Manchester. Leeds to Manchester would then be £15. If you got on a train that made additional stops it might be different, I suppose, but you’d only need to have a website to change that. You could work out all other prices from there. Railcards would be valid at any time and take a flat 10% off the bill. First class would cost an extra 15% or whatever, and travelling at peak time would cost an extra 15% or whatever. It would be easy then. Just pick a journey. You could tot it up in your head if need be. Somebody explain how that system would be worse than the current one, because I for one can’t see it.