London North Eastern Railway has launched its new ‘Simpler Fares' scheme, which will be piloted for a number of journeys on the East Coast route.
The initiative aims to enhance customer experience by providing a simplified choice of tickets, making buying tickets much easier for the customer
The Simpler Fares scheme will be trialled for travel with LNER on routes between:
- London King's Cross and Newcastle
- London and Berwick-upon-Tweed
- London and Edinburgh
The scheme comes following the introduction of Single Leg Pricing which is now in place for the majority of London North Eastern Railway's route and brings improved flexibility for customers who can easily mix and match fares.
The Simpler Fares scheme will see fares made simpler by removing the complex array of tickets with three easier options, which will be available on the pilot routes mentioned above. This change will also mean that journeys can be priced in keeping with demand, aiming to even out peaks of demand for service throughout the day. The scheme will also see a new LNER semi-flexible ticket called the '70min Flex', introduced.
For the routes taking part in the pilot scheme, the new fare structure will see tickets available to buy today (16th January) for travel from Monday the 5th of February, 2024, as follows:
- Advance (Fixed) – offering the best value fare, this ticket can be booked in advance for a fixed journey with a guaranteed
reserved seat for travel with LNER. - '70min Flex' (Semi-Flexible) – This brand new style of ticket will provide customers with the opportunity to travel on other LNER services for up to 70 minutes before or after the originally booked journey.
- Anytime (Fully-Flexible) – this ticket can be used at any time of the day.
From the 5th of February, 2024, Off-Peak and Super Off-Peak fares will be removed for journeys in the pilot scheme. These ticket types represent only 11% of journeys made currently in the trial areas.
Customer feedback will also be an important part of the pilot for LNER as research by the Rail Delivery Group has revealed that 35% of people were put off rail travel because of complex fair options. The simplification of fares aims to provide more flexibility and fairer fares for customers and, in doing so, it is hoped that this pilot scheme could support a return to rail travel for more people.
The pilot scheme will be in place for 2 years, enabling London North Eastern Railway and its industry partners to learn more about how it can support customers with a good range of affordable fares.
David Horne, Managing Director at LNER, said:
“LNER remains at the forefront of rail reform. Simplifying fares is vital in making rail travel more attractive. Customers tell us they find fares confusing.”
“This exciting new pilot is the next step in our plans to overhaul complicated and outdated ticketing
options and we look forward to hearing feedback from our customers. We believe that making fares
simpler, smarter, and fairer, while introducing value for money and modern flexibility, will encourage
more people to choose to travel by rail, the most sustainable travel choice.”
Rail Minister, Huw Merriman, said:
“We are delivering on our commitment to reform the railways,
working with operators to provide passengers with simpler and more flexible tickets that better suit
their needs.”
Stewart Fox-Mills, Fares, Ticketing and Retail Programme Director at GBRTT said:
“It is great to see this next step in the simplification of rail fares. This pilot will move the dial towards simpler and better fares for customers. The cross-industry Fares, Ticketing and Retail Programme is bringing the railway together to coordinate introducing simpler fares packages, building on the great work LNER is delivering.”
If you don’t like the simpler fare, then it is possible to bypass it.
For example, if booking London-Newcastle, then put one of the following into the LNER website (or any other including split ticket sites)
Finsbury Park-Newcastle or Kings cross-Manors (or sort or finish at any other station that suits you that isn’t King’s Cross or Newcastle).
Hey presto, the current pricing returns (may or may not be cheaper).
It is my understanding that you potentially will need to travel the route as ticketed (i.e. travel by some means to Finsbury park first, or travel back from Manors in my example). If the ticket type includes “break of journey” then you might be able to “stop short” or “start late”, at your own risk; some ticket barriers may refuse entry if you are attempting to start at a station that isn’t the one listed on the ticket.
This is a really poor idea, that is likely to see passengers travelling off-peak paying significantly more for their tickets – and being unable to guarantee an affordable fare – if they are unable to commit to a specific train weeks in advance. Far from simplifying matters, the 70 Flex is a confusing and completely unnecessary addition to the system, which is worse in every respect than the flexible off-peak tickets it replaces. Passengers travelling from Edinburgh to London can still buy flexible off-peak tickets by buying them from Haymarket, and passengers from Newcastle can buy them from Manors. Spread the word so that LNER can see a big rise in the number of tickets sold from those stations as evidence of demand to retain flexible off-peak tickets!