Split ticketing can save you money – sometimes a very large amount of money. If you have saved a large sum, I would like to know about it too see if it can beat the £150 saved on a journey from Durham to Abergavenny. This involved splitting the journey into four parts, with a separate ticket for each part. The train had to stop where you change from one ticket to another, which is the critical rule for split ticketing.
But what does this matter?
There are 23 separate train companies, more or less, in the UK – depending on how you count them. They run on different routes, sometimes on their own and sometimes on routes also served by other operators. Train companies or operators are often called TOCs, standing for train operating companies. These continue even though the franchising system has broken down during the COVID 19 crisis. The routes can be straight or criss-cross over one another, and for every flow (a journey from one station to another) the fares are set by one of the TOCs, and the revenue from that flow is shared out between the relevant TOCs depending on how many trains they run on the route, the number of seats provided and the speed of the journey, with the money usually going to the operator of the fastest train on the grounds that most passengers will choose a fast train over a slow one. These are pre-arranged percentages but that is a matter for the TOCs and does not concern the average passenger.
Imagine a simple railway between A and B
There are two operators on our imaginary simple railway. FASTtrain runs non-stop with new trains between A and B. SLOWtrain also runs between A and B using older trains which also stop at C, midway between A and B. (It does not matter if C is on the mainline and FASTtrain runs straight through, or if C is on a slower diversionary route which means SLOWtrain covers more miles between A and B. Let’s further imagine there are four types of single ticket on our imaginary railway:
1) Tickets valid on FASTtrain and SLOWtrain between A and B (which might call at C), £10
2) Slightly cheaper tickets valid on FASTtrain only between A and B, non-stop, £9
3) Cheaper still tickets between A and C, only available on SLOWtrain, £3.50
4) Tickets between B and C, only available on SLOWtrain, £4.50
We have made a simple example. In the real world there may be day returns, period returns, season tickets, child fares, maybe advance purchase bargains and railcards. SLOWtrain gets all the money for the £3.50 and £4.50 tickets. FASTtrain gets all the revenue for the £9 tickets, and the two of them get a share of the £10 tickets, the majority going to FASTtrain, say £7.
That’s why FASTtrain likes to sell £9 tickets instead of £10 ones because £9 is better than £7. But if you buy a £3.50 ticket and a £4.50 ticket via C and travel on the FASTtrain which does not call at C, the revenue goes to SLOWtrain whilst you have been riding on FASTtrain. Who don’t like that at all and will probably charge you £9 for riding on their train. Which is why you have to stop at the station where you switch from one ticket to another!
You don’t have to understand the workings of the system to save money. For train times and prices, look no further than nationalrail.com
