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RAIL TICKET RANT

The article in the picture is worrying. Sometimes, when going from A to C, it is cheaper to buy two tickets - one from A to B, and another from B to C, where B is an intermediate calling point. For example, Didcot Parkway is useful for this when travelling from London to Bath. It's basically as if you get out at B - formally finishing one journey, and then get back on again and s...tart a second journey.

I was told on a particular journey that my tickets were all good and valid, but that I shouldn't really be doing this. I now realise that that is rather unfair. I've simply shopped around for the cheapest tickets that legally cover my journey. I'm making sure that my train DOES stop at the intermediate calling point, and therefore my tickets cover my complete journey. So I have a clear conscience, and therefore am mystified as to why I "shouldn't be doing this". People shop around for the cheapest deal all the time - how are they morally deficient?

I'm told that splitting tickets isn't really in the spirit of the rules. However, if we want to go by the "spirit of the rules", then why are advance ticket passengers penalised for travelling short - ie. ending their journey at an earlier station? Surely that's within the spirit of the rules. Yet the train companies seem to press to the last letter of the law. So I don't think that it's morally wrong for me to press to the last technicality when I seek to split my ticket. Train companies cannot have it both ways.

Youd think that longer journies should cost relatively less... the reasons for this happening is the fundamentally flawed ticket pricing offered by the rail companies. They want to stop us taking advantage of it, when in reality, they want to take advantage of us.

This all revolves around the concept that often longer journeys are priced by a different TOC to that of the shorter journeys. Even when same TOC one part is usually priced using a local service cost, the other an intercity cost.

Whilst I don't have details of the Taunton example, a through ticket would also allow travel via, and break of journey at, Bristol. The spit ticket example doesn't!

Additionally, in the event of delay between Taunton and Westbury then only that ticket is subject to compensatory measures whereas with a through ticket the whole ticket may end up being refunded. Imagine having to get two rail replacement bus services between Reading and Westbury and Westbury and Taunton instead of being able to use the express Reading - Taunton service.

When the rail system works, it's a great saving - when it doesn't, you are not so protected.