ChEMBL

The way that train journey tickets are priced in the United Kingdom is non-rational. There appears to be relatively little correlation between journey length and price paid for a ticket, and it is quite galling to sit on a train and happen to catch sight of someone’s equivalent ticket for yours and see they have paid a lot less for the same seat on the same train. When I go into McDonald's for a petit salad, or Starbuck's for an Orange Mocha Frappuccino, I am secure in knowing that other customers in the same store will pay the same as me for the same product and service - all is right with the world; when it comes to trains (and planes) as a consumer, I am always left with the impression that I haven't necessarily got the best deal. The basic reason for this (for trains) is that for some time now, train tickets have been ‘market priced’ (sic), which effectively means that the companies can charge what they like for a particular journey, albeit that there is some statutory regulation on price increases.

I travel to work by train every day, and my ticket is (or used to be) 16.00 GBP per day. I think this is quite a lot of money (equivalent to a whole weeks worth of lunches at the excellent campus canteen, or two typical contemporary Compact Discs by popular recording artists, etc.).

Anyway, here is the money saving tip - try ‘ticket splitting’. Using this simple approach I saved 1.80 GBP per day (so an incredible 12% saving), for the same seat on the same train at the same time. The basic idea is that you investigate the prices for a ticket that splits your journey at an intermediate station. You then buy these two tickets in place of one. For ca. 80% of the split ticket journeys for my normal train there was a cost saving, (for 20% the journey was more expensive). A general heuristic would seem to be to look for splits either side of ‘popular’ stations - but even a brute force approach is not that difficult for typical journeys.

It is actually quite difficult to find out from official sources and customer agents what the lowest price ticket(s) for your journey are, as expected they are all motivated to encourage you to pay the highest price you are prepared to pay. I was reliably informed it would ‘take a super-computer’ to work out the best fare (really?, especially when some physical possibility heuristics are applied). Being the sort of person I am, I phoned the regulators, train operators and so forth, and basically it is down to you to do the investigative work. So when you see the words ‘cheapest fare’ on a website, there may be something cheaper still!

There are some important restrictions (primarily that the train you are actually travelling on must stop at the ‘split’ station). Please check your terms and conditions of travel, etc., etc., ....