Britain's notoriously complicated and often high-priced rail fares are in for a government-mandated shake-up that should make fares easier to understand and in many cases cheaper.
The plan, announced Tuesday by the Department for Transport, will basically end a system in which one-way tickets are often nearly as expensive as a round-trip, and where it often saves money to buy a ticket to an intermediate station and then another to the final destination.
Under the new plan, one-way fares will be exactly half the round-trip cost, eliminating a system that sometimes made one-way travel by train more expensive than going by car or even discount flight.
The system has been tried out for the past two years on LNER (London North Eastern Railway) routes between London, Leeds and Edinburgh and has been quite popular. As the plan comes into effect—no fixed date yet—there will be only three types of tickets:
- Anytime singles, which can be used on any train and are generally expensive
- Off-peak singles, which is what this measure is largely about
- Advance singles, which as always are for specific trains and sold more cheaply than off-peak tickets
Comments (1)