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The West Coast Main Line is easily at capacity. There are upper limits (as dictated by the government) on maximum fares, but we can still expect fares to decrea
by johnday 7y ago
The West Coast Main Line is easily at capacity. There are upper limits (as dictated by the government) on maximum fares, but we can still expect fares to decrease at peak times if there is open space on trains. Likewise with off-peak; empty carriages don't pay the bills, and if they're running twice as many trains then either (a) twice as many people will travel, or (b) fares will decrease until they start filling up.
The problem at the moment in off-peak times is that they dare not reduce the price because there are trains that run during the day which fill up, and there's no good way of differentiating fares between the ones which do and the ones which don't.
- sweeneyrod 7y ago> The problem at the moment in off-peak times is that they dare not reduce the price because there are trains that run during the day which fill up, and there's no good way of differentiating fares between the ones which do and the ones which don't. Isn't there? Travelling from Leeds to London at 7-9am Monday costs several times as much as at 2pm Sunday, and I assume that's because the operators can differentiate which journeys are popular (and furthermore which ones carry large numbers of business people who can afford/expense higher fares).
- johnday 7y agoCurrently the process is that tickets are sold in tiers - the closer to sold out, the closer to maximum price. The only control over maximum price is whether it's peak or off peak hours. So there are actually two confounding factors