Any frequent train traveller, fed up paying over-the-top prices for below standard services, will be interested in a company set up by rail enthusiasts to slash fares.
While ministers at Holyrood were boasting about their infrastructure investments and gazing into the crystal ball of the high-speed rail network HS2, it was down to four quite ordinary men to actually make a difference to people’s travelling experiences.
The train buffs are unlikely heroes. With IT backgrounds and a passion for algorithms, you probably won’t have heard of them, unless you share their obsession with timetables.
But their brainwave, called Trainsplit.com, could save passengers tens of millions of pounds by uncovering the cheapest way to travel, something the rail operators have been at pains to conceal.
Trainsplit.com provides a search engine for passengers to buy “split tickets” breaking their journey into legs. So, if you wanted to take the train from Dundee to, say, Newcastle on March 8, returning the next day, Trainsplit quotes an off-peak £58.50 fare, compared to one offered by Trainline, a conventional online ticket seller, of £72.20, travelling on the same service at the same time. At peak periods, the savings can be much bigger.
You don’t have to get off the train where you change from one ticket to another the only thing that you must check is that the train stops at every station where you split tickets. So in this case, your train would have to stop at Leuchars and Berwick-upon-Tweed en route. You would not be able to use any train that didn’t.
Splitting tickets is completely legitimate, says Trainsplit: “The train guard will understand what you’re doing (and will often compliment you on finding a cheap combination of train tickets).”
Tayside rail passengers are perhaps more accustomed than most to splitting their tickets, thanks to historic anomalies that meant Dundee was excluded from a “regulated zone” which benefited other cities, such as Edinburgh. Travellers referred to it as the “Tay tax” and at one point it was cheaper for four people to travel from Dundee to Glasgow by taxi than take the train.
The government promised to make the system fairer a year or so ago but, as Trainsplit has shown, it is still cheaper to split tickets on many routes.
Savings of more than 60% are possible with the system and the four men behind it are now devising an updated mechanism to find even cheaper fares for passengers prepared to take longer getting to their destinations.
MoneySavingExpert.com also has a split ticketing service and created an app (Tickety Split) for those with smart phones. The firm argues that the cheapest fares should not be hidden from consumers, as they currently are.
MoneySavingExpert believes that people should be given split ticket prices by default. “If a consumer asks for the cheapest ticket from A to B the retailer should offer the cheapest fare, which includes if the ticket needed to be split either one or more times. Train staff should then be helpful and considerate with passengers who do have split tickets.”
But far from being helpful, train companies have apparently tried to ban split ticketing, which suggests they are not on their passengers’ side (not that the overcrowding, unexplained cancellations, filthy carriages and grouchy staff on certain routes ever convinced us they were).
Train fares went up again in January, by 2.5% in Scotland, but off-peak prices were pegged at 2013 levels. This, said the Scottish transport minister, Derek Mackay would “draw even more people out of their cars and on to trains”.
The rises still outstrip pay increases, however, and leave many people struggling to afford public transport. Few passengers feel they are being put first, either by government or by the rail companies.
That is why outfits such as Trainsplit are to be applauded. Their idea, as one of the founders, Mike Richardson, said, was “to take insider knowledge and make it available to the general traveller, so they don’t have to work it out for themselves”.
It’s pure genius, beyond the wit or will of the rail operators and let’s hope it makes its inventors deservedly rich.