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Recliner[_3_] · June 1st 15, 03:47 PM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote:
In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Mon, 01 Jun 2015 13:04:38 +0100, David Cantrell
wrote:

On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 10:41:19AM +0100, Paul Corfield wrote:

They are not permitted to undercut parallel TOC services.

We wouldn't want to have multiple operators on a route actually
competing with each other, would we!

Well the context is suburban services in London, not Inter City or
inter-regional journeys where you might want to argue that buying an
advance, single operator ticket warrants a discount because spare
capacity is available at that time. Hardly works in the context of
jam packed full commuter trains where there's barely an inch of space.
It also doesn't really work in the context of potentially subsidised
TfL operations abstracting revenue from premium paying franchisees.
You're then just shovelling money round parts of the public sector,
looked at a macro level. The Treasury tend not to like "money go
rounds".

I can't see any form of main line rail service competition working on
the London commuter network. We sort of have it between tube and main
line rail in parts of London but the difference there is also on
service frequency etc as well as sometimes on price by virtue of the
different PAYG tariffs.

We have competition between Cambridge and London between GTR and AGA, the
latter offering Advance and other discounted AGA-only fares.

I expect the same sort of thing will start from Oxford to London when the
new route from Marylebone gets going.

Indeed so -- Chiltern is used to competing for business with other
operators running on different, established, electrified routes.