Roland Perry wrote in message o.uk...
In message , at
22:36:07 on Thu, 26 Aug 2004, Martin Underwood
remarked:
In an ideal world, there would be only one fare between A and B, it would be
valid for travel at any time (and return at any other time, on the same or
another day) and it would be directly proportional to distance travelled.

The problem with making it directly proportional to the distance
travelled is that often there is more than one route.

Should a ticket from Peterborough to Nottingham be two different prices,
depending on whether one catches the [roughly alternating] services via
Leicester or Grantham?

You could set the fare as the shorter of the two, but that will then
create further anomalies. What, for example, if Peterborough to
Leicester was further than Peterborough to Nottingham via Grantham [1]?

You'd then have one of those situations where a ticket
Peterborough-Leicester-Nottingham was cheaper than
Peterborough-Leicester!!

[1] Surprisingly, Pbo-Leicester by train is 52 miles 16 chains
Pbo-Nottingham (via Grantham) is 51 miles 66 chains.

Then God invented the zonal fare, and it was good.