I've just started a commute from Surbiton to Farnborough daily and was
surprised to find that it is significantly cheaper to buy daily
tickets than it is to buy a weekly or monthly ....

Here's my weekly tickets ... PITA ... http://www.flickr.com/photos/elyob/3905742603/

It's £8.40 a day = £42 for a five day week. Whereas it's £56.90 for a
weekly ... that's £15 more expensive. I'm amazed at that, I mean I'm
hardly likely to go there 7 days a week.

So, my question of the day is, how many days in advance can I buy
daily tickets, can I go to the window and ask for a full months worth
of daily tickets? Also, why can't SWT offer a five day solution?

Thanks

elyob wrote:
I've just started a commute from Surbiton to Farnborough daily and was
surprised to find that it is significantly cheaper to buy daily
tickets than it is to buy a weekly or monthly ....

Here's my weekly tickets ... PITA ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elyob/3905742603/

It's £8.40 a day = £42 for a five day week. Whereas it's £56.90 for a
weekly ... that's £15 more expensive. I'm amazed at that, I mean I'm
hardly likely to go there 7 days a week.

So, my question of the day is, how many days in advance can I buy
daily tickets, can I go to the window and ask for a full months worth
of daily tickets? Also, why can't SWT offer a five day solution?

[uk.railway added]

I think a similar journey query has come up before in uk.railway. The
explanation is that you are going against the peak flow. If you check the
price of an anytime return from Farnborough to Surbiton I think the figures
will be completely different, and the season is a discount on 5 of those
fares. But a season ticket works in either direction, at any time of day,
so a Surbiton to Farnborough season can be used as a Farnborough to
Surbiton.

Rightly or wrongly I think that's the basic problem, and you'll find the
season is normally a significant discount on 5 up direction journeys at
£15.80, ie it is normally considered as a 5 day product.

Paul S

On Sep 10, 11:42*am, "Paul Scott"
wrote:

elyob wrote:
I've just started a commute from Surbiton to Farnborough daily and was
surprised to find that it is significantly cheaper to buy daily
tickets than it is to buy a weekly or monthly ....

Here's my weekly tickets ... PITA ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elyob/3905742603/

It's £8.40 a day = £42 for a five day week. Whereas it's £56.90 for a
weekly ... that's £15 more expensive. I'm amazed at that, I mean I'm
hardly likely to go there 7 days a week.

So, my question of the day is, how many days in advance can I buy
daily tickets, can I go to the window and ask for a full months worth
of daily tickets? Also, why can't SWT offer a five day solution?

[uk.railway added]

I think a similar journey query has come up before in uk.railway. The
explanation is that you are going against the peak flow. If you check the
price of an anytime return from Farnborough to Surbiton I think the figures
will be completely different, and the season is a discount on 5 of those
fares. *But a season ticket works in either direction, at any time of day,
so a Surbiton to Farnborough season can be used as a Farnborough to
Surbiton.

Rightly or wrongly I think that's the basic problem, and you'll find the
season is normally a significant discount on 5 up direction journeys at
£15.80, *ie it is normally considered as a 5 day product.

Yes, I recall that coming up on uk.r quite recently.

With regards to buying the tickets in advance, you might find it
easier to buy them online and then collect them from a ticket machine
at the station - both Surbiton and Farnborough Main offer what's
called "TOD" or "Ticket on Departure" these days[1]. I dare say you
might find this easier using a WebTIS based booking engine as opposed
to a Trainline based one - i.e. the one used by NXEC or Southern
Railway amongst others. The booking takes two hours to process, so you
could perhaps book them on Thursday evening for collection on Friday
evening or some such (and regardless of what station you specify, you
can pick the tickets up at any TOD station). A PITA having to do this
ticket shuffle, but nonetheless I'd say it's preferable to having to
pay the more expensive fare.

-----
[1] List of stations that offer TOD (though I think it's incomplete):
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/statio...inations/tods/

On Sep 10, 12:24*pm, Mizter T wrote:
On Sep 10, 11:42*am, "Paul Scott"
wrote:



elyob wrote:
I've just started a commute from Surbiton to Farnborough daily and was
surprised to find that it is significantly cheaper to buy daily
tickets than it is to buy a weekly or monthly ....

Here's my weekly tickets ... PITA ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elyob/3905742603/

It's £8.40 a day = £42 for a five day week. Whereas it's £56.90 for a
weekly ... that's £15 more expensive. I'm amazed at that, I mean I'm
hardly likely to go there 7 days a week.

So, my question of the day is, how many days in advance can I buy
daily tickets, can I go to the window and ask for a full months worth
of daily tickets? Also, why can't SWT offer a five day solution?

[uk.railway added]

I think a similar journey query has come up before in uk.railway. The
explanation is that you are going against the peak flow. If you check the
price of an anytime return from Farnborough to Surbiton I think the figures
will be completely different, and the season is a discount on 5 of those
fares. *But a season ticket works in either direction, at any time of day,
so a Surbiton to Farnborough season can be used as a Farnborough to
Surbiton.

Rightly or wrongly I think that's the basic problem, and you'll find the
season is normally a significant discount on 5 up direction journeys at
£15.80, *ie it is normally considered as a 5 day product.

Yes, I recall that coming up on uk.r quite recently.

With regards to buying the tickets in advance, you might find it
easier to buy them online and then collect them from a ticket machine
at the station - both Surbiton and Farnborough Main offer what's
called "TOD" or "Ticket on Departure" these days[1]. I dare say you
might find this easier using a WebTIS based booking engine as opposed
to a Trainline based one - i.e. the one used by NXEC or Southern
Railway amongst others. The booking takes two hours to process, so you
could perhaps book them on Thursday evening for collection on Friday
evening or some such (and regardless of what station you specify, you
can pick the tickets up at any TOD station). A PITA having to do this
ticket shuffle, but nonetheless I'd say it's preferable to having to
pay the more expensive fare.


Thanks for this, I just signed up for both Southern and NXEC websites,
and they are unable to book more than four journeys, so I can't do a
complete week. Also, they don't allow me to book multiple days at one
go - which means I'm having to retype in the station names etc every
time. A bit of a pain. If I click "back to search" it starts editing
one of the saved journeys, aarrgghhhh.

I might see whether they'll give me my own API access and I'll write
something that is a bit more useful! Any one here in the IT dept of
WebTIS?

Also, to be honest, as they provide no easy way to do this, they can
spend the time thumping the keys and double checking it. I can't be
bothered!

elyob wrote:

Thanks for this, I just signed up for both Southern and NXEC websites,
and they are unable to book more than four journeys, so I can't do a
complete week. Also, they don't allow me to book multiple days at one
go - which means I'm having to retype in the station names etc every
time. A bit of a pain. If I click "back to search" it starts editing
one of the saved journeys, aarrgghhhh.


I wonder if SWT's smartcard ticketing would be able to sort this out
eventually? I wonder if anyone has even pointed the problem out to them,
they may be blissfully unaware, as they seem to organise the whole area on a
basis of travel towards London...

Paul S

On Sep 10, 1:31*pm, elyob wrote:

Also, to be honest, as they provide no easy way to do this, they can
spend the time thumping the keys and double checking it. I can't be
bothered!- Hide quoted text -

Why not go to the station and get them to "thump the keys" to issue a
week's worth in one go?

Neil

On Sep 10, 1:43*pm, Neil Williams wrote:
On Sep 10, 1:31*pm, elyob wrote:

Also, to be honest, as they provide no easy way to do this, they can
spend the time thumping the keys and double checking it. I can't be
bothered!- Hide quoted text -

Why not go to the station and get them to "thump the keys" to issue a
week's worth in one go?

Neil

That's what I did last week, and will do again this week. Takes ages,
therefore I was wondering whether I could get them to take "really
ages" and ask for a full month? How far in the future can they book
tickets for?

Ta

"elyob" wrote in message
...

Thanks for this, I just signed up for both Southern and NXEC websites,
and they are unable to book more than four journeys, so I can't do a
complete week.
--------------
You should find Southern will let you do two 'transactions' which can each
contain four 'journeys', each 'journey' being an outward and return. This is
how I bought eight Brighton-Victoria return trips on 10th July when
Southern were doing 90% discounts on advance purchase tix - I'm using the
last of these tomorrow!

DON'T use the 'save for later' feature (it doesn't work properly), just keep
booking journeys into a transaction until it won't let you enter any more.
The SN site also lets you save the From/To station names and retrieve them
later via a drop-down, but you still have to re-enter the departure/return
time ranges and yes, it's tedious.

D A Stocks

On Sep 10, 1:39*pm, "Paul Scott"
wrote:

I wonder if SWT's smartcard ticketing would be able to sort this out
eventually? I wonder if anyone has even pointed the problem out to them,
they may be blissfully unaware, as they seem to organise the whole area on a
basis of travel towards London...

AFIK there is some way to go before SWT et al can fulfil anything
other than season tickets into smart cards. I think it was LM man who
said to a conference that their commitment is for 50% of journeys to
be made with smart cards, and 45% of their journeys are on season
tickets...

"ticketyboo" wrote in message
...
On Sep 10, 1:39 pm, "Paul Scott"
wrote:

I wonder if SWT's smartcard ticketing would be able to sort this out
eventually? I wonder if anyone has even pointed the problem out to them,
they may be blissfully unaware, as they seem to organise the whole area
on a
basis of travel towards London...

AFIK there is some way to go before SWT et al can fulfil anything
other than season tickets into smart cards.

I agree - hence 'eventually'...

Paul S