BBC News reports that the previously promised plan to simplify UK train fares is finally being implemented. Not all in one go, of course, and not entirely as simple as it needs to be, but it’s a start. At the moment, for many train journeys, the price you pay might as well be derived from the balls drawn in last Wednesday’s National Lottery for all the sense it makes.

You can have “open” tickets, that you can use on any train, “saver” tickets that don’t allow you to travel at certain times of day[1], not to mention “business saver” tickets that err, have slightly different restrictions from normal savers. If you get on a train with the wrong ticket (an easy mistake to make, which people do all the time), in many cases rather than having to pay the difference between the cost of your ticket and the one you need to be on that train, you have to buy a whole new ticket. And the only ticket they’ll sell you on the train[4] is the maximum price open one. Friendly, that.

And that’s the simple bit. In addition to that, there’s a ludicrous range of discounted advance tickets. Some are available in very limited numbers, many require you to commit to travel at particular times and will only be valid on the specified trains, and the prices vary widely, not to mention wildly. Now having the chance of a cheap trip somewhere if you book in advance and can organise yourself to get on the right trains is a Good Thing. What’s less of a Good Thing is that you have to go looking for the cheapest fares. The various websites that sell train tickets[5] might tell you if you search properly, but what you’re supposed to do when faced with five or six different fares for the same journey, all with cryptic names and varying restrictions, is a bit of a mystery. The nice people selling tickets at stations or on the phone are often as confused as everyone else. Some of them will make the effort to find the cheapest tickets, but this doesn’t always happen, sometimes because they don’t know either. And then there’s the crazy stuff with some tickets being valid on some operators’ trains only, or not being valid if you take a different route.

So it’s all a bit of a mess, really. People have complained about the ticketing mess for a long time[6]. Well, not as much as the egregious rises in fares, but that’s not likely to improve. But something is Being Done about the tickets.

From 18 May, all those complicated SuperAdvanceXYZ ThingyOffPeakSaverWombat[7] tickets will be replaced by “Advance” tickets. They’ll still have an obscure range of prices that you’ll have to search for if you want the best deal, but at least they’ll have less confusing names. This is a moderately typical approach and won’t really fool many people. As Norman Baker, transport spokesman for the Liberal Democrats put it:

It would help everyone if train companies made their advance ticket policies public so that travellers were clear about what bargain tickets are available and when and how they can best buy them.

Well, yes. A statement of the blindingly obvious to everyone except (a) train operating companies and (2) the government.[8] Clearly this man is far too sensible to be allowed anywhere near the reins of power, and this is why the Liberal Democrats won’t get into government in a hurry. Fancy suggesting that if they have bargain tickets they should actually, well, tell people about them!

But that’s just the start. From September, non-advance tickets will be simplified into “All Day” (which would be the equivalent of the current “Open” tickets) and “Off Peak”, which would be the equivalent of lots of things. So that’s going to be less confusing, except we’ll probably find that each operator will have their own rules for when “Off Peak” tickets can be used, and they’ll still find ways to annoy, embarrass and harass passengers who commit the dreadful crime of getting on the wrong train[9].

Of course, if the railways hadn’t been privatised in such a barking mad manner, we wouldn’t have numerous companies with completely different policies, and it might all be a lot less confusing. But that might have been sensible, and we can’t have that, can we?

[1] The actual times depending on where you’re travelling to and from, if it’s a Friday[2] or quite possibly the weather in Oslo[3]
[2] Unless they changed that bit. I wouldn’t be surprised
[3] Place name chosen at random. No offence to any readers from Oslo
[4] Subject to variation depending on which operating company is running the service
[5] Most of them are actually run by the same company…
[6] Especially the fining people for getting confused business.
[7] Or whatever each operator chooses to call them
[8] Do you like my advanced counting system? It was inspired by off-peak rail fare structures
[9] I seem to recall reading that on some operators’ trains, the on-train staff who enforce this actually get commission for selling tickets on the train, which rather makes it in their interest to take a hard line with people travelling on the wrong ticket, or not having their discount rail card with them[10]. I don’t have any hard evidence on that one, so don’t quote me on it.
[10] I definitely recall a case where an elderly lady was travelling on a discount ticket, but didn’t have her Senior Citizen’s Rail Card with her[11]. Rather than agreeing, as she asked, to let a relative meet the train at the destination station with the card, they actually got the Police to drag her off the train. That was in a generally reliable newspaper, and I don’t recall it being denied, so it’s probably true.
[11] This is a “your papers are not in order” kind of offence.