More Railway Madness

[major_clanger]

Remember yesterday's post, where I was bemoaning the ludicrous cost of travelling by rail from Edinburgh to Birminham for Novacon? I took brixtonbrood's advice and tried various versions of splitting the journey.

Book as single journey: £100 per person.

Book as singles to/from Doncaster, return Doncaster to Walsall: £65 pp.

Book as singles to/from Crewe, return Crewe to Walsall: £43 pp.

...and going via Crewe is actually an hour quicker than the route suggested when booking as a single journey.

Bugger the Turing Test. A convincing AI will be one that can consistently find the cheapest route to travel on the British railway network.

Comments

[jamesb.livejournal.com]

perhaps all railway TOC execs should do the Voigt-Kampf test.
see if they have emotions at all

james

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

As someone trained in the use of eyetrackers and pupilometers please allow me to volunteer to run the tests. Especially if I can retire them immediately afterwards.

I found the same thing last year travelling from Troon to Liverpool (long story involving Glasgow airports and a hire car). If I booked Troon->Liverpool then it cost considerably more than Troon->Glasgow and Glasgow->Liverpool. In spite of the fact that I'd be on precisely the same trains for both sections of the journey.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

What makes you think that allowing you to find the cheapest tickets is the intended purpose of that system? ;-)

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Exactly. There is no one whose job it is to make the ticketing system fair, nor yet understandable. Certainly, it's too complex for the staff.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

When we went down to London last weekend, it was cheaper to get first class singles each way than any of the available standard returns (there were no standard singles left).

The consensus was that we could get used to travelling like that (especially if it turns out to be true about the East Coast route going to 5-across seating)

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Privitisation made railway companies like airlines, who aim to squeeze the optimal revenue out of the market. This makes prices variable, and stresses those people like me who feel the need to get the optimal deal. My reaction to the whole mess is to drive if I possibly can.

[pwilkinson.livejournal.com]

The problem of finding the cheapest route between A and B during a given time period on the British railway network is rumoured to be of at least exponential complexity - and if the period involves a weekend or bank holiday, unsolvable until at most three weeks beforehand because of still unannounced engineering works.

Of course, there are rules of thumb for cutting costs (any ticket is always priced at the most expensive rate for any part of the journey, returns are usually only cheaper for shortish journeys outside peak times and so on) - though all of them sprout countervailing sub-clauses or break down altogether from time to time.

- and, as you have discovered, look at splitting a long journey

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Even in the British Rail days, the system had features that favoured high-fare routing. It was printed lists, with routes between stations, and Barnetby to Milton Keynes was by way of Doncaster and London. Despite there being a through service to Coventry, where you changed for Milton Keynes.