On 10 Jan, 16:20, Michael Hoffman wrote:
John B wrote:
After about a year, I've finally worked out what they mean: "we don't
want to have to give all our station bods network-wide a list of
numbers to tick off against people who claim they need to go through
the gate to get on the Megatrain, and we certainly don't want any old
fare-dodger to be able to pretend to have a Megatrain not-ticket as an
excuse".

You give them too much credit. I think the real answer can be found he

http://tutor2u.net/economics/revisio...ice-discrimina...

Airlines charging more to go AAA-BBB than to go AAA-BBB-CCC has long
been a classic example of price discrimination.

I understand the concept, but I'm not sure it's relevant for Megatrain
(which is precisely why I was previously confused).

If it were doing complex airline-style price discrimination, it would
sell cheap tickets between minor stations, and more expensive tickets
between major stations. And it probably wouldn't cover the initial
London legs at all (since any given train in SWT-land will be busiest
on its first half-hour out/last half-hour into London, and since
London has the highest concentration of people who want to go from
[anywhere] to Y) - rather, you'd fill capacity with Guildford-
Portsmouth, Farncombe-Havant... etc... customers.

Instead, it achieves the opposite. Which makes me think that it's not
complex discrimination, but just a way of filling a few empty seats
very very cheaply to the company (and to the passengers, of course).

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org