"Roland Perry" wrote in message
news
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!!

This is what happened to me in Italy. I had travelled by an valid
alternative route that was not the one that I had a ticket for.

I had my official 'collection' ticket taken away from me,
surcharged for the different fare and was given back a tatty
scrap of paper.

And all for 400 lira (20p)

tim