Neil Williams wrote:
On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:58:17 +0000, Jan Buxton
wrote:

The only thing in the latest Newsrail Express relating to Virgin is that
they are reinstating the no break of journey allowed on outward journey
restriction for various off-peak tickets including the 2C (ie PRE-EUS)
and 3A (ie LAN-EUS) restrictions.

Odd. I wonder are TOCs actually losing revenue over the "slackened"
BoJ restrictions? Or are they intending to use it to stop people
starting long/ending short on the outward and thus avoiding
restrictions?

Well certainly with the NFM02 time restrictions anyone travelling from
Preston for example who thought they might need to leave London between
3 and 6 would have been a fool not to have bought a Lancaster ticket.
And maybe Virgin saw that, maybe they've noticed a lot of people doing
that these last three months anyway. That said it is more than that
route I think, its quite a list of restrictions, off sick from work so
can't remember right now. Ultimately it must come down to perceived lost
revenue.

--
Jan

"Jan Buxton" wrote in message
et...
Neil Williams wrote:
On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:58:17 +0000, Jan Buxton
wrote:

The only thing in the latest Newsrail Express relating to Virgin is that
they are reinstating the no break of journey allowed on outward journey
restriction for various off-peak tickets including the 2C (ie PRE-EUS)
and 3A (ie LAN-EUS) restrictions.

Odd. I wonder are TOCs actually losing revenue over the "slackened"
BoJ restrictions? Or are they intending to use it to stop people
starting long/ending short on the outward and thus avoiding
restrictions?

Well certainly with the NFM02 time restrictions anyone travelling from
Preston for example who thought they might need to leave London between 3
and 6 would have been a fool not to have bought a Lancaster ticket. And
maybe Virgin saw that, maybe they've noticed a lot of people doing that
these last three months anyway. That said it is more than that route I
think, its quite a list of restrictions, off sick from work so can't
remember right now. Ultimately it must come down to perceived lost
revenue.

Cue another debate about whether Offpeak 'BOJ restrictions' include starting
long or ending short. As discussed last May, this has been settled once and
for all in the T&C for 'Advance', but not AFAICS for Offpeak...

I did some googling, and found a TSSA 'press release' that looks like it
might be the basis of the Evening Standard & Telegraph articles about those
long distance restrictions to Lancaster etc:

http://www.tssa.org.uk/article-101.php3?id_article=4630

Maybe they (TSSA) were on the right lines but got the time of day wrong?

Paul

On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 04:41:01 -0800 (PST), Mizter T
wrote:

Perhaps this is to stop people splitting tickets - or rather more
accurately, splitting their journey, i.e. LM from Euston to Milton
Keynes, then change and catch Virgin on from there. Have they done the
same at Watford Junction I wonder?

Watford always did have evening restrictions - it was MK that was the
oddity.

There was at one point a notice at MKC booking office saying that VT
had told them they couldn't sell split tickets of the above nature
(this was when trains did stop at the height of the evening peak, and
it provided quite a saving on the Open Singles). This disappeared
soon afterwards, presumably when someone pointed out that they were
not allowed to refuse that ticket combination if it was specifically
requested.

Actually, as at NFM01, it was about 15 quid cheaper to split at MKC
*even with* peak restrictions[1]. I can't help but wonder if that was
actually a major reason why the stops were withdrawn in the peak, and
not just the risk of overcrowding caused by short-distance commuters.

[1] Because LM have no evening peak restrictions, it's even more
significant than that if you do the EUS-MKC bit on LM. The saving for
doing that (CDR EUS-MKC plus SOS MKC-MAN) is 24 quid!

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:47:26 +0000, Jan Buxton
wrote:

Well certainly with the NFM02 time restrictions anyone travelling from
Preston for example who thought they might need to leave London between
3 and 6 would have been a fool not to have bought a Lancaster ticket.
And maybe Virgin saw that, maybe they've noticed a lot of people doing
that these last three months anyway. That said it is more than that
route I think, its quite a list of restrictions, off sick from work so
can't remember right now. Ultimately it must come down to perceived lost
revenue.

Was it all outward restrictions, or were there any return ones?

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

Neil Williams wrote:
On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:47:26 +0000, Jan Buxton
wrote:

Well certainly with the NFM02 time restrictions anyone travelling from
Preston for example who thought they might need to leave London between
3 and 6 would have been a fool not to have bought a Lancaster ticket.
And maybe Virgin saw that, maybe they've noticed a lot of people doing
that these last three months anyway. That said it is more than that
route I think, its quite a list of restrictions, off sick from work so
can't remember right now. Ultimately it must come down to perceived lost
revenue.

Was it all outward restrictions, or were there any return ones?

All Outward in the sense of, that is when BoJ restriction will apply.

--
Jan

The only thing in the latest Newsrail Express relating to Virgin is that
they are reinstating the no break of journey allowed on outward journey
restriction for various off-peak tickets including the 2C (ie PRE-EUS)
and 3A (ie LAN-EUS) restrictions.

Of course, it's not as if *passengers* have access to the secret
Newsrail Express, so how are we expected to know this?

Are passengers really expected to phone NRE every fare change date to
ask if the BoJ rules have changed?

(I'm assuming the new rules come in with NFM 02 so I should be able to
look them up once I finally receive the latest Avantix Traveller CD?)

-roy

On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:16:26 +0000, Roy Badami
wrote:

Are passengers really expected to phone NRE every fare change date to
ask if the BoJ rules have changed?

More to the point, if most TOCs clearly want the Off-Peak Return to
have outbound BoJ restriction, why don't they just introduce it as a
blanket measure like it was with the SVR previously? The current
situation is worse because nobody knows what is and isn't the case.

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

In article ,
Jan Buxton wrote:

Well certainly with the NFM02 time restrictions anyone travelling from
Preston for example who thought they might need to leave London between
3 and 6 would have been a fool not to have bought a Lancaster ticket.
And maybe Virgin saw that, maybe they've noticed a lot of people doing
that these last three months anyway. That said it is more than that
route I think, its quite a list of restrictions, off sick from work so
can't remember right now. Ultimately it must come down to perceived lost
revenue.

Bringing up an old subject, but isn't starting short on non-Advance
tickets considered to be different than BoJ?. So it's prohibited to
start from Lancaster, break off at Preston then resume the journey later
but ok to start at Preston on a Lancaster ticket?

Of course, with multiple TOCs serving the two stations, neither of which
have barriers, who is to say you haven't just changed trains there
anyway?

On Dec 19, 3:12*am, "Mr.G" wrote:
Bringing up an old subject, but isn't starting short on non-Advance
tickets considered to be different than BoJ?. *So it's prohibited to
start from Lancaster, break off at Preston then resume the journey later
but ok to start at Preston on a Lancaster ticket?

It's not *absolutely* clear, but that seems to be the most obvious
reading of the rules.

And the fact that the rules have been changed for Advance to
explicitly ban starting/stopping short is, in itself, strong evidence
that starting/stopping short are allowed on all other tickets.

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

On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:12:48 -0800, "Mr.G"
wrote:

Of course, with multiple TOCs serving the two stations, neither of which
have barriers, who is to say you haven't just changed trains there
anyway?

Probably why it was hardly enforced in the days of the Saver Return.
The only thing you really wouldn't get away with was breaking
overnight unless you'd got stuck (in which case it was allowed
anyway).

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.