The rail network in the UK is also strange. On some routes it is cheaper to split your journey across multiple tickets. On others it is cheaper to buy a ticket for a longer journey. However, this is illegal and the train companies do attempt prosecutions.

It's legal:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/fare-spli...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19217111

and there are web sites which do split ticketing:

http://www.raileasy.co.uk/home/split-ticketing/

http://www.splitticketing.co.uk

https://www.splityourticket.co.uk

To be clearer, splitting tickets is legal, and while the second ticket may become invalid if the first train runs late, train companies now honour the second ticket if the reason you miss your train is because the incoming train has run late.

However, what can be in breach of the terms and conditions is to buy a ticket for a longer journey than desired and then get off at an intermediate station. If you read the comment to which you're replying, it's the "overlength ticket" that he is saying can be illegal.

Fair enough for split ticketing, but they prosecuted someone last year for overlong ticketing. It only failed because they got the facts (as opposed to the law) wrong.

Why is it illegal and how do they enforce it?

I know that something similar happens with airplane tickets but they get you with the luggage and with terms & conditions AFAIK.

How is it similar/different with train tickets?

It is illegal because the railway byelaws make it illegal. The railway doesn't just have its own law, it also has its own police force, The British Transport Police, though as far as I know they don't do the ticket enforcement.

You are not allowed to break a journey either, so a ticket inspector can spot a ticket for a longer journey at one end of the other. The multiple tickets ruse is more of a grey area.

BREAK OF JOURNEY

Rules vary by train company and route. In general you cannot break your outward journey (except for necessary changes of train) but you can break your return journey.

Source: https://www.splityourticket.co.uk/info/fare-types.aspx

I've already dealt with the legality of split ticketing in another post.

The National Conditions of Carriage actually permit breaking an outbound journey, provided the ticket remains valid for the continuation. Outbound tickets are usually only valid on the day, so in that case you can't continue the journey the next day. But a regular standard (or first-class) ticket on a train that's not the last train of the day can be broken on the outbound journey.

For most tickets.

Some tickets, such as Advance and some Super-Off-Peak, have additional conditions. However, I do have a letter from a train company saying that they were wrong to have charged for an extra ticket, and wrong to have tried to start proceedings.

So breaking an outbound journey can be legal, and in such cases buying an over-length ticket is possible. It's circumstances like these that led in part to some of the specifics of the recent shake-up of the fare structures.

Huh. I wonder if it would be cheaper to do a ticket like

start -> actual destination (stay on train) -> overshoot destination (get off) (get back on) -> (turn around; begin return trip) -> actual destination (get off) (get back on) -> start

?

Seems utterly unintuitive, and it probably is, but I am curious.

That can be possible, and I have done it.

Part of the reason for all this is that the train system has been broken up into a collection of franchises. Some companies will then incentivise some journeys, and so the fare doesn't always reflect the time or distance of the journey being made. As a result you can find and exploit anomalies, but only if you're willing to spend the (sometimes considerable) time and effort.

And how do they enforce it? Chain you to the train?

No, they fine at exit.

Really?? Is that true only when there are multiple paths between A & B or is there something else involved?

For busses, the B stop on the way out may be in another zone as the B stop on the way back because they're geographically displaced. For busses and trains, depending on your type of ticket (2-8 zones, 8+ zones, commuter card) and whether the zone intersection is on or between stops/stations, you may have to pay for that zone one way but not the other. Those are edge cases.

But the most confusing part is the ring topology (here shown with the zone-ring center being the actual city center):

https://passagerpulsen.taenk.dk/sites/default/files/styles/f...

When buying 2-8 zones you don't pay for individual zones, but rather rings from your origin zone. Going one way, the zone rings look one way. Going back they look different, because the origin zone is different.

A practical example of this peculiarity:

You go from Hellerup (zone 2) to Friheden (zone 33) via the central station (zone 1). Your ring 0 is zone 2, and zone 1 and 33 are both in ring 1, so you only pay for two zone(-ring)s: https://dinoffentligetransport.dk/media/1413/svanemollen-fri...

You go back from Friheden to Hellerup via the central station: Your ring 0 is zone 33, zone 2 is in ring 1, but zone 1 is in ring 2 this time, so you pay for three zone(-ring)s: https://dinoffentligetransport.dk/media/1411/friheden-svanem...

Your origin zone on the way out was adjacent to both other zones needed (needing only 1 ring), but your origin zone on the way back was not (needing 2 rings).

So they're not just different prices: The graph that spans train stations via zones in the ring topology is not metric. So getting a return ticket is not the inverse of getting the ticket out. And while you have a ticket that's valid for the timespan of your return, it may not be valid for your return path.

What the... that was painful to read and comprehend. Was this kind of complexity really necessary? Did someone get a promotion for coming up with this?

I copied and translated a quite limited subset of the official traveller guidelines.

There are several reasons why it ended up like this, and I don't know all of them.

But two reasons I can think of:

1) With the introduction of RFID-based commuter cards, the zone system was revised for traditional ticket types as well. It appears convenient that a price can always be determined by knowing the check-in point, the check-out point and the shortest path in the graph. Unfortunately, with the old ticket types, you have to perform the calculation instead.

2) It is the odd shape of zone 2 that causes some tickets to not work on the way back, even though the trip goes in a straight line. But for a large part of all trips, you only need zone 1 and 2, or zone 2 and zone (30, 31, 32, 33). Only the ones that start in zone 2, go through zone 1, go back into zone 2 and farther into another zone (or vice versa) have the anomaly. (Trips that actually bend can have this too, but it is slightly more intuitive.)

Other possibilities: Trains going in different directions don't make the same stops (express vs local), and time-based fares applying to a specific direction based on commuting patterns.

In the US, on Amtrak, a ticket is specific to an exact train, like buying a plane ticket. There's no generalized "I want a ticket from DC to NYC."

Some of the shorter ones have unreserved coach class tickets that aren't restricted to a specific train. So, while there is no generalized, "I want a ticket from DC to NYC", there is a generalized, "I want a ticket from Chicago to Milwaukee."

Another possibility is that there is more demand in one direction.

You might have a major city, A, a center of finance and law and full of corporate headquarters, and a smaller city, B, where many of the companies whose headquarters are in A have their engineering and manufacturing facilities.

Someone making a deal with one of those companies may need to visit both engineering to work out technical details first and then visit headquarters to work out business, financial, and legal details. They will travel from home to B, and then travel to A, and then when done travel directly home from A. This may happen much more than the other direction--people needing to visit headquarters first and then going to visit engineering and manufacturing, without needing to go back to headquarters.

Net result: more passengers needing B to A than A to B. This can result in A to B trips having empty seats. It might even result in some trips with no passengers at all! They can't simply cancel those trips, because they need to get the vehicles to B to handle the B to A traffic, so they sell seats cheap.

Chicago has a minor version of this, even without zone fares: The entry fee to get on a train is $2.50 everywhere except O'Hare Airport, where it's $5.

Interesting, thanks!

The tourist fee.

Nah. Most the people I see on that train are people commuting to/from work, and locals who live along the blue line corridor. Some tourists, but I think most of them are opting to pay a driver 8x as much to take even longer to get them downtown.

They use a zone system, and you don’t have to pay for a zone if you get off at the first stop after entering it.

This creates the asymmetry

thanks

The same goes for airfares.

A round-trip can be cheaper depending on direction of travel.

One-way trip can be significantly cheaper if you are flying through a major hub like FRA and starting your journey from a less wealthy country.