If
someone


with
time
on
their
hands
went
through
the
backfile
of
Railnews
(more
than
700
editions)
and
pulled
out
each
issue
which
included
a
story
about
the
complexity
of
rail
fares,
they
would
have
enough
sheets
of
newspaper
to
wrap
a
lorry
load
of
fish
and
chips.

The
nonsense
which
is
the
National
Rail
tariff
has
been
getting
worse
for
many
years.
The
original
culprit
was
‘market
price’
fares,
as
opposed
to
those
simply
calculated
on
distance,
in
the
1960s,
when
British
Rail
was
short
of
money
and
firmly
in
the
grasp
of
economists
whose
knowledge
of
financial
matters
may
have
been
infinite,
but
who
knew
very
little
about
railways
or,
indeed,
what
it
was
like
to
travel
by
train.

Charging
‘what
the
market
will
bear’
was
not,
in
itself,
particularly
damaging
perhaps,
but
the
1980s
began
to
see
the
first
rumblings
of
‘yield
management’,
in
which
every
seat
on
every
train
can
have
its
own
price.

From
this
came
the
present
disaster,
and
we
use
the
word
deliberately.
Matters
were
made
worse
by
privatisation,
and
we
are
now
in
the
position
that
a
railway
system
with
roundly
2,500
stations
providing
some
20,000
passenger
trains
a
day
can
have
55
million
possible
fares.

There
have
been
a
number
of
tinkerings
over
the
years,
such
as
attempts
to
abolish
return
tickets
on
a
few
routes,
which
tends
to
add
to
public
puzzlement
because
it
is
inconsistent.

The
individual
operators
had
a
field
day
once
privatisation
had
given
them
a
relatively
free
hand.
Peak
and
off-peak
(logical
enough,
and
known
to
exist
since
at
least
the
1940s)
were
made
more
confusing
by
the
addition
of
‘Super
Off
Peak’,
while
each
operator
decides
the
time
limits
for
each
type
of
ticket,
so
that
Operator
A
declares
that
off-peak
starts
at
09.00,
while
operator
B
says
it
is
09.30.
Operator
B,
by
the
way,
doesn’t
offer
Super
Off
Peak
at
all.

A
row
is
now
brewing
(again)
about
the
plight
of
passengers
who
get
caught
up
in
the
machinery,
and
who
plead
(often
in
vain,
it
appears)
that
the
ticket
machines
at
their
departure
station
weren’t
working
and
are
given
a
£100
penalty
fare
as
punishment.

Of
course,
some
people
are
on
the
fiddle.
There
have
probably
been
passengers
trying
to
evade
payment
for
their
journeys
ever
since
the
days
of
the
Stephensons
and
Brunel.
We
have
no
time
for
such
cheats,
but
there
seems
to
be
overwhelming
evidence
that
many
people
are
not
cheating,
but
are
simply
baffled
by
the
rules.
Rightly,
many
cases
are
now
being
reviewed.

It
is
wrong
to
baffle
customers,
and
it
flies
against
any
idea
that
the
railways
are
there
to
provide
a
service.
There
is
a
lot
for
this
government
to
do,
but
giving
fares
a
radical
overhaul
must
be
high
on
its
list
of
transport
reforms.

To
misquote
an
old
HMRC
slogan,
buying
a
railway
ticket
doesn’t
have
to
be
taxing.