Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I got 100% off my train travel

readbunce.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 240 posts

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#71

Post by switch007 »

celticninja wrote: post #2

There is a slightly less ethical way to do this, you buy a ticket that mows you to travel at any time of day. Then when you have made your trip log on to realtimetrains to find a train on your route that was delayed and then claim that as your journey. Now your ticket is sometimes scanned when you enter or leave a station but this is rare and even less likely to be scanned on the train by a conductor. Anyway that is…

IANAL but that is 100% straight up fraud. It's the most common accusation I believe regarding delay repay (and the train companies allege it is indeed fraud)

Do not mess with the railways and their revenue in England.

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#72

Post by bombcar »

dbspin wrote: post #10
dlcarrier wrote: post #4

Where I live, in the US, the income from light rail fair payers is a laughably small portion of the operating budget, so all rides are effectively discounted by 90%+. The fares really only exist to keep homeless people from sheltering on the trains, but they do that anyway, without a ticket. Somehow the prices are still high enough that it's cheaper to buy a cheap used car and drive it instead.

Find this curious. Surely factoring in the cost of tax and insurance greatly increases the cost of the used car? I'm based in Europe so perhaps things are radically different in the US.

Insurance on a beater can be quite low if you’re not a young male or bad driver. Like $1-200/yr.

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#75

Post by joshstrange »

sksksk wrote: post #55

I expense all my work travel, and get to keep delay repay payments for myself. My number one trick to getting the payments: get the tightest connection possible. For the journey I take frequently, the train arrives into the main station at 8:52pm, my connection is at 9pm; picking up just 8 minutes of delays means I'll miss the connection. The next train is at 10pm, which triggers delay repay.

Maybe I've underestimating the amount of money we are talking about but I'd much rather be where I'm headed on time than travel for free, especially on a regular basis.

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#76

Post by blibble »

sarreph wrote: post #8

The UK train system is a dire, expensive mess. Attempting to avoid getting directly political here, but I strongly believe it’s one of the lowest hanging fruit a political party could act on to curry favour with the electorate. Would be amazing to see this productised à la the way split ticketing works.

it's not dire and it's not expensive compared to the next reasonable alternatives

if you compare the cost of a London commuter belt season ticket compared to the cost of driving+parking, it is still very much a bargain

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#77

Post by chgs »

sebtron wrote: post #27

> Avanti West Coast offers customers: > 15 minutes — 25% off > 30 minutes — 50% off > 1 hour + — 100% off To me they look like very generous refund policies. I checked Italy's Trenitalia and what they offer is[1]: > 30-119 minutes: 25% > 120+ minutes: 50% I suppose anything below 30 minutes is consideres "on time". [1] https://www.trenitalia.com/it/informazioni/indennizzo_per_ri...

This is standard U.K. policy

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#78

Post by blibble »

amiga386 wrote: post #57
sarreph wrote: post #8

The UK train system is a dire, expensive mess. Attempting to avoid getting directly political here, but I strongly believe it’s one of the lowest hanging fruit a political party could act on to curry favour with the electorate. Would be amazing to see this productised à la the way split ticketing works.

It's harder than it looks. Excluding special cases like HS1 and TfL, we have three players: - Network Rail, who maintain the entire country's track, signalling, etc. Also owns and runs some major stations. Run at arms length by government, centrally funded. - Train Operating Companies (TOCs), who won a bid held every few years on how much they'll pay the government to be allowed a monopoly on running a particular reg…

there is no doubt that the early ROSCO deals were outrageously tilted against taxpayers/passengers (they pay £1 for old BR trains the state paid for, then we pay them to rent them back)

however the newer ones are significantly better

funding the capital cost of a billion pounds of new trains isn't free (even for a government), and there is risk on that investment

they also maintain the trains (to varying levels of quality)

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#79

Post by eCa »

Tomte wrote: post #42
sebtron wrote: post #27

> Avanti West Coast offers customers: > 15 minutes — 25% off > 30 minutes — 50% off > 1 hour + — 100% off To me they look like very generous refund policies. I checked Italy's Trenitalia and what they offer is[1]: > 30-119 minutes: 25% > 120+ minutes: 50% I suppose anything below 30 minutes is consideres "on time". [1] https://www.trenitalia.com/it/informazioni/indennizzo_per_ri...

Deutsche Bahn: 1hr+ --> 25%, 2hr+ --> 50%

I believe that’s the level EU requires for long distance trains.

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#80

Post by Symbiote »

blibble wrote: post #76
sarreph wrote: post #8

The UK train system is a dire, expensive mess. Attempting to avoid getting directly political here, but I strongly believe it’s one of the lowest hanging fruit a political party could act on to curry favour with the electorate. Would be amazing to see this productised à la the way split ticketing works.

it's not dire and it's not expensive compared to the next reasonable alternatives if you compare the cost of a London commuter belt season ticket compared to the cost of driving+parking, it is still very much a bargain

It's expensive for irregular users.

If I want to visit friends in Derby, coming from London, that's £81. For no good reason, a return ticket is £84.

If I need to travel at peak times, that's £123.

Booked months in advance it might be £20, roughly what a bus ticket costs.

Post reply on HN