http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30649551

Amazing what they can do when the government rediscovers it's balls... though I imagine it only happened to head off an uproar over the prices, and some bean counter worked out the vast majority will just buy whatever's in front of them.

It can't be hard surely to programme the ticket machines to offer the best prices, surely?

It shouldn't be, no however when the cheapest ticket is offered by a competitor on the same route there's hardly been an incentive to offer that price. Also the sheer number of possible choices makes fitting the most common options on a single page tricky.

Hold on, competition always provides the best deal for the public. This is a provable fact that cannot be argued with.

Correct. It's the other people that have predictable, tedious little one track minds; absorbed in a self-congratulatory reverie directed at the misrepresentation of a point of view that almost nobody holds. Not you, you're doing fine.

This is a story about a lack of competition, surely?

Depends how you frame it. There's competition in provision of service i.e. trains running on tracks carrying people. There's just no competition in terms of providing information to the consumer. It's in every company's interests to make sure as few customers as possible know when somebody else would provide the service cheaper.

Here's the thing - competition often breaks down because it's often not in the interests of the competing providers, so they're permanently all trying to rig the market. Quite often, via various methods, one or other of them succeeds. In a perfect world, competition would operate perfectly and the dogmatic view would be true. But it's not a perfect world.

Customers want competition. Suppliers want monopoly. Unless you regulate things properly, the suppliers often win. And the governments we've had for the last 30 years or so have pretty much all been in favour of reducing regulation because its 'red tape'.

Properly regulated competition benefits the most consumers most often, much the same way 'enlightened capitalism' benefits the most people in society most often. The problem is we currently have very little properly regulated competition and we have virtually no enlightened capitalism.

In a lot of places, there is no competition. There's only one rail company running passenger services where I live. Every couple of years, the name changes as a franchise lurches from company to company, but I have no "Company A fare vs Company B fare" choice. If I want to travel to London, the choice is simple: train from Chelmsford, or a drive out to Epping and catch the tube (which is actually cheaper). But if I wanted to travel North, there is no choice.

It is, but there's more than one way to compete. They don't just not compete for each train fare (which would be impossible), they also don't seem to compete much for each franchise. In theory they do compete against road and air traffic, but nobody would build a new airport or lay a road to capitalise on the weakness of a local rail franchise.

If the market were competitive there would be winners and losers (that being the point of competition), some would go bust and their operations be snapped up by better run firms. If there were some way for better rail operators to increase their market share at the expense of worse ones, there would be an incentive become better rail operators, and competition of the sort that benefits consumers would be possible.

It could be worse. In France for instance which has privatised very little, the national state owned rail operator is protected against competition from coach firms. There are lots of cities that have no direct rail links but cannot legally be linked by direct coach services either. The result being unnecessary long multiple train journeys instead of shorter, cheaper coach trips. It's not just privately owned companies that ought to face competition.

Haha, this is brilliant

[quote="ShockWaffle"If the market were competitive there would be winners and losers (that being the point of competition), some would go bust and their operations be snapped up by better run firms.[/quote]

It strikes my cynical mind that "better run firms" does not equate to "firms that can run a railway". At times, I feel that making trains run from point A to point B for the betterment of paying passengers is an unnecessary evil for some companies.

Some of the best railways I have travelled on have been privately owned. However, they also seem to have steam locomotives.

The best performing regional rail franchise in the last few years was publicly owned and has had it's franchise taken away so it can be sold off to the private sector again.

Aww, ain't it sweet. Every time SW says something witty, his little groupie runs out onto the pitch and shakes his pom poms.

Interestingly not in the case of railways the best value tickets are normally caused by cock ups in the pricing of tickets. e.g.

Chippenham to Didcot first class return £114
Didcot to Watford Junction ( via Paddington ) first class return £94.60
Total - £208.60 no changes required

Chippenham to Paddington first class return £256

saving £47.40

these privatised rail companies make the old nationalised British Rail look brilliant in comparison ...