So, I am in the possible ‘looking for a new job’ camp as a result of redundancy, maybe, that seems to just about sum up my situation anyway.

My questions:
– remote working will be likely part of the week, having commuted in the past the only kind of season ticket worked assuming 5 days travel into London (from Cambridgeshire). Is there a type of season ticket that’ll work 2 days a week, or does anyone inside the train network know if this will become a thing?
– Train companies are saying commuters will need to ‘get used to fewer trains’, given the shifts and changes are we going to see madness on Mon/Tue and then quieter trains for the rest of the week? What are you plans if you expect to be in the office for part of the week post-pandemia?

While I’d love to stick to a local job I can ride to, I also need to pay the mortgage and bills and at the moment there are more jobs in London for me than locally, albeit with lots of them looking at remote options for some/much of the time.

Is there a type of season ticket that’ll work 2 days a week, or does anyone inside the train network know if this will become a thing?

I was thinking about this the other day,with the rapid uptake of WFH and the drop in annual season ticket sales,you would imagine that the rail operators must be making plans to adapt/take advantage of this.

I used to do a partial commute before moving up to Calderdale. It was Bedfordshire to London. Any season / monthly / weekly ticket combination from that location required me to travel in just over the number of days I would work in London (varying between 3.1 days and 3.4 days), but that would give you weekend travel for the same journey. Advantage of monthly / annuals is you can also usually get a season ticket loan from your employer.

I ended up getting Carnet tickets (sold in 5 or 10 single journeys), which were valid for 3 months as some weeks I would only be in 1 or 2 days it was the most practical. As fasthaggis says above i wouldn’t be surprised if rail companies would need to start to offer a partial commute option for their annual tickets.

Thanks, I was wondering if it had already been announced and I’d just missed it, highly likely knowing me.

I used to enjoy using my train ticket for non work reasons, but after 5 days commuting, the last thing I wanted to do was go in again on a weekend!

I don’t think TfL have announced any plans so far.

I know Thameslink do a carnet, which is probably your best bet for the long distance bit.

If you have an oyster, or make sure to use the same contactless card on the TfL network, you’ll benefit from daily & weekly capping.

https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/tube-and-rail-fares/pay-as-you-go-caps

I should have said, if it happens I reckon mainline train in, at the moment to Farringdon, then something like a Brompton or deathtrap electric scooter to the actual office. I loathe the tube and will do as much as I can to avoid it.

Firstly the rail companies don’t have much say in ticket pricing. It’s mostly a hangover from British Rail and what the concessions are allowed to uplift fares by, so apart from travel that is devolved like London TFL or the equivalents in Manchester etc, there isn’t an easy mechanism to create a new ticket type and determine what the cost should be.

The season tickets work on the basis of unlimited travel, which make them easy to police either at barriered stations or manually. Having something that only gives you travel for 3 days or 4 days per week, or so many days per month like a carnet is that bit harder to police and manage.

A weekly season ticket is generally 4.5/7 the cost of daily peak return fares. If you are commuting 2 days out of 7 it makes little sense to the train operators to make a 2-day fare when there are already day-return fares and advance ticket options available. So the only thing I can see possibly happening is an Oyster card system across the whole network where you tap in and out and get charged the minimum of some published fees, depending on times etc. But I can’t see it getting rolled out because of infrastructure cost and because lots of people will get on a peak timed train and then complain of ‘overcharging’ when they are charged £200 instead of £40 or whatever.

Northern Rail were experimenting with a carnet-type system; something like 10 journeys within a 1-month period.

Train companies all over the UK (and the Government) know they’re going to have to come up with a new style of ticket because the old peak morning in / peak evening out 5x a week will dramatically decline.

“Northern Rail were experimenting with a carnet-type system” well that is good news. I hope it gets rolled out, the technology is there.

The current daily ‘anytime travel’ ticket is £52ish hence I am looking to reduce this if I were indeed to be offered and take the job, obviously still early days in this process of course.

I’m looking forward to some proper mental gymnastics from train operating companies operating into London in the face of a far lower season ticket volume. No word from my place about when we’re going to start going back into the office, but I’m thinking it might be more like a day a week than anything else…

We’ve been told at our place that it will be a move to hybrid working, aimed for September. I’m planning to do a combo of PAYG and running to / from work to keep the costs down. It’s about 10k door to door and isnt a bad journey, I’ll be amazed if the rail companies make it easy