Split ticket savings: How exploiting Britain's barmy train fares could cut the cost of your travel

Independent

03-03-2025

Rail fares have risen again. On 2 March 2025 ticket prices went up by an average of 4.6 per cent in England and Wales; from 1 April 2025, ScotRail tickets will cost 3.8 per cent more.
Fortunately, Britain's absurd rail fare structure means there are plenty of pricing anomalies you can quite legally exploit by 'splitting tickets'. And after the latest rail fare rise the potential savings from dividing a rail journey into separate segments are bigger than ever.
Rather than buying a ticket from Bristol to London, it pays to use the 'Didcot Dodge'. Get one ticket from Bristol to Didcot Parkway and a second from there to London. Mad, but beneficial. You are 'splitting tickets' to save over £50. Just make sure the train stops at Didcot.
The money you legally save by splitting tickets is depriving the rail industry – and by extension the government – of revenue. The more this happens, the better: it will hasten the day when ministers finally have the courage to reform a rotten fares system. So do yourself and fellow rail travellers a favour by seeking savings and accelerating the progress of the necessary root-and-branch reform.
What is split ticketing?
You would expect someone on a train from A to C that stops in B to pay no more than the sum of the individual legs from A to B and B to C. The passenger might even get a reduction in the per-mile rate for going a long distance. After all, the bigger a container of milk you buy, the less the per-unit cost.
Yet since rail privatisation, successive governments have sustained a 'system' that defies logic. As a result, passengers have plenty of chances to save.
Suppose you want to travel from Shrewsbury to Liverpool, requiring a change of train in Chester. You might fondly imagine the best course of action is to buy a standard ticket for the journey – price £35.40, whatever time of day you travel.
But if you buy separate tickets for each leg – Shrewsbury-Chester and Chester-Liverpool – you save almost £12, reducing the cost by one-third. This is for a completely flexible, travel whenever you like journey. But on each leg Advance tickets are available for many trains, reducing the fare to barely half the number you first thought of.
What if I'm not changing trains?
No problem. The technique also works where the passenger stays on the same train, as in the example of Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington.
The Anytime fare for the full intercity journey is set at a premium price – £138.70 – because, frankly, businesses are prepared to pay it. Yet you can combine two tickets set according to different principles:
A Bristol-Didcot ticket for £43.80. This is priced as a regional journey and therefore much lower than journeys to and from London.
A Didcot-London ticket for £40. As the Oxfordshire station is part of the 'Network South East' area, in which the aim is to keep fares affordable for commuters (though many would dispute that).
Congratulations, you have saved £51.90, or 37 per cent of the fare.
You can also save on journeys that straddle the peak/off-peak boundary, to obtain the benefit of the off-peak portion. For example, from Hitchin in Hertfordshire to Brighton, the 8.55am departure switches from peak to off-peak at London St Pancras. Splitting the journey saves over £6 on the £51.70 through ticket.
Sounds complicated – are there any short-cuts?
Fortunately technology has come to the rescue. Mainstream rail retailers such as Trainline automatically offer 'SplitSave' fares that exploit a ticket-splitting opportunity. The same technology and feature is available on the ScotRail app, which – unlike Trainline – does not charge fees.
More sophisticated dedicated sites such TrainSplit.com will search through multiple possibilities for the lowest combination of Advance, Off-peak and Anytime fares that will work for your journey. For a trip between Aberdeen and Plymouth at 8.20am tomorrow, the standard Advance fare is £220. But TrainSplit will get you there for £70 less, with splits at Dundee, Edinburgh Haymarket, Carlisle, Stafford, Wolverhampton, Cheltenham Spa, Bristol Parkway and Tiverton Parkway. Yes, nine separate tickets.
Is ticket-splitting legal?
Yes. The only requirement is that the train stops to set down and pick up passengers at the intermediate station. On that London-Bristol route, most Great Western Railway services stop in Didcot. But if you have booked London-Didcot and Didcot-Bristol and travel on a train that whizzes through the Oxfordshire station at 125mph you will be travelling without a valid ticket.
GWR says: 'You could be issued with an Unpaid Fare Notice, a Penalty Fare Notice or be interviewed under caution.' Many people who have tried to split tickets have encountered problems when they haven't scrupulously obeyed the rules.
Do I need a whole series of paper tickets?
In some cases you do, and any ticket office will sell you the required components for your journey. But for most trips you will be able to buy online and get tickets on your smartphone.
Why are fares so irrational?
When British Rail was broken up and rail privatisation began in 1995, the fares regime was stipulated by the 415-page Ticketing & Settlement Agreement (TSA). It is a document intended to protect the interests of travellers. The TSA insists that each of the 2,500 stations in Britain must have a fare to all of the others. In the course of setting those prices, anomalies are inevitable.
But it was written long before the budget airlines transformed our attitude to travel pricing, with the principle that the most in-demand services will be expensive – and that the more flexible you are, the more you can save.
The current rail ticketing system relies on some travellers paying more than they need, which is plainly unfair. Fares reform is way overdue: eradicating anomalies, switching to pricing based on one-way legs and removing the 'cliff-edge' border between peak and off-peak prices.
Why hasn't anyone cleared up the mess?
Successive governments have failed to reform the system. Instead, once a year ministers just push up all fares. They fear the political risks. The Treasury is concerned that a new fare structure could see revenue falling even further. And governments are aware that reform will see many rail fares fall and others remaining the same – but some tickets will cost more.
People who find the cost of their weekly commute or weekend excursion has risen by 10 per cent will make far more noise than those whose find their journeys are 20 per cent cheaper.