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INFORMED SOURCES April 2002

Fight to save the Network Card

The Bus Bandits are at it again – to the barricades!

Network Card was part of Chris Green's grand vision of one network for London . It meant that you could get a one third discount off tickets for travel outside the morning peak anywhere in Network South East.

Given the price of even day returns and travel cards, Network Card made a big difference to the perceived cost of using rail, particular since the discount applied to groups of up to four and, as the slogan had it ‘kids could go for a quid'.

Come privatisation and the Conservatives were bounced into protecting some of the Railcards, but the Network Card remained voluntary and has been under fire ever since. ATOCs first attempt to drop the Network card came in 1997. It claimed that the Card was abstractive. After all, day returns already offered a substantial discount so why give a discount on a discount?

Well, yes but. Out in the real world loyalty cards are a big thing. For £40 or so you can become a friend of the Tate or the Royal Academy and get into exhibitions free. Three exhibitions a year at the Royal Academy and we are in profit. In Switzerland 30% of the population have all line Rovers and so, like car owners who have paid for tax and insurance, see rail travel as ‘cheap'.

Anway, Informed Sources got wind of the move and sounded the alarm and Network card was saved. Well, sort of. Subsequently ‘kids for a quid' was dropped and the child fare became subject to a minimum charge of £1.

Try again

Late last year I got wind of a fresh attempt by ATOC to drop network card. TOC's were threatening to introduce their own cards, which would not be interchangeable. There would also be a minimum fare of £10.00.

So I asked the ever helpful ATOC press office what was happening - making sure I phoned on the day when the ATOC board was discussing the issue. And by return First Great Eastern's media enforcer was on the line.

'Why are you asking about Network Card', he inquired with silken menace? So I explained.

'You don't want to bother your head with minor details like Network Card when there are so many big issues you ought to be writing about' he flattered. The unspoken rider 'if you know what's good for you' hung in the air.

This time round, he revealed, there was a new abstractive threat. Occasional commuters buy two tickets in the morning - a full fare single out and a return with a Network card. This is indeed blatant abstraction. But the answer to such misuse should be to stop up the loop-hole rather than devalue the card.

Anyway, having remembered the pain and grief from the Regulator and Parliament, not to mention passenger bodies, in 1997, ATOC back-tracked, but not for long.

And again

Discontent among certain TOCs kept bubbling on. Within ATOC views were split. First Group and Go-Ahead led the hardliners, who threatened to leave the scheme unless the minimum fare restrictions were introduced during the peak. Those in favour of keeping the scheme as it is, were Stagecoach (perhaps surprisingly) and Connex. National Express, predictably, havered, but would support the minimum fare proposal if there was a real threat of other TOCs leaving the scheme.

And on 28 February there was a vote at ATOC and the proposed £10 minimum fare during the week was accepted pro tem. In anticipation of protest, the change was announced as ‘plans to' and ATOC said that its members would meet again in four weeks time (nominally 28 March) to ‘consider the comments of passengers and their representatives on this issue and decide whether or not these change their decision'.

If the changes go ahead, the conditions of use for Network Railcards purchased after 2 June this year will change. From that date, tickets purchased from Monday to Friday, will have a minimum fare of £10.

According to ATOC's Director of Commercial Services Philip Benham the change is indeed aimed at countering those using their Network Cards for peak hour commuting. This was, it was claimed, costing the TOCs between £5million and £10million a year and ‘encourages travel in the peak'.

When I argued the decision with Philip Benham and his team, and oddly, I was the only one who turned up for the railway press briefing thatATOC organised, they defended the move on the grounds that the change in conditions would ‘provide train companies with greater flexibility to offer promotions that are tailored to their passengers' needs'.

‘It is broad brush, which added we can't target specific groups' he explained.

This is marketing speak, since the whole aim of the change is to screw more money out of rail travellers and not just commuter abstraction. That vague ‘£5-10million' is spread over 11 commuter TOCs plus six other operators into London . In an industry with a £3billion turnover it is background noise.

No, the real prize is getting rid of discounts on day returns costing under £15 during the week. As ATOC admitted, the presence of Network Card inhibits decisions where market pricing would work without the extra one third off.

Does it really matter? I think so. Network Card held together something that is coming back with the devolution of power to the Mayor of London – the concept of a pan-London multi-modal transport system.

How ironic that just as Thameslink and CrossRail are coming to the fore again, that the main line railway reverts to the feudal system that was BR London & South East before Chris Green thought big.

So I'm going to write to my MP and stir up the watchdogs. As the well known philosopher Joni Mitchell observed, ‘you don't know what you've got ‘till its gone'.

So there you are. It is possible to write a column with mentioning the W*** C**** M*** L***, the S******** P*** or even R********. But don't bank on it lasting.