A standard off-peak one-way train ticket from London to Durham costs £154. A return is just £1 more – an increase of just 0.65 per cent for doubling the length of the trip. It is perhaps the most obvious of many anomalies “baked in” to the UK rail fares system.
The transport secretary, Mark Harper, will reportedly unveil plans this week to replace return fares with “single-leg pricing”, in which the price of two single tickets will be equal to a return. Single fares will fall by almost half in many cases.
