The Hidden Truth About UK Train Fares: Have you been played?

 

Same Journey, Different Price — Why?

Thinking about you on a train from Manchester to London, you spend about £60 on this trip with sipping your overpriced station coffee, when the person sitting next to you casually mentions he paid just £30 for the same journey. Suddenly, your £60 ticket tastes twice as bitter. Same seats, same destination, so why did he only pay half?

This isn’t luck, it’s because he knew the system better than you. This is a case of information asymmetry. The train company had all these options available but didn’t show them clearly. One passenger had access to better information; the other didn’t. And that knowledge gap turned into a price gap.

But that £60 ticket is just the tip of the iceberg. The real problem? The system is rigged to hide cheaper options, from hidden fares buried in maze-like menus to psychological traps that steer you toward higher prices, the system is designed to keep passengers in the dark.

Behind the Screens: How the System Is Built to Mislead

So why does this happen? Here’s the dirty secret: your train operator isn’t working for you, they’re gaming a principal-agent problem. In theory, you’re the boss (the principal), trusting the ticketing platform (the agent) to find the best deal for your journey. But in reality, platforms like Trainline are profit hunters. In this case, they prefer to sell tickets with higher commissions—like those £60 ‘flexible’ fares—quietly push them while burying cheaper split-ticket options behind layers of filters.

But it’s not just one app with bad incentives, the whole system is built this way. Operators use shared algorithms to monitor and match prices in real-time. This behavior aligns with what Ezrachi and Stucke (2016) call "conscious parallelism"—a form of tacit collusion where firms, through identical algorithms, mirror each other’s pricing strategies without explicit agreement. The outcome? Prices are kept at levels far higher than true competition would allow. It’s a clear case of information asymmetry: operators know exactly how the system works, but passengers don’t. The result? Prices look identical across platforms, making it nearly impossible for passengers to find better deals.

It's not the end, the manipulation goes deeper, and it's in your face. Every time you book a ticket, the system nudges you to pay more. By how? Imagine you are searching the app late at night, watching the fare jump £10 within minutes, and you panic, clicking “Buy Now” before it gets worse. Or hesitating for just a moment too long and seeing the message: “Only 2 seats left at this price!” This stress is not random. It’s built into the system. To avoid the risk of paying more later, many passengers rush to book expensive tickets even though waiting or taking a different route could save money.

This strategy, called loss aversion, is when people value losses more than associated gains. (Jervis, R. (1992)), it preys on our panic: we'd rather overpay now than risk missing out even if waiting could save us cash. Train companies deliberately limit cheap tickets and use panic-inducing messages to push early bookings, proving that high fares are not just about market control, but also about manipulating minds and behaviors. As a result, you’re not just buying a seat, you’re stepping into a system that quietly turns your confusion into profit.

Where Your Money Goes and Why It’s Hard to Know

 

Figure 1: Where do rail fares go? Source: Rail Delivery Group via BBC (2018).

The manipulation doesn’t stop at confusing prices, it runs deeper, baked into fare components that are designed not just to obscure what passengers pay, but why they pay it. According to Figure 1, only 2% of your fare goes toward profit, with the bulk covering staff wages, infrastructure, and maintenance. But here’s the catch: 35% of spending is jumped into a vague “other” category. What exactly does “other” mean? No one knows and that’s the problem. Without clear, itemized breakdowns, passengers are left guessing—Is that £60 ticket a fair price or a rip-off? Right now, there’s no way to tell.

Real Transparency, Real Change

Trying to book a train ticket these days feels like navigating a maze, and that’s not an accident. It’s exactly why we need real transparency. Transparency isn’t about being nice; it’s about being visible. And that visibility is what gives it power. As Zúñiga, Jenkins, and Jackson (2018) put it, “To ensure a positive influence, transparency and accountability systems should be designed to support each other.” In other words, openness only matters when it’s tied to consequences. That’s where regulation and public scrutiny come in. Once things are out in the open, companies face real pressure from reputation damage to financial penalties. And often, that’s enough to steer them away from sneaky practices, like hiding cheaper fares or rigging the way prices are ranked.

If we want to push back against all this confusion, we need a simple, universal rule for how train fares are shown. Booking platforms should be required to show all available options upfront, not just the most expensive or convenient ones filtered through algorithms. That means including split ticketing, off-peak alternatives, and slower but cheaper routes without making passengers dig for them.

When passengers no longer have to ‘dig’ for a fair deal, it tackles two fundamental problems: information asymmetry (can I trust this fare?) and the principal-agent problem (is this platform really acting in my interest?). Transparency changes the rules of the game. No more hidden profits at the passenger’s expense, leaving just honest, genuine price that puts people first.

Conclusion: Small Choices, Big Impact

So, next time you book a ticket, take a breath. Are you picking the easiest option or the fairest one? Try checking for split fares, comparing platforms, or waiting a bit longer instead of reacting to countdown clocks and panic alerts. The system may be built to confuse, but a little awareness puts power back in your hands. And when enough passengers make smarter choices, the industry has no choice but to change.

Reference list

BBC news (2018). Reality Check: Where does your train fare go? Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46398947. (Accessed: 20 March, 2025)

Ezrachi, A., & Stucke, M. E. (2017). Artificial intelligence & collusion: When computers inhibit competition. U. Ill. L. Rev., 1775. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2591874. (Accessed: 22 March, 2025)

Jervis, R. (1992). Political Implications of Loss Aversion. Political Psychology, 13(2), 187–204. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/3791678. (Accessed: 15 March, 2025)

Zúñiga, N., Jenkins, M., & Jackson, D. (2018). Does more transparency improve accountability? Transparency International. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep20498. (Accessed: 18 March, 2025)