At last, the anomaly concerning the purchase of Annual Season Tickets with a Gold Card is being addressed. As readers of my blog may remember, the previous situation was that to get a Gold Card with an annual season ticket, the ticket had to be bought AND have an origin or destination station within the old Network South-East area. This meant that holders of Birmingham to London Annual Season Tickets had to buy them from London rather than Birmingham.
From January 2015, the Annual Gold Card area is being extended considerably so that any annual season ticket between stations from Birmingham to London (EXCEPT those wholly within the Network West Midlands area) is eligible for the Annual Gold Card. Full details can be found at http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/46573.aspx#2015
Good news for +Chiltern Railways and +London Midland commuters. NOTE however that Virgin Trains will NOT be accepting Annual Gold Card discounted tickets from January.
An interesting side-effect of these changes is that a Gold Card will become available for £144. This is the price of the Lichfield City - Lichfield Trent Valley Annual Season Ticket - a journey which is within the new Gold Card area. A saving of £24 on the previous lowest price annual season ticket between Ryde Esplanade and Ryde St John's Road!
Barry Doe has written a very useful overview of the usefulness of the new version of the Card in Rail 761 (12-25 November 2014)
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