I wrote about the time I visited Goukei Station on the Hakubi Line and made a side trip to the Bantan Line on my way back home. The tickets I purchased at that time were “Tokyo to Goukei” and “Goukei to Tokyo. The ticket for the round trip from Himeji to the Bantan Line was purchased with Suica.
Is it correct to buy as per the actual route?
If the path of travel were written as it is, it would look like this.
Tokyo → (Tokaido/Sanyo Shinkansen) → Okayama → (Sanyo Main Line) → Kurashiki → (Hakubi Line) → Gokei
Gogei → (Hakubi Line) → Kurashiki → (Sanyo Main Line) → Okayama → (Sanyo Shinkansen) → Himeji → (Bantan Line) → Mizoguchi → (Bantan Line) → Himeji → (Tokaido & Sanyo Shinkansen) → Tokyo
A ticket “can be made into one ticket as long as the sections do not overlap,” but the route in this case is “round trip plus side trip. In this case, one ticket was purchased for the first leg “Tokyo→Goukei,” one for the second leg “Goukei→Himeji→Mizoguchi,” and one for the third leg “Mizoguchi→Himeji→Tokyo. This is the way to buy tickets as per the route.
So why didn’t they do it? The reason lies in the “round-trip discount. A “round-trip discount” is applied to tickets with a one-way operating kilometer of 601 km or more, and the fare for the trip to and from the destination is reduced by one discount each.
The operating kilometer between Tokyo and Gogei is 764.1 km, so the one-way fare is 11,000 yen, or 22,000 yen for a round trip. However, if a round-trip discount is applied, the fare becomes 11,000 x 0.9 x 2 = 19,800 yen, a savings of 2,200 yen. The operating kilometer between Himeji and Mizoguchi is 14.5 km, so a one-way trip costs 240 yen and a round trip costs 480 yen. The total cost is 22,280 yen.
So what would happen if they had bought as routed? First, Tokyo→Goukei remains the same at 11,000 yen. Goukei→Himeji→Mizoguchi is 134.3 km, or 2,310 yen, and Mizoguchi→Himeji→Tokyo is 658.8 km, or 10,010 yen. The total is 23,320 yen, a difference of 3,040 yen.
This is the reason why the JR ticket is a “round-trip ticket plus side trip” instead of the same ticket as the route. The JR ticket is based on a system of diminishing returns, which means that the longer the distance, the lower the fare per kilometer.
The application of this system of diminishing distances is the circumferential route. For example, instead of simply taking the Hokuriku Shinkansen between Tokyo and Kanazawa and back, a circumferential route could be constructed by taking the Tokaido Shinkansen – Hokuriku Main Line – Hokuriku Shinkansen (or vice versa).
In order for this “round-trip plus side trip” to be valid, there is a prerequisite that a stopover must be available. The longer the distance of the “trunk” round trip and the shorter the distance of the “branch” detour, the greater the benefit. The shorter the distance of the “trunk” round-trip and the longer the distance of the “branch” detour, the less profitable it is.
© Source travel watch