On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 07:50:24 +0000, Martin Rich
wrote:

On Wed, 7 Jan 2004 16:39:20 +0000, Kat
wrote:
[snip]
No matter what sort of ticket or Pre Pay alone you have on Oyster, it's
essential to use the yellow reader at both the start and finish of your
journey.

So far, I haven't been doing this at Finsbury Park, and I've done 5
journeys starting or finishing at Finsbury Park so far this week. The
posters at Finsbury Park imply that it's only essential to use the
readers there if you're on pre-pay.

That's why I remain slightly puzzled by the problems with using a
paper extension ticket. If I buy a paper extension, my Oyster record
looks just the same whether I've travelled from a zone 1 station to a
zone 3 station, and presented my extension at the zone3 station, or
I've travelled from zone 1 to Finsbury Park and just walked out of the
station at Finsbury Park. (As it happens I usually travel to or from
Finsbury Park by W3 or W7 bus, so it should be easy enough to deduce
where I've been from the complete record, but I don't think the system
is that clever). At the other end, if the paper extension won't open
the gate, what would I do if I still had a paper season ticket? The
extension ticket and the gate at the zone 3 station don't know what
type of Travelcard I have.

The issue at the heart of this is whether you *have* to validate solely
for Pre-Pay or part Pre-Pay trips compared to a Travelcard only trip.

As I think I (and others) have posted before it is essential to record
entry and exit points for any trip that involves pre-pay. The
subtleties relating to extension tickets being paid from the pre-pay
part of an Oyster card have not been well communicated IMO.

Your experience of using Finsbury Park is different to other whole gated
trips simply because you have not validated your travelcard part of your
Oyster card (you don't have to) which is why a trip record would show
and entry in Zone 1 and then presumably an exit back at Zone 1 because
there is no validation at the Zone 3 station to which you have travelled
on a magnetic ticket. The system has to be tolerant of such cases
because if it wasn't thousands of people who enter the LUL system via
open interchanges (e.g. Highbury cross platform from WAGN) would have
their cards rejected. This would not be a sensible policy.

Extension tickets hardly ever open ticket gates at the destination
because they are for a lower fare than the trip you have taken from the
station where you bought it. Therefore a gate will always reject them on
exit as "under fare". If you bought an extension (for your return leg)
at your Zone 3 station to add to your Z12 T/Card then it would work
because the ticket was bought where the gate is and is for a valid fare
to some other station from Z3.

There is a clear need to provide a sensible explanation as to

a) how travelling out of Zone with an Oyster card works.
b) what passengers should do with their cards.
c) what the ramifications are if for whatever reason they are unable /
unwilling to comply with the rules.

I was most surprised when Kat posted that someone with zero Pre-Pay
balance had been deducted into negative value because they presented
their Travelcard Oyster out of zone. While I understand why the system
does it I think it is barmy to put passengers in a position of needing
to do something with their cards when there is nothing to explain to
them the way to avoid it happening. I've looked at the Oyster website
and I was not terribly impressed with the FAQ.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!