London Banter - View Single Post - Oyster Top-up Queries

[email protected] · January 23rd 10, 08:10 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article
,
(Mizter T) wrote:

On Jan 23, 2:20*pm, wrote:
In article
,

(Mizter T) wrote:
The outboundary Day Travelcard will of course continue to exist -
the TOCs sell a ton of them.

At extraordinarily widely varying prices. I've been having a
(non-)correspondence with FCC. I asked them to explain why, when a
Cambridge to London Terminals Off Peak Day Return is £20 (or £13.20
with railcard) and the Oxford to London Terminals Off Peak Day Return
is also £20 (or £13.20 with railcard), the Cambridge Day Travelcard
is £26.50 (£17.50 with railcard, a £4.30 addon) while the Oxford one
is only £2 (with railcard discount) more than the London Terminals
fare.

All I got back from First was this waffle:

"I have passed your thoughts to our fares Manager, who has replied
saying that the Travelcard fare within the Travelcard Area (Zones
1-6) are set by Transport for London in conjunction with all the Train
Operators that operate services within the Travelcard Area."

Obviously ********.

What the letter failed to go on and say was that 'out-boundary
Travelcard fares are set by TOCs on the basis of a commercial decision
as to how much they can get away with charging (versus their desire to
attract traffic)'. Of course there will be a certain amount of money
from each out-boundary Travelcard that has to go into the Travelcard
pot, for sharing out, but that only accounts for some of it.

Re your examples - FGW probably price the Oxford fares in the context
of the competing coach services to London, a factor that doesn't exist
at Cambridge (NXEA arguably provide a bit of 'competition', but most
pax go the fast way via KX and FCC).

As opposed to the very slow way via the Oxford Tube? 100 minutes outside
rush hours makes West Anglia look quick!

--
Colin Rosenstiel