On Oct 21, 6:36 pm, MIG wrote:

On 21 Oct, 18:14, "tim...." wrote:

"Paul Corfield" wrote:

Information available via

http://www.london.gov.uk/who-runs-lo...ecisions/md698

and

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/medi...tre/17092.aspx

Not looked at it in detail so no comments.

Off peak fares to be charged contra-flow during the evening peak.

Can't find the Zones 1-6 cap anywhere (found 1-2 and 1-9).

It has really pist off the journalists, hasn't it, this burying of bad
news on CSR day?

They are saying that it's the start of an attempt to phase out
travelcards.

Given how an Oyster OSI ****up has just saddled me with a penalty
fare, and I can't be the only one, this is extremely bad news.

Is anyone actually saying it's the start of an attempt to completely
phase out Travelcards? (I mean, apart from you?)

Lets have a look at what's happening here.

First off, one should note that Day Travelcards and Oyster PAYG daily
caps now exactly mirror each other (they have done so since the
beginning of this year, previously Oyster caps were set at 50p below
the then quasi-equivalent Day Travelcard price) - so all changes

What is being 'phased out' aka got rid of can be seen on the table of
page 12 of the MD678 document [1], and it consists of:

(a) a selection of Anytime (aka Peak) Day Travelcards and therefore
also the Oyster caps that match these - so the Anytime 1-3, 1-5 and
2-6 Day Travelcards and related caps;

(b) and also the Off-peak 2-6 Day Travelcard and related cap (which I
have to say that personally I'm particularly annoyed about, but I'll
come back to that later).

It seems to me these changes are just ways of eking that bit more
revenue out of the system - of course the prices of all (the
remaining) Day Travelcards and hence daily caps are going up too, and
by rather more than the headline 6.8% increase in TfL fares.

So it might take a journey (or maybe two? - haven't looked at it that
closely yet) more to hit a cap (or justify the purchase of a Day
Travelcard), but that does not in and of itself mean that the Day
Travelcard is being phased out.

And yes of course season Travelcards are going up too, so this might
again tip 'borderline' punters towards PAYG instead of buying a season
Travelcard - but my understanding is that Travelcard prices (both
season and Day - at least the off-peak flavour) were actually held
down in price at the Jan 2010 fares change because of the rail fares
regulatory mechanism which linked it to RPI (and there hadn't been any
inflation).

Indeed I recall Boris saying something like 'the Travelcard prices
were only held down for political reasons' (which translates as it
being a central government restraint which was out of his hands),
though as I recall that didn't stop other parts of the Boris PR
machine trumpeting the 'frozen' Travelcard fares.

I haven't entirely got my head around it, but I assume that the
announcement in the CSR about rail fares rising by RPI+2% is what has
enabled these Travelcard price rises - so whilst indeed I imagine it
was rather convenient for the Mayor to announce these new fares on the
same day as the CSR, and hence hope some of the bad news got drowned
out, it couldn't have been announced any earlier (else it would have
given the game away w.r.t. the above inflation rail fares rises -
well, we all knew it was coming, but it would have confirmed it).

One last thing - yes, Oyster Ticket Stops are going to stop selling
printed Day Travelcards - so that's a phasing out of sorts. Can't say
I'm really at all surprised by that - indeed, I'm sure it's been part
of the game plan, what with the withdrawal from newsagents of the
machines that printed tickets and had Oyster pads retrofitted in
favour of the much simpler, all electronic/ no moving parts Oyster
'Pearl' devices - I didn't imagine that newsagents going back to the
old ways of having a stock of pre-printed Travelcards kept in an ice-
cream box under the counter, and stamping the date on them, would last
all that long! So yes, those who specifically want a Day Travelcard
over using Oyster will now need to get to a station in order to buy
one.

-----
[1] MD678:
http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/defau...on%20PDF.pd f