On Feb 10, 1:01*am, "John Salmon" wrote:
Can someone please explain why all the Oyster fares to the four c2c stations
which are outside the Travelcard zones but inside the Oyster PAYG area
include validity within zones 7, 8 and 9? These three zones have absolutely
nothing to do with c2c, and the number of people who need validity e.g. to
Grays *and* to Zone 9 must be vanishingly small. *The area containing these
four stations is contiguous with Zone 6, so why not (for example) "Zone 1-6
+ Grays"?


I think conceptually you might not be looking at this in quite the
right way, though I certainly see where you're coming from. An Oyster
single fare is for the journey made, i.e. it doesn't include validity
beyond that journey - I don't know the inside workings of Oyster PAYG
revenue apportionment, which I'd think are hellishly complicated (and
far more dynamic than the divvying up of the Travelcard loot), but at
a complete guess I'd suggest that c2c would probably get a greater cut
of the money from a Grays to Fenchurch St plus zone 1 Tube journey
than if that same passenger then continued on to travel out to
Amersham on the Met line - most pax from Grays being rather more
likely to do the former than the latter.

Given that, in terms of determining the fares structure I'd suggest
it's simply easier for there to simply be a 'zone 1-9 + Grays' fare
than for there to be both 'z1-6 + Grays' and 'z1-9 + Grays' fares - in
effect once you're coming into London from Grays then any travel out
to zones 7-9 comes for 'free' - however, how the money is actually
divided up between c2c and LU/LO depends on what you do and where you
travel (which in most cases isn't going to involve heading out to
Bucks or Herts!).