(Roy Badami) wrote in
:

It's confusing, but there are two entirely different notions of
peak/off-peak used on the London network.

Each individual journey on Oyster PAYG is charged as peak
6.30am-9.30am and 4pm-7pm and off-peak at other times. The notion of
off-peak fares was new with Oyster (although the actual times have
been revised since launch) and off-peak fares were one of the carrots
used to drive Oyster adoption. The previous paper single tickets
hadn't depended on time of day (and still don't).

The daily fare caps on Oyster are charged as peak before 9.30am and
off-peak after 9.30am. This has always been the rule for Travelcards,
from which it was inherited - Oyster fair capping is essentially the
replacement for the One Day Travelcard - but the same rule continutes
to apply to One Day Travelcards, too, insofar as they still exist.

Railcard holders now also get a discount on the fare caps, by virtue
of the fact that they traditionally got a discount on One Day
Travelcards.

It does all make some kind of sense if you view it in the proper
historical context, but it's certainly not straightforward.

-roy


Also bear in mind that the normal rules for the railcard don't apply when
using an Oyster card loaded with a railcard. So a Gold Card (which isn't
normally valid until 10:00 MF) will give Oyster discounts from 09:30 and
you get discount on Tube only single journeys (which you can't with a paper
ticket).

I havn't yet tried a journey before 06:30 but the TfL fare finder

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/tickets/fa...inder/current/

suggests - bizarrely - that the off-peak fare with railcard discount will
be available.

The lack of discount between 4pm-7pm has caught me out a few times ...

David