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[email protected] · July 7th 11, 01:55 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Wed, 06 Jul 2011 02:28:27 -0500,
wrote:

That is where I disagree with you. If there are not-via-zone 1 fares
this seems a reasonable one which should exist. If there is a higher
fare for a zone 2 - zone 1 - zone 2 journey then there really should be
a not via zone 1 fare option.

I'm sorry but this is plainly daft for the journey you did. It is an
extremely long way round for a short cut to go from Highbury to Putney
NR via the NLL and WLL and then SWT. No one in their right mind would
take that route as a quick or effective way to travel. There are
faster routes via Zone 1 and it is an entirely reasonable assumption
that it will be the choice of almost everyone to go that way. This is
why there is only one priced route.

This argument would be more credible if there wasn't a Highbury to Clapham
not via zone 1 fare. That is the default fare too, with via zone 1 as the
alternatives.

One thing that would of course help in making it all that bit more
comprehensible would be if there was a single Oyster PAYG tariff
rather than the current arrangement of there being separate TfL
(i.e. Tube & DLR), NR and TfL+NR 'through' journey tariffs. However
getting to that point isn't likely to be remotely easy (see how
long it took for the TOCs to adopt Oyster PAYG universally in
London).
I thought there was. There are tables showing fares for pretty well all
zone combinations so I reasonably thought it applied to my journey and
that making the non-trivial effort to touch the pink validator at
Willesden Junction (try it some time if changing there from a Richmond
to a Clapham Junction train) I decided to pursue the charge.

Just because there is a fare shown on a tariff for a given zonal
combination does not mean that it applies for every origin and
destination pair when using PAYG. This is why TfL have provided the
Single Fare finder - to make it explicit as to whether there is just
one fare for a journey on a given priced route or if there are options
whereby you may need to interchange at a given point or else use a
route validator.

You obviously know the system better than I do. It sure confused me,

--
Colin Rosenstiel