"Tristán White" wrote:

Can someone tell journeyplanner.org and all the other websites, apps,
etc etc, that if you want to go from Bowes Park to London Bridge, it's
a hell of a lot easier to change at Moorgate (down one tiny escalator
- about 20 seconds all in) than at Old Street (which takes about 3
minutes).

Everywhere recommends changing at Old Street, which I cannot
understand. Moorgate is so much easier.

I think journey planners default to recommend changing at the first
available interchange point (in this case Old Street) - indeed if you ask
the Journey Planner for the reverse journey, it'll recommend you change at
Moorgate.

(As an aside, going northbound I prefer changing at Old St - at Moorgate,
one potentially needs to work out which of the two trains on the two
platforms is going to leave first, which of course isn't an issue at Old
St - then again I'm often in a rush!)


Incidentally, when using PAYG, there's a yellow touchpad at the top of
the escalator. I have an annual so this doesn't concern me personally,
but merely out of curiosity, if a PAYG user did not touch that pad
with one's Oyster while making the transfer, could he or she be
charged for any non-starting or non-ending journeys? What with Bowes
Park being a National Rail PAYG fare-station rather than a TfL PAYG
fare-station.

No, passengers only need to touch-in at the start of their journey, and out
at the end of it.

The Oyster touchpads you refer to at Moorgate and Old St are provided for
passengers arriving on FCC (Great Northern) using paper rail tickets to
touch-in in order to start their Tube journey on Oyster PAYG, and likewise
to end their Tube journey when heading for the FCC platforms.

However if an Oyster PAYG user touches on one of these touchpads
mid-journey, there's no ill-effect at all - I've done just this to test it
out. (Same applies to say the Oyster touchpads located within Stratford
station - and they're provided for the same reason too.)


(I know that TfL have just announced the getting rid of the £4
overcharge for when people forget to touch in or touch out - but if I
understand it correctly, this is only for when the system spots a
regular journey. And I guess it won't apply in the case of the NR PAYG
journeys either, though I haven't read confirmation of that, yet.)

I hadn't clocked this development until you mentioned it - here's the report
from Monday in the Evening Standard:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23983998.do

A few comments - it's wrong to say that they're getting rid of the "Maximum
Oyster fare", that's not what's going to happen - rather as the ES story
states they are going to try and spot the "symmetry of repeated journeys",
and if there's the occasional failure to touch-in or out then it seems
they'll process a refund to that card. (However it simply won't be possible
to spot the "symmetry of repeated journeys" if a cardholder always fails to
touch-in or touch-out.)

Also, just to be up-to-date, what you describe as the "£4 overcharge", TfL
refers to as the "Maximum Oyster fare" (when it was £4 they referred to it
as the "maximum cash fare") - note that it's no longer set at £4, rather it
actually varies station by station but can be up to £7.40 - more info he
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14873.aspx

(If you ever touch-in at an ungated station, then so long as you knew what
your balance was beforehand you can then go back to the ticket machine and
check your current Oyster balance and determine what level the "max Oyster
fare" is set to at that particular station - e.g. when I did this at a
suburban outer-London NR station the other day, it came out at £4.40.)

Lastly, I don't know why you think that this new refund system described in
the ES article wouldn't apply to NR PAYG journeys - I can't see any reason
why it wouldn't - well unless the TOCs failed to play along it, I suppose -
however given that a failure to touch-in or out is far far more likely when
making an NR journey (or journey with an NR component), given that so many
NR stations in London are ungated, I'm pretty sure it'll apply regardless of
whether it's an NR, Tube or combination journey being made.