London Banter - View Single Post

[email protected] · April 3rd 14, 11:34 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Thu, 3 Apr 2014 18:08:24 +0100, "Peter Masson"
wrote:

"Mizter T" wrote

(If you were to somehow escape Waterloo Tube station without
touching-out, and get on to the Waterloo mainline platforms without
touching-in, then on arrival at Wimbledon the system would assume you'd
arrived on the Underground - of course you would also have made the
Waterloo to Wimbledon journey on SWT without a valid ticket.)

Suppose you touch in at Kensington Olympia and touch out at Wimbledon.
Does the system know whether you've used LUL throughout, via Earls Court,
or NR throughout, via Clapham Junction? Does it take account of the
day/time and whether the Kensington Olympia - Earls Court service is
actually running?

Very interesting example. Looking at the fares finder shows that it is
priced on the TfL fare scale regardless of mode *provided* you don't
go via Zone 1 (where higher fares apply). Therefore the SWT service is
treated as being on the TfL PAYG tariff. To make it fair the base
fare should be priced as TfL / NR with an alternative fare made
available via West Brompton where there are pink validators to
register this route. I recognise this does NOT cover the possibility
of travel via Earls Court, which does not have pink validators, but
the District Line service from Olympia is very limited these days.

Checking the fare to Earsfield from Olympia shows it is more expensive
at all times compared to Wimbledon because it is priced on the TfL /
NR tariff. This is not the only inconsistency in pricing where there
are differing applications of TfL, NR and TfL / NR tariffs.

I have yet to find any fares which require the use of the pink
validators at Clapham Junction given there are no fares from north or
north east London routed via CJ onto Southern or SWT services. They're
just routed via Zone 1. This is important if you hold a Z23 travelcard
and want to travel from say Wandsworth Town to Crouch Hill. That
journey is priced via Zone 1 even though it is perfectly viable,
though slow, to use the Overground via Willesden and Gospel Oak.
Therefore you can travel entirely within your zones but the lack of a
priced PAYG fare means you will be surcharged for Zone 1 even if you
do not travel through it. The only way to avoid the surcharge is to
exit and then re-enter at Clapham Junction which breaks the journey.

I seem to remember running into that problem trying to do Highbury and
Islington to Clapham Junction too.

--
Colin Rosenstiel