London Banter - View Single Post - Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off

[email protected] · April 24th 14, 04:35 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 10:47:36 -0500, wrote:

In article ,
(Peter Johnson) wrote:

On Wed, 23 Apr 2014 18:08:41 +0100, Paul Corfield
wrote:

However the alternative is that thousands of journey combinations are
priced via Zone 1 *regardless* of the fact that for a lot of journeys
orbital routes avoiding Zone 1 are now feasible. The DLR and
Overground have facilitated a lot of that extra choice.

I, for one, would object enormously to be charged via Zone 1 when I'd
never been through the centre! If I *do* go via Zone 1 then fair
enough I'll pay the extension fare but at least I've decided to do
that rather than some system imposing it on me even when I have *not*
been via Zone. If I need to tap a pink reader to stay in the rule set
then that's OK, if a little tiresome.

I came up against that at Willesden Junction when the new
inter-platform route was opened; I used it but there is no pink reader
there and no warning that it must be used. There was no way that I
could have got from Stonebridge Park to Kew in the time taken if I had
gone via Zone 1 but neither LOR nor TfL were interested in putting
things right.

I thought the pink validator was on the route between those lines at
Willesden Junction? It was somewhere around there when I had to walk
from the LO platforms and back to use it.

Mr J is correct. There are *two* routes between the NLL and DC
platforms at WJ. if you go the old route down the narrow stairs and
"up and down" corridor then you do fall across the pink validators
(near the stairs down to the n/b DC platform). However if you use
the new link at the eastern end of the NLL platform it takes you round
in the open and you can reach the DC platforms without encountering a
pink validator.

For a while there was a similar issue when they created a new wide
stairway from the e/b NLL platform to the GOBLIN bay at Gospel Oak.
The pink validator is located on the narrow ramp so it was entirely
possible to dash between a NLL and GOBLIN train on the new stairs and
not see a pink validator. I *think* TfL have installed an extra pink
validator on the stepped route. Nonethless it was all too easy for
people to change trains and not validate.

They don't seem to be helping do they?

--
Colin Rosenstiel