In message , at 10:07:24 on Thu, 1 May
2014, Someone Somewhere remarked:
Just wondering how this could be explained - I was in Bath yesterday
and travelling back to Shadwell. According to National Rail an
off-peak single to Paddington was £31.50 (what the machine actually
spat out was a Super Off-peak single to London Terminals for that).
However, a search for Waterloo finds the cheapest ticket is £34.50.

Each was any permitted in routing terms, and given Waterloo is a
legitimate London Terminal (having changed at Reading) the £3
discrepency seems odd.

That's because the £3 is the tube fare from Paddington to Waterloo, and
the journey planner is only showing the fastest routes. It's £31.50 to
Waterloo from Bath, change at Reading or Salisbury, if you specify "via
Clapham Junction" to show the slower trains.

However, that's not what I came here to post about - given the tube
strike, my uncertainty of routing and my inability to find/see large
pink Oyster routing indicators I thought I would be cunning and look at
the price of a ticket straight to Shadwell as it's technically a
National Rail station. The quoted off-peak price? £58.00.

Super off peak.

I'm not normally one to get het up about petty price disputes, but even
I have to admit that £26.50 for a Z1-2 single seems a little steep....

The difference is a result of the single to Shadwell only being £1 less
than the £59 return, whereas the single to Paddington is [much closer
to] half the price of the £55[1] return.

So based on the majority of ticket prices nationally, the anomaly is
actually how cheap the single to Paddington is.

Obviously something to watch out for when buying singles - the
opportunity to save money by splitting according to the possibility of
"x/2" vs "x-£1" rates for singles on different legs.

[1] With the cross-London portion of the return thus being £4.
--
Roland Perry