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[email protected] · December 20th 15, 12:07 AM posted to uk.transport.london,cam.transport

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Sat, 19 Dec 2015 10:23:29 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 09:21:40 on
Sat, 19 Dec 2015, Paul Corfield remarked:

Already an important franchise commitment, greater capacity to King's
Lynn, has been sabotaged by Network Rail's inability to deliver Ely
North Junction.

And while not GN's fault Northstowe Parkway station is a year (or more,
depending on which broken promise you count) late, and perhaps
something to do with co-operation from Abellio the franchise commitment
to roll out "Franchise wide" smart ticketing has been re-jigged as
"Royston and further south".

Roger Ford tweeted this week that the South East Flexible Ticketing
project appears to be "binned" by the DfT.

So my calling it vapourware all those years wasn't completely off the
mark?

I still think smart ticketing will be delivered via the TOCs
themselves so it won't be vapourware in the sense I think you mean it.
If you are not trying to create a regional product structure spanning
several TOCs and removing boundary issues why do you need an
overarching project structure / team? I've never been convinced,
given the sparse level of info, that the DfT envisaged a South East
region set of tickets / pricing that was enabled in a consistent
manner across the SE area.

It seems Rail North do have such a scheme in mind and Mr Osborne has
lobbed them £150m to try and implement it. If they manage it I'll be
amazed given it hasn't been done in the South East where there is only
TfL and TOCs and not several PTEs, potential new ITAs, TOCs and
private bus companies to deal with. None of the PTEs have yet managed
a fully integrated smart solution in their areas that can deal with
single, return, day, period and PAYG type ticketing (which seem to be
the minimum expectation these days).

Have they also binned the "part time seasons"?

Don't think so. There are suggestions elsewhere that something is due
for announcement early next year. SWT is one TOC and Greater Anglia
might be the other. Don't know what TSGN are doing.

Presumably any future smart ticketing will be delivered by TOCs
themselves with no attempt at an overarching project.

TSGN and TfL account for 95% of my rail travel in the South East, so
that wouldn't be too much of a problem.

Southern had much of the work done already, so all it needs from Govia
is rolling it out over the old FCC network too.

I thought Govia were doing that but I am not up to date as to how far
things have stretched north of the Thames. As you say they have a lot
of project expertise inherited from Southern. Of course there may be
more difficulties north of the Thames given operator interfaces etc.

The real problem, Paul, is that every TOC doing its own things is a disaster
for any routes, like Cambridge to London, with 2 competing TOCs like Abellio
and GTR.

Will we all have to get two ITSO cards to allow for the different tickets to
London we can buy? Will Liverpool St only accept Abellio cards and King's
Cross only GTR's, even for "any permitted" tickets to London Terminals? I've
already got an ITSO card (my bus pass). Why on earth can't I use that
instead of having to get separate ones from each operator (including, if I
was still paying to use buses, a Stagecoach bus smartcard)? Meanwhile London
buses still can't read my bus pass despite ITSO on Prestige.

GTR are rolling out "The Key" as far north as Huntingdon and Royston only to
start with but are promising availability on the rest of their route later.

Cambridge station has a specific problem off-peak with ludicrous queues at
the oddest times because there is no way for the vast majority of passengers
to get tickets other than from a ticket window or machine. FCC were starting
on m-Tickets but GTR scrapped that and Abellio seem to have some limited
print at home facilities which I've not yet found a way to use for a ticket
from Cambridge. So ability to pick up tickets at the gateline without going
to a machine first is very important and being promised by GTR.

--
Colin Rosenstiel