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Old November 19th 19, 12:04 PM posted to uk.transport.london
Roland Perry Roland Perry is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Aug 2003
Posts: 10,125
Default TfL fares freeze dethaws

In message , at 11:15:47 on Tue, 19 Nov
2019, Recliner remarked:
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 09:21:29 on Tue, 19 Nov
2019, Recliner remarked:
Roland Perry wrote:
https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/18/trans...-tube-dlr-bus-
tram-fares-sadiq-khan-says-11173313/

At a time when political promises are being made daily, it always pays
to ask about the small print.

So when Khan said

"I want to be crystal clear - no ifs, no buts - what you'll pay
if I'm elected Mayor in May 2016 is what you'll pay at the end
of my 4 years in office."

What he delivered was: all fares on buses and trams, plus single pay-as-
you-go Tube and DLR fares; but Daily and weekly price caps, plus weekly,
monthly and annual travelcards, are not included in the freeze.

So lots of people are paying many pennies more.

There are inevitable structural reasons why this might be the case,
but that
simply brings the original pledge into more disrepute.

To be fair, I think he always made clear that his promise only applied to
TfL fares,


If you can find a quote from him *before* the election, distancing
himself from "no ifs and buts" into "well, actually... on the trains
it's just daily tube fares, not even seasons, let alone suburban rail
services" a lot of people would be interested.

And at the time it would have lost a lot of votes, especially south of
the river.


Of course, and that's why he didn't do something so idiotic.


So idiotic as to tell the truth!!!

He's a lawyer-turned-politician, and used carefully chosen, precisely
correct terms that people were free to interpret as more generous than
they were.


No, his talk about travellers and commuters precisely *didn't*
ring-fence to promise to day-ticket tube users. When Andrew Marr later
asked him how well it was going, considering that most passengers
observably use Travelards, Oyster and Contactless, he ducked the
question.

But he told no lies, even if some people mistakenly thought the pledge was
wider than it really was. He was under no obligation to correct their
mistake.


On one hand I'm posting this thread to make people more alert to the
possibility of more "over-interpretable" promises being made, on the
other hand what he promised *was* much wider than you are caring to
remember.

and not those that included any actual or potential mainline rail use,
over which he had no control.


I think it's part of the opaqueness of fares setting that Londoners
might well think that national rail fares *within the zones*, while
being higher than tube fares for an equivalent trip, could be set by the
Mayor rather than the DfT. It'd have to be in the franchise agreements
of course.


It would, but isn't.


Because of the opaqueness. And he deliberately chose not to shine a
light on this aspect.

While we are on the subject, who sets the Crossrial (nee TfL Rail)
fares? And is there an expectation in Khan's pledge that those might be
pegged as well (on routes currently operated by TfL Rail).


I think that TfL only sets them inside the zones. That's why, for example,
Oyster won't be usable on TfL Rail trains next month to Reading.


"Zones" is becoming a bit fuzzy now. I suppose Shenfield is in a "Zone",
but they don't really give it a user-facing number.

Yes, it's "Zone C", but you won't find that on a ticket machine I bet.
--
Roland Perry