On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 10:16:48 -0000, "Solar Penguin"
wrote:


--- Phil Richards said...
Solar Penguin wrote:

And even better still for LUL to adopt point-to-point instead of all
that zone nonsense.

Why not be silly enough to suggest that London Buses go back to a
system of fare tables for each route?

What's silly about that? In the present system, even if you just take a
*local* bus ride, just a couple of stops or so, you have to pay the same
as a journey the *whole length* of the bus route! Think how much money
you could save if you only paid for the short journey you actually
travel, instead of all those miles you don't!


Remember zonal fares in London have been in force for over 20
years now

And that's what scientists call "the Concorde fallacy", i.e. "We've been
trying, without any success, to make this thing work for so many years
now, that it's pointless to give up now, even though when we finally do
get something that works, it won't be worth all the effort we've put
into it!"

Face it, twenty years is *too* long. It's definitely time to get rid of
the zones by now. Long overdue in fact.

I completely disagree. It would be mad to get rid of the zonal system.
The old point to point system was hugely complicated and very costly to
run - both in terms of administration but also in terms of ticket
issuing times. Even with an electronic system as we have now it would
be worse than the current relatively simple structure.

It would also be much harder for passengers to understand and you would
certainly struggle to have innovative features like pre-pay discounts,
counter peak direction discounts or modal through tickets.

We should have a proper integrated fare structure, true. But it should
be based on point-to-point fares, not zones.

Face facts, the zones are just a con to make us pay for distances we
haven't travelled. For example, you get on an East London Line train at
New Cross to travel across the river to Wapping. But you can't buy a
ticket to Wapping. Instead, you have to buy a Zone Two ticket that's
valid beyond Wapping, all the way to Bromley-by-Bow! And no chance of
getting a refund on the unused portion of your ticket.

Sorry but why do you imagine that your fare to Wapping would be less in
the future than it is today. All that would happen would be that fares
would rise overall to deal with the mileage and related cost that you
cling to as some sort of justification for adopting point to points. In
the case of NR fares almost all PTPs are far more expensive than the
Tube equivalent. The only case where this does not apply is with cheap
day tickets where discounts are different to those on LU or with
operator specific tickets.

Another example, you have a choice of fast Metropolitan Line trains or
slow Jubilee Line trains when travelling from Wembley Park to Baker
Street. Common sense says that the faster trains should be more
expensive. That way, any customers who want to save money can use the
cheaper, slower trains. But because of the stupid zonal system, we all
end up paying to travel on the Metropolitan trains, with no option for a
cheaper ticket.

But there is no justification at all for differentiating fares like this
on an urban railway system. It is also completely and utterly
unenforceable. To use your theoretical basis Turnham Green would have
to have two sets of fares to everywhere to deal with the fact that for a
tiny part (early and late) of the day super fast Piccadilly Line trains
stop. These are traditionally off peak times when fares would be cheaper
but in your version they would be more expensive than the slow chug
along District Line which provides the service at the height of the peak
- the most expensive time of the day. Lunacy!

Yes, the zones work for maximising LUL's profit, but are crap at giving
good value to customers. No truly fair fares can ever come out of it.
(Admittedly, the NR TOCs aren't always fair in practice either, but at
least a fair point-to-point system could be made. That's impossible
with a zonal system, and always will be.)

What profit? This is nothing to do with profit maximisation - if it was
then LU fares would be far higher than they are now. This is about
trying to price on the basis of a relatively simple system which charges
more for travel in the most congested part of the network (Zone 1) which
also providing tickets that will encourage usage and mobility in the off
peak. Whether you like it or not I cannot envisage the day when a zonal
basis for fares in London will be abolished. The public hostility would
be too great as it would be seen as a step towards abolition of
Travelcard which is a politically protected product under the rail
privatisation legislation.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!