Neil Williams wrote:
On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 13:39:59 -0000, "Solar Penguin"
wrote:


And why is being individually priced a bad thing? Look at the example I
gave elsewhere in the thread: the Northern Line ticket from Morden to
Waterloo costs the same as the ticket from Morden going all the way to
Mill Hill East. Passangers to Waterloo are paying for around twice as
much journey than they actually use. An individually priced
Morden-Waterloo ticket would solve this problem.


As would a fairly simple change to the zonal fares system, which would
be to count the number of zone boundaries crossed, rather than to
count which zones are entered. I'm sure I've seen this kind of
ticketing elsewhere. There are plenty of point-to-point systems which
"max out" like this one, as well - I believe Deutsche Bahn's
semi-kilometric InterCity fares system has a maximum fare.

Counting zone boundaries crossed is useless if you want to discourage
people from entering or using a particularly busy part of the network if
they don't need to. Under that system, a journey from Shadwell to New
Cross would be priced the same as one from King's Cross to Victoria.

All of which is a moot point, anyway. Given that a public transport
system has been planned and is being operated based on average traffic
etc, there is no direct cost that can be attributed to one person's
usage of the system, because whether that one person was there or not
the system would operate anyway, and the fuel cost attributed to one
passenger is tiny enough to be irrelevant. Whatever means is used to
define the fares is therefore a model.

That's true, but it doesn't stop the fares system from being used to
restrain demand.

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London