Aidan Stanger wrote:
Solar Penguin wrote:


--- Dave Arquati said...

Suppose you want to travel, for example, from Crystal Palace to Oxford
Circus. Why can't you simply buy a cheap day return from Crystal Palace
to Oxford Circus? Instead you *have* to buy a One Day Travelcard for
zones 1-4, which means you're also paying for the flexibility of
travelling to Morden, Mill Hill East, Waterloo, and dozens of other
places that you won't actually visit today!

You *can* buy a return between those stations, but it's more expensive
than a Travelcard, so you get a Travelcard instead.


Are you sure it's more expensive? I don't know about from Crystal Palace,
but from some NR stations a return ticket to Underground Zone 1 is
cheaper than a travelcard.

From Crystal Palace it's £3.10 CDR + £4 TfL Z1 return. The NR return
has to be less than £1.20 from Z3/4 or £2.00 from Z5/6 for a return to
be cheaper than a Travelcard (£4.70, £5.20 or £6.00 for Z1-2, Z1-4 or
Z1-6 respectively).

What about families? Rail can't possibly compete with car without some
sort of discount for groups travelling together.


Yes it can. The question is how much group discount should be provided to
attract families - or should it stick to what it's best at. And the
answer really depends on the time of day - when the trains are full,
attracting families is probably best avoided, but when there is spare
capacity, it's often worth putting on special offers in order to attract
more passengers.

Yes; I wouldn't propose family tickets for the peaks but off-peak family
travel should be encouraged as it gets people thinking about
alternatives to the car, and gets the children used to public transport.
Whether one agrees with it or not, I think one of the reasons behind
Ken's plan to give under-18s free bus use is to make sure they're
totally used to freedom of bus use rather than depending on parents for
car rides and therefore yearning to drive themselves.

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