On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Stevie D wrote:

Solar Penguin wrote:

Ahhh... You think it's those elusive across-London-to-Mill-Hill-East
passengers that TfL are so eager to attract with artificially low
fares?

What TfL have done, which is a very sensible approach in a busy city
that sees millions of tourists, is to implement a simple zonal system
made up of six concentric rings, with a set price for any station in
Za to any station in Zb.

Er, no.

Morden (Z4) to Balham (Z3): 1.30
Morden (Z4) to Highgate (Z3): 2.80

But you were almost right!

You then go on at length about how elegant the current system is, and
you're quite right - it's simple and it works, and a system based on
distance, or some other random variable, is by no means a replacement.
Zones are here to stay, bless their little pastel-coloured socks.

However, that doesn't mean it couldn't be improved by some very simple
measures.

Artificially low fares to MHW or artificially high fares to zone 1?
Which are they really doing? Either way, it doesn't matter, as long
as they're stopped.

You make it sound as though there is some great conspiracy afoot whereby
all those passengers going from zone 6 through zone 1 and out the other
side are getting a free ride and that you personally are paying for
every one of them.

Er, that's exactly what's happening. The problem we have at the moment is
this:

Morden (Z4) to Waterloo (Z1): 2.80
Morden (Z4) to Highgate (Z3): 2.80

Once you get involved with zone 1, it costs the same to travel any
distance out the other side (at least, as far out as you were when you
started). If you accept that the costs associated with transporting
someone from Morden to Highgate are greater than those associated with
taking them from Morden to Waterloo, and you accept the idea that ticket
prices are there to cover costs, then Morden - Waterloo travellers are
indeed subsidising Morden - Highgate travellers. Nobody's claiming this is
a conspiracy, or even a scandal - it's just a defect in the system.

The simple correction is to count zones which are crossed twice twice.
For example, if a single in Z1 costs 2.00, and a single from Z1 to Z4 (or
Z4 to Z1) costs 2.80, then the cost of extending a journey from Z1 to Z4
must be 80p; that would make a Z4-Z1-Z4 journey cost 3.60.

I have no idea how you'd implement this for travelcards, though; you'd
want someone who lived in Morden to be able to buy a travelcard which let
them go as far as London Bridge for less than one which let them go as far
as Highgate, but you can't just say it's for Z1-4 on the Morden side -
what happens if they get on the District Line? You'd have to get the
customer to specify which half of each line they wanted when they bought
the ticket, which would be rather silly! The only solution i can see is to
split the outer zones into sectors, and make travelcards specific to some
combination of sectors, but that way madness lies. Do away with
travelcards, i say!

We live in a world that is overdeveloped, in a country that is
overdeveloped.

What the hell does that mean? What's 'overdeveloped'?

What I am trying to say here is that we cannot afford to simply go on
increasing capacity willy-nilly to cater for people to travel on a whim.
That is just as true of public transport as it is of road building. If
widening the M25 is bad because it will encourage profligate car use,
building Crossrail is equally bad because it will encourage profligate
rail use.

The problem with generating more car traffic is not that people moving
around is bad per se, but that cars are a bad way to do it. As long as
rail is the most environmentally and socially sustainable form of
transport, creating more rail traffic is not a bad thing!

We could cater for a never-ending increase in demand for peak-time
services.

We could, and in fact we better had.

The more trains run at peak times, the greater the proportion of
passengers will travel at those times.

No. The greater the number, but not necessarily the greater the
proportion. Yes, if everyone wanted to travel in the peaks (and let's
pretend they do), and if you ran more peak-time trains, and if you kept
the total number of travellers constant, you'd get a greater proportion
travelling in the peaks, which would be a bad thing. However, the total
number of travellers is not constant, it's growing, and that's why we need
more capacity.

But for the rest of the day, this additional capacity will be sitting
idle. We will have used vast quantities of resources - and huge sums of
cash - to build a system that is hardly used for 20 hours a day. What a
waste.

Well, i for one am looking forward to riding crossrail at midday and
having a carriage all to myself.

OTOH looking at any map will allow you to estimate the distance and so
give you a fairly good idea of what it would cost.

Not if you look at a topological, stylised map such as used by all
national rail TOCs and organisations, and the London Underground. These
maps have no relationship to ground distance.

Indeed. This is a mad idea.

tom

--
Destroy - kill all hippies.