On Thu, 24 Feb 2005, Tom Anderson wrote:

If some people are getting more for their money, that means i'm
getting less,

sounds reasonable so far...

which means i am personally paying for them.

By no means. In practice you're *both* being subsidised by the rest
of the country - who are getting a substandard PT network in
comparison with what they're paying for you to get.

Not that I have any hankering to live under the conditions that you
chose, but it takes all kinds...

Nonetheless, i'm not objecting to the practical
result, i'm objecting to the principle of the thing;

Yup, I've seen this line of argument befo wanting everyone to pay
more in the interests of fairness.

But just be sure you really intend what it is that you're asking for.

How much would a Z4-Z1-Z3 ticket cost?

3.60.

I think you're over-simplifying. If the tariff system was changed,
the fares would need to be re-balanced.

At present, yes. However, if you accept the idea that Zn-Z1-Zn is not the
same as Zn-Z1 for singles, it's natural to extend the idea to travelcards.
Intuitively, i think the travelcard i use to commute to work, a Zn-Z1
journey, should cost less than a travelcard which let me go all the way
across London when i felt like it.

As a point of information (I'm not for a moment claiming this is
directly comparable, but just presenting it as an alternative approach
that has worked elsewhere), the Munich tariff system had a fairly
simple ring-zone tariff for /cash/ fares, although you had to count a
ring-zone twice if you passed through it on both sides of the core
(which seems to be the issue that you're arguing here); but for season
tickets they had a more finely-divided zone tariff: you had to get the
desired "season ticket zones" entered onto your photo card, and then
at each renewal you bought a voucher for the appropriate price.

(What a surprise, I see that it's been changed yet again since: well,
what I'm describing here is a system as it worked at one time, even
though it's different again now. YMMV).

The honeycomb model. While this could work OK for individual
fares, it would be an absolute nightmare for TCs or other passes.
Would you have to specify everyone cell/zone your journey might
pass through?

That's how Munich used to do it for season tickets. You made a more
finely-divided choice when the card was issued or officially amended;
but then it was good for as long as you cared to keep buying vouchers
from your local sales point (usually the local newsagent / lotto
vendor ;-)

If you wanted to change your season ticket plan, you had to go to one
of the central offices (hopefully you had chosen season ticket zones
which included one!) and stand in the queue to get your photo card
officially amended.

On the other hand: if you wanted to buy a one-off day ticket, then you
only had two or three options to choose from.

So, to summarise, they had:

* Season tickets, with a finely-divided fare structure

* Cash tariff, with a medium-complexity core-and-ring zone structure

* Day passes: choice of city zone, or outer zone, or entire network
(that would be like Z1-2, or Z3-6, or all-zones, if you applied the
analogous model to London).