London Banter - View Single Post

Colin Rosenstiel · August 25th 03, 07:54 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Barry Salter) wrote:

On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 00:30 +0100 (BST), (Colin
Rosenstiel) wrote:

Oddly, some journeys *are* cheaper by booking to and from boundary
zone 6. When I went to Reading the other day, a Peak Travelcard from
Cambridge plus a boundary zone 6 standard day return to Reading was
quite a lot cheaper than a standard day return from Cambridge to
Reading. The main problem was booking them at Cambridge! Odd, because
they are supposed to sell the cheapest fare for a particular journey.

True, but the requirement stated in the National Fares Manuals is as
follows:

quote

Tickets should always be sold for the throughout journey required unless
a customer specially requests more than one ticket for the journey. In
such cases the combination of tickets should cover the entire journey
being made.

/quote

The primary reason for this being that there are around 2500 stations in
the country and over 100 ticket types, so if your poor Ticket Office
Clerk was to go through every possible combination to try and get you
the cheapest fare it could take quite some time.

Apart from anything else, you wouldn't immediately think that a
Cambridge Peak TC + BZ6 to Oxford SDR would be cheaper than a Cambridge
to Oxford SDR via London as it's not obvious.

Indeed, but it hardly suggests the fares are right, if people have to ask
for a combination they wouldn't think of and get a substantial saving, as
much as a tenner ISTR.

--
Colin Rosenstiel