London Banter - View Single Post - Oyster pre-pay penalty for incomplete journeys at NR terminals

asdf · September 2nd 05, 10:06 AM posted to uk.transport.london

On Thu, 01 Sep 2005 19:44:59 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:

And I thought these things were supposed to make travel less complicated.

They are, but I don't believe they will until the fares structure is
totally recast to make their (exclusive?) use make sense.

A paper-based fares structure does not translate well to smartcard
use, unless a virtual ticket is loaded before travel. I strongly
suspect that the National Rail version, when it happens, will be of
the latter type - can you imagine trying to implement PrePay on the
messy NR fares structure?

I don't think it would be too hard - I think the prepay system can
handle point-to-point fares, and different fares at different times of
day. The main change to the fares structure that would need to take
place would be an adjustment of the fares so that a return costs twice
as much as a single. Route- and TOC-specific fares would have to go,
but how many of those are there entirely within the TfL zones? You'd
also need to be able to store a Railcard on your Oyster.