"Peter Smyth" wrote in message
...
I have been thinking about some flaws in the Oyster system and was
wondering
if anyone knew the legal situation in the following case.
If I have a zone 2-6 travelcard and travel from Highbury & Islington to
Richmond via the North London Line I am staying within my zones so no
money
is deducted - no problem.
It is my understanding that the Oyster Fare between any two stations on
the LUL network is the cheapest, even if you go out of zone to get there.
E.g. I've been told that Boston Manor to Uxbridge does not need to involve
zone 1 and so doesn't, even if you do go via Baker Street.
However, your example involves using a non-LUL line, the NLL, so I don't
know.
Oyster allows greater possibility for fare-evasion because you don't have
to have "the correct ticket BEFORE you travel": the money is only deducted
at the point of leaving the system. I've often gone from say, Baker street
to Krapy Rubsnif, to get a WAGN/FCC service, but could easily have not
touched-out
at the Krapy Rubsnif interchange (I already had a valid FCC/WAGN ticket)
so, indeed, how do they know ? All anyone can see who looks at the logs will
see "unresolved journey" without knowing whether it was a simple intra-Zone1
journey, or a Z1-Chalfont+L.
I think that this problem will only get worse when Oyster is rolled out to
National Rail services as there will then be many possible routes for a
given journey.
That's the reason it's not being rolled-out so quickly onto NR: they
are waiting for OysterNextGen where the cards can be read at a distance of
several meters without a touch in/out and without the passenger knowing
they've been read. In this way, they can check for invalid routings if
wanted.
However, as someone else here has suggested, TfL seems to be getting rid
of fare evasion by engineering it out of the system
As the Oystercard can only know the start station and the end
station, it can only work properly when the fare from A-B is always
constant, regardless of the route you use between them. However this is
not
consistent with London's zonal fare system.
Peter Smyth
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