On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 14:35:51 +0100, Dave Arquati wrote:

With Oyster there is this new scenario that hasn't as far as I can see
occured before in transport ticketing - to have a valid ticket fore the
whole journey a passenger must perform the correct action at the end of
that journey i.e. touching out. Obviously when a stations automatic
gates are in operation enforcing this is easy, but otherwise it relies
on the passenger doing the right thing.

These are problems that will come to the fore when Oyster is
implemented across National Rail in London, given that number of
ungated stations.

Indeed. I imagine the solution will be to make sure that touching in and
out is always in the user's best interest, and this will probably be
achieved by combining "refund-at-exit" as you mention (i.e. charging a
higher fare at entry and refunding if necessary at exit) with the
lock-ups of users' cards if too many unresolved journeys occur (as
mentioned below).

And, as has been mentioned, that's what happens on NR at the moment.
AIUI, £5.00 is quite literally deducted from your pre-pay balance as
soon as you touch in at Marylebone, Euston, Liverpool Street, or
Fenchurch Street NR. The difference between that and the correct fare
is then refunded when (if!) you get off at a station pre-pay is valid
to, and touch out on a reader there.

Dave - where you say above if you don't touch in/out this "may prevent
you from using your card (thus losing your deposit if you don't top
up)" what do you mean? From what I've seen unresolved journeys don't
lock up someones card, not yet at least.

This is just from hearsay, but I think *multiple* unresolved journeys
prevent the card from working.

In the early months of pre-pay, when querying an unresolved journey at
a Tube ticket office, I was told that if you picked up too many
unresolved journeys (without getting them sorted out by the Helpline),
your card would/might* stop working. I don't know of any reports of it
actually happening though.

*I can't remember his exact words; perhaps he was just speculating.

The cheapest fare is the cheapest valid ticket for your journey. If you
don't have a valid ticket at all and don't intend to obtain one, you are
essentially a thief!

You could equally accuse Tesco of false advertising for saying that
their baked beans are cheaper than any other place's - Sainsbury's baked
beans are "free" if you shoplift them.

A strong point that essentially deals with the original question -
though the original poster was welcome in pondering on the language
used by LU and sharing his thoughts here.

True, it was just that the original poster's language implied that
fare-dodging was the desirable course of action, rather than merely a
possible one ("you should not swipe in..." rather than "you *could*
avoid swiping in"...). Probably just my over-reaction!

Perhaps he meant "best" fare as in the best of all possible fares that
could theoretically exist, rather than just the actual ones in the
table in the fares leaflet. Which would of course be £0.00 (at least
from the passenger's point of view, though perhaps not from the
taxpayer's). ;-)