Hi all,

I've been trying to get my head around some odd ticket pricing, and I
just wanted to check that what I'm seeing is correct. All of this
refers to off-peak one-day Travelcards.

If I buy a cheap-day return from, say, Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire,
to London Liverpool St, it costs £10.50. However, the same station
will sell me a ticket with a one-day Travelcard included for £14.50.
Hence it's cost me £4.00 for the Travelcard. But the cheapest I can
get a Travelcard from an UndergrounD station is £5.10 - and that's
just a Z1-2 card, whereas my National Rail one is Z1-6.

Is this really right? Buying a travelcard with a train ticket costs
just £4.00 - better than the standard Travelcard price, and better
even than the Oyster pay-as-you-go capped price (which I believe is 50p
less than the equivalent Travelcard).

(I also note that if I have a Railcard, then the discount applies to
the Travelcard portion of the ticket, too - e.g. with a YP railcard I
could get a One Day Travelcard from Sawbridgeworth for just £2.60 more
than the CDR alone. Or with a Network Railcard, I hit the minimum fare
of £10 and my Travelcard is free!)

It seems odd that train users are afforded this perk of cheap off-peak
travelcards. It's also odd that these prices beat PAYG Oyster, when I
understood the whole pricing methodology these days was to encourage as
much Oyster use as possible.

All comments welcome.

Thanks,
Sam