On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 15:16:28 -0400, David of Broadway wrote:

There simply isn't any justification for imposing penalty fares to
coerce people into using a system that isn't fully available.

On the systems that accept it, how is it not fully available?

It isn't fully integrated with NR yet, and that's a shame. But it's
fully available on all TfL services, no?

I think what you're saying is that for any given journey, either:

(a) Oyster PAYG is valid, and the cash fare is 'punitive'; or

(b) Oyster PAYG is not valid, but the cash fare is not 'punitive'.


However, there is at least one type of journey where neither of these
holds - where one part of the journey is along a route where Tube cash
fares are valid but Oyster isn't, and the other part of the journey is
by Tube.

For example, Camden Road to Manor House, changing from NLL to Tube at
Highbury & Islington. In 2005, the cash fare for this journey was
£1.30 (a Z23 Tube single). At the 2006 fares revision, when the
'punitive' fares were introduced, the cash fare increased to £3.00.
But Oyster PAYG cannot be used for this journey.

(It's possible to reduce the fare slightly by buying a paper ticket
for the NLL part of the journey (£1.50) and using Oyster for the Tube
part (£1.00), but that's still almost a 100% increase.)