On 19 Oct, 15:07, Ken wrote:
On 19 Oct, 11:38, Mizter T wrote:



asdf wrote:

(Or to be pedantic, Z1-D ODTCs, as that's what you actually get.)

And herein lies a slight anomaly - if you had a Z1-6 Gold Card
Travelcard (i.e. annual) and wanted to buy a discounted ticket for a
travelling companion, you yourself would not need to get one. However
you're travelling companion would actually end up with an ODTC valid
in Z1-D rather than Z1-6, i.e. it would cover more zones than your
Z1-6 Gold Card Travelcard. Of course they would not be able to use it
outside of Z1-6 as you would not be accompanying them, unless of
course you bought one yourself. But I can imagine even the most "with
it" LU ticket office might get confused by the idea that someone with
a Z1-6 Gold Card Travelcard would want a further discounted Z1-D ODTC
for themselves!

And if you had that Z1-6 Gold Card Travelcard loaded on Oyster, I can
well imagine the ticket office would simply suggest using Oyster PAYG
to allow you to travel to/from zones A-D - though in this case any
travelling companion's discounted ODTC would technically cease to be
valid when the travelling party entered zones A-D.

Indeed the existence of Oyster PAYG actually rules out any changes of
the rules regarding the necessity for Gold Card holders to buy a
discounted ODTC for themselves. Let me explain...

Let's say the rule that a Gold Card holder had to buy an all zones
ODTC for themselves (except if their season covered all Z1-6) was
ditched - and the rule rewritten so that the Gold Card holder could
buy discounted all zones ODTCs for their travelling companions but as
a group you could *only* use them within the zones covered by the Gold
Card holder's Travelcard (say zones 1-3).

Before the introduction of Oyster PAYG, notionally speaking this
could've been enforceable. However, since Oyster PAYG started, anyone
who held a Gold Card Travelcard loaded on Oyster can of course extend
their journey into any zone and the extension is automatically paid
for from their PAYG balance. Therefore the idea of restricting that
Gold Card holder plus travelling companions only to the zones covered
by the Gold Card holder's Travelcard becomes totally unworkable.

OK, my head hurts now


A question. If you buy a Railcard-discounted travelcard at a LU
booking office, it states it's valid in zones 1-D (before the
designation of zones A-D as such, they used to say something like,
"Also by rail to Amshm/Cheshm/Ongar" [anything beyond Loughton being
then out-of-zone]). Now, as I say, they say "123456D", which is clear
enough. But if you buy the ODTC at a NR ticket office, it just says
"From [issuing station] To R1256 Zones" with no mention of any
validity in zones A-D. Would such a travelcard be valid to
(eg)Amersham, being a "Railcard Travelcard"? The National Fares
Manuals http://www.atoc.org/retail/_download...7_Common_K.pdf
(Travelcards) and http://www.atoc.org/retail/_download...7_Common_F.pdf
(Railcards) seem to be silent about this.

If yes, then it needs to be clarified. If no, then you get more
mileage for (ostensibly) the same ticket if you buy it from LU rather
than NR.
--
Ken


You're second paragraph hits the nail right on the head! Railcard
discounted Day Travelcard bought from LU ticket offices give you more
bang for you buck (or more mileage for your money) that if they were
bought from an NR ticket office.

NR ticket offices will sell you a railcard discounted ODTC valid in
zones 1-6 only - this is absolutely *not* valid anywhere in zones A-D.

LU ticket offices meanwhile will sell you a railcard discounted ODTC
valid in zones 1-D - that is zones 1-6 plus A-D chucked in 'for free'.

I'm not entirely sure why LU does this. I guess one reason why they
might is that they run the ticket offices at Amersham, Chalfont and
Latimer, Chorleywood, and Rickmandsworth - stations where Chiltern
Railways trains stop at (and bear in mind that tickets are fully
interavailable on both LU and Chiltern here).

If this arrangement was not in place then pax from those stations who
wanted a railcard discounted ODTC would need to be sold some other
type of ticket - when one bears in mind that ODTC are available from
non-London stations in the South East that are effectively a day
return plus Z1-6 ODTC, one can see that some kind of ODTC ticket has
to be offered from these stations.

So perhaps LU just decided to keep things simple and instead of
offering two types of railcard discounted ODTC - one for zones 1-D
that was only sold from these stations, and another zones 1-6 sold
everywhere else (not sure whether other zone A-D Met line passengers
from say Watford or Chesham would even get a railcard discounted ODTC
at all under this scenario) - LU just decided to lump them all
together an have a single product available across their network, the
railcard discounted ODTC valid in zones 1-D.

I think that logic is pretty good, but perhaps others disagree.