Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:

asdf wrote:

Are there any cases where a travelcard holder can make a detour journey,
even an unusual one, staying entirely within validity but get charged an
extension because the system assumes a trip into zone 1?

Yes, this will happen in every such case, as the system does not know
which route the passenger actually took.

Each pair of origin/destination stations is assigned a set of zones
that the passenger is assumed to pass through when travelling between
them.

Which does somewhat clash with the basic concept of the travelcard...

See my other post - I come to the possible conclusion that holding a
paper season Travelcard might actually be preferable for some longer
journeys on the NLL. Which, as a fan of Oyster, isn't the kind of
conclusion I like.



For example, Finchley Road to Barons Court would be defined as a Z12
journey. Even if you travelled via Rayners Lane, a Z2345 journey, you
would still be charged for a Z12 journey (including excess fares as
appropriate). If you held a Z2345 Travelcard season and wished to
avoid the Z1 excess fare, you could leave and re-enter the station at
Rayners Lane, so that you would instead be making two separate Z2345
journeys.

So if someone did make the round about journey and got charged on exit - or
even had no money on their PAYG - what would happen if they pursued a
refund? As far as I can make out, they would have made a legitimate journey
using a totally valid means of travel and been charged additional. That
sounds like the basis of an interesting legal case.

I agree, it's a very interesting scenario - I go into this in detail
in my other post.

There does I suppose remain the possibility that on the system is
configured to allow for such cases when someone holds a Travelcard
valid for both their starting and finishing zones and could reasonably
have travelled on the NLL.


Conversely, this also means that if your journey is defined as not
being via Z1, you can legally travel via Z1 and not get charged the
via-Z1 fare.

Well yes - but if you get checked at an interchange or en route (not that
TfL seems to bother with human ticket checks) would that line get you off
the hook?

As asdf says as long as you've touched in somewhere it doesn't matter
where you are.

I think the only rule is that you must broadly be going somewhere -
i.e. if you touched in at Ealing Broadway, and are checked on a Met
line train going south from Chesham having not touched-in there then
the ticket inspector might reasonably ask where you were going - if
you say Ealing Common then I'd think you'd be in trouble. In other
words simply touching-in doesn't mean you have the freedom of the
whole network to roam it at will (though if you have a season
Travelcard on Oyster you have the freedom to roam the zones you have
at will). Of course your journey would time-out after two hours as
well, so even if you didn't get checked you'd get 2 x £4 "max cash
fare" 'penalties'.