I was rather hoping to get online and post here and correct myself
before you did - so I would be the one pointing out I'm an idiot,
rather than anyone else! Unfortunately commitments this morning meant
I couldn't.

Anyway I'm holding my head in shame at having written posts late last
night that I thought were filled with pertinent questions, but were
(as I can see in the cold light of day) in fact filled with a
demonstration my inability to read previous answers and go through th
erelevant information and then put 2 and 2 together!

I perhaps wasn't quite at my sharpest last night!


Paul Corfield wrote:

On Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:06:18 -0800 (PST), Mizter T
wrote:

However all is not clear - there is something I've been intending to
query with regards to the new 2008 TfL Fares booklet - available here
as a PDF...

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloa...s-08-01-02.pdf


On page 17, underneath the table for the different Oyster daily
capping rates, there is this text - the first bit about peak/off-peak
times is exactly the same as I described above, it's the second bit
about London Overground (LO) that's interesting...

---quote---
On the Tube and DLR: peak times are
0430-0930 Monday to Friday (except
Public Holidays). Off-Peak is at all other times.

For details of peak and off-peak times on
London Overground, please see page 21.
---/quote---


OK, let's turn to page 21. There's a table of Oyster PAYG fares for
London Overground - and at the top of the table is the description for
the two columns - "(Monday to Friday from 0700 and before 1900)*"
and then
"(All other times including public holidays)".

If we follow the asterisk to the text under the column, we'll find
this intriguing footnote:

---quote---
*For local journeys, Watford Junction to Euston
inclusive, these fares apply as follows:
Towards Euston:
Monday to Friday from 0700 and before 0930.
From Euston:
Monday to Friday from 1600 and before 1900.
---/quote---


I'm genuinely confused as to what that means - it could mean that all
journeys on the Watford Jn - Euston line will be treated differently
to the rest of LU and LO in not just simply charging the more
expensive PAYG fare between 7am-7pm - in which case Bakerloo
passengers would also benefit from these cheaper fares on the shared
stretches.

It means exactly this. If you stay on the Euston - Watford line then
you benefit from these lower PAYG charges irrespective of operator.
However as soon as step off the line either by changing to LU at Queens
Park, LOROL at Willesden (NLL / WLL) or LU at Euston you immediately
resume the normal charge rates between 0700 and 1900 M-F.

In effect outside the peaks or peak direction you're on the weekend
charge rates as I understand matters for the Euston - Watford service.

This is the first real application of differential fares by time and
direction. I think it will take some time for people to be accustomed to
it and I can see the potential for confusion when people change
operators and see their overall through fare rise if they re-enter or
exit the system at times when the higher charges apply. This will be
particularly the case if people are travelling near the shoulders of
either the Watford line time bands or the wider time bands applicable to
the main charging rates for PAYG (near to 0700 and near to 1900). For
example travelling from say South Kenton into Zone 1 via Euston you
might wish to linger a little if you arrived at Euston at 18.50 before
heading to the Tube as you'd get the cheaper price all the way through
if you re-entered after 1900. That's certainly how it has been
explained to me by someone who took the time to phone me to point out
these issues.


Thanks, thanks for the confirmation (I think I'd deciphered this by
the time I'd replied to myself!). So Watford - Euston line PAYG fares
will be at the cheaper (in internal TfL lingo "discount") PAYG rate
for much of the day.

I wonder if the text shouldn't say "Towards Watford Junction" rather
than "From Euston" to indicate the evening peak flow - "From Euston"
could be misconstrued to mean just journeys that start from Euston.

This will be interesting. I can imagine it will confuse people - for
example those doing short local journeys in the 'wrong' direction.
Let's say a parent goes to pick their child up from primary school
from Bushey to Hatch End. Their return journey (after 4pm) will be
charged at the higher rate, though I bet the trains that far out
aren't that busy at that time, and perhaps not any busier in one
direction to the other.

Interesting scenario you put forward with regards to arriving in
Euston pre-7pm and then waiting for 7pm before entering the LU network
so as to ensure the whole PAYG fare is at the discount rate. Starting
from Harrow & Wealdstone the PAYG fare difference is more pronounced -
either £3.50 or £2 discounted. For those savvy to this distinction,
they might in fact prefer to travel on the Watford - Euston line
rather than the Bakerloo simply to take advantage of this.

But nonetheless it sounds like a good plan. It's communicating it to
the punters that's the challenge - especially if there going to be as
dense as I was being!

Lastly, if I'm right in understanding this all, PAYG journeys starting
or finishing at Watford Jn will be priced by London Midland - I'm
still a bit unclear as to whether these journeys will be cheaper on
weekdays between 0930 and 1600, as will be the case with all other
journeys on the Watford - Euston line.


Of course, as Watford Junction isn't in a zone ("zone W" being a term
solely intended for internal TfL use) then things get complicated
here. I suppose every journey to/from Watford Jn will be charged, and
there won't be any capping - thus someone who goes between Watford Jn
and Euston several times a day will be capped at the zones 1-8 cap,
plus will have a boundary zone 8 to Watford Jn fare charged on top of
that (which I guess could be the same as a Watford High St - Watford
Jn fare).

Go back and read the prices that I published at your request in an
earlier post. Yes there are caps that apply specifically to Watford
Junction - they were in the post!!!!!!


Sorry, I'm not really sure what I was thinking - I managed to
desperately ask questions that had already clearly been answered - and
answered by your good self, at my request no less. Evidently I just
wasn't thinking!

Without a doubt I win the utl dunce of the month award for that.


I really don't know - I can see all sorts of possibilities, but
without exact information on how things will be working to/from
Watford Junction, including a table of fares and confirmation of
whether there will be a "zone W" cap or not, it's all just
speculation. Paul C - can you help!!!

There isn't space to replicate all the pricing information but there are
prices for Travelcards, PAYG charge rates and caps that apply for all
applicable zone combinations within the zones plus a smaller range of
Zones to "W". If you stop and think about it there have to be or else
none of this works properly.

As Mr Thant has explained the complication undoubtedly arises because
pricing for the line remains with the main TOC - London Midland. As I
have said until I am blue in the face the whole PAYG interface with the
TOCs will be immensely complicated because of their retained rights to
price their traffic flows. There has to be some sort of "logic" between
the various pricing regimes or else it becomes a nonsense. What's
perhaps concerning (IMO) is that this first major application doesn't
seem very logical although to be fair to London Midland none of us know
what the cash fares will be or how cheap day travel will be priced for
cash payers.


That all makes sense, of course.

So, just to be clear, for a simple minded soul like myself, the PAYG
prices for single journeys to/from Watford Jn will be set by London
Midland, and has already been decided, but doesn't feature in the TfL
2008 fares booklet.

The current Watford Jn - Euston PAYG price of £5.50/ £3 was presumably
set by TfL *before* London Midland agreed to accept Oyster PAYG from
Watford Jn. Therefore the control over setting this fare will in fact
be passing from TfL to London Midland, right? If so this would surely
have knock-on implications for the other PAYG fares from Watford Jn,
such as a simple Watford Jn to Watford High St fare, or Watford Jn to
Harrow & Wealdstone - PAYG fares that thus far have been set solely by
TfL.


All existing Overground literature is almost silent about the fact that
cash fares and cheap day tickets are available across the network - it's
being portrayed that the only game in town is PAYG with Travelcards in
second place.

--
Paul C

Indeed. (The following fares info is sourced from the Avantix
Traveller program.)

What those cash fares will be is interesting - as since January 2007,
fares between Harrow & Wealdstone and Queens Park have all followed
the LU principle of charging £3 for a cash fare outside of z1, and £4
for a cash fare for travel to zone 1 (i.e. to Euston). Similarly from
South Hampstead up to H&W all cash single fares are £3.

However whilst SDR are priced at double that - as they would be on LU,
where a return is twice the single fare - CDRs are currently available
at prices closer to the single fare.

I'd also be intrigued to know if a single £4 ticket to Euston sold at
(for example) Kenton is sold as a through LU zonal fare, so it could
be used for onward travel from Euston on LU, or if it is sold as a
standard point-to-point NR fare. Of course, Kenton and all the other
stations (apart from Willesden Jn) are now run by LU, so perhaps such
a ticket would be issued as if it were an LU fares nowadays - but
under the old Silverlink regime, I wonder if they were? And what
happens at Willesden Jn, where the ticket offices are run by LOROL.

I'm just pondering whether punters could hand over £4 and end up with
two very different tickets - one a simple singe to Euston, the other a
through LU fare for onwards Underground travel - depending upon
whether they specify they actually specify they want onwards travel or
not.

In addition I should point out that Railcard discounts are available
on the £3 or £4 fares on the Watford Jn - Euston line, but if a ticket
was issued with Railcard discount, then presumably it would have to be
issued as a point-to-point NR ticket to Euston, as plain-vanilla LU
cash fares cannot be discounted with a Railcard.

I'm also left wondering whether the LU fare scale might at some point
be applied to the NLL and WLL, at least with regards to single tickets
- i.e. £3 for a single ticket - as has been done on the Watford -
Euston line.

The question of whether tickets are issued as zonal fares (ala LU) or
as NR specified point-to-point tickets is also interesting. Tickets
printed as zonal fares do allow for flexibility, but they are perhaps
arguably more open to misuse (i.e. reused for several journeys during
the day) on routes where many stations still don't have ticket gates,
as is the case with a number of stations on the NLL (though gates have
gone in at many points). Of course a point-to-point return ticket can
still be misused/reused as well, especially as the rules allow for
breaks of journey - but perhaps misuse is harder to spot, and they
don't allow a subsequent ride on the Underground either.

(Do LU issued single fares get rejected by the gates if a long period
has elapsed from the time when they were purchased?)