On Jan 17, 10:00*pm, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:36:04 -0800 (PST), MIG

wrote:
But the logic has a different purpose from that behind travelcards.
Travelcards are a simple case of ensuring cash flow pay getting cash
up front for a cheaper offer.

It is a long standing product which existed before a single UTS style
ticket gates was ever installed. *The coding parameters are relatively
simple as are the fraud checks as there are only so many that can be
done and even then only a subset can be detected via gates. *Travelcards
or season tickets can work without any form of automatic checking.

The purpose of Travelcards is the offer a bulk travel product for
regular travellers. Yes they receive a discount compared to buying
single tickets for every journey and that reflects the reduction in cost
to the operator from fewer transactions and shorter queues and also the
fact that money is received up front. However that latter fact is NOT
the "purpose" of the product.

PAYG has a different purpose which is to ensure that maximum cash is
extracted with minimal effort as the journeys are made. *It's this
purpose, rather than the logic, that might be considered unreasonable,
and lead one to be wary of how the same logic might be applied on a
larger scale.

Sorry but you are completely incorrect. It was never a project objective
for Stored Value that maximum cash be extracted for minimal effort. The
purpose was to provide an additional product for people who have highly
variable journey needs, who may travel off peak more than the peak and
who cannot commit to a season ticket product. They were stuck with a
situation where they had to buy fully priced tickets or skew their
journeys to be able to use One Day Travelcards. However they then have
the burden of queuing up every day. *That's expensive to run,
inconvenient and not customer friendly. SVT (now PAYG) has to have
validation on entry and on exit whether on Smartcards or on hi
coercivity magnetics. *London is the only place in the world that I am
aware of where a SVT system is in place without gates at every single
point of entry and exit to the system. *There are a number of options
that can be employed to "incentivise" people to validate and to retain
their cards. *London tried the option of a low form of fare deduction on
entry with further deduction on exit for PAYG. The system was abused (as
might have been expected) but at least TfL gave people the benefit of
the doubt initially. *In the face of demonstrable evasion TfL had no
choice but to amend the fare deduction on entry provisions to the
current £4 or £5 level. *The fact that was done still does not make it
the "purpose" of the product.

Was the number of unresolved journeys used as evidence for evasion?
That's a wild assumption. I had a number of unresolved journeys
before the penalty version was brought in, but I never evaded any
fares.

These were in situations where I got on one stop into zone 3 with a
zone 1 and 2 travelcard (paper, from NR). The only extension I could
get was at the standard, huge cash fare, which I wasn't going to pay.

Given that the minimum (correct) fare would be deducted from my
Oyster, I declined to get off at the boundary station just to touch
out, so the journey was unresolved.

Was this the "fraud" that the outrageous cash fares (playing into the
hands of the appalling Boris Johnson) was meant to prevent?

If so, it's misguided and could be solved in far better ways, such as
(as I have suggested over and over) selling extension tickets at a
reasonable price to holders of paper travelcards and the installation
of validators in trains.

The former would be very simple, and TfL's refusal to do it does not
show any kind of concern for offering choices to customers, but does
show an intention to extract cash, sorry.