On 24 Jan, 23:43, Arthur Figgis wrote:
Chris Tolley wrote:
Paul Scott wrote:

much as it might seem straightforward to have a London centred zonal
system spreading ever outwards, there will have to be a limit somewhere -
and it might as well be the Greater London boundary as anywhere.

Actually ... I rather like the idea of the zones spreading ever
outwards. With Zone 43 including the great arc of Wrexham, Chester,
Warrington, Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and Hull, it looks like a
one-zone ticket will be quite good value, though knowing the way that
such boundaries are set, I expect a Chester to Manchester via Knutsford
ticket would have to be a 2-zoner. ;-)

Some countries do have a national zone model, where you pay for the
zones you pass through. They use boxes or cells rather than concentric
rings as the zones.



This is how things are done in Tyne & Wear - see:
http://www.networkticketing.com/selector.html

or for a more detailed PDF of the above:
http://www.nexus.org.uk/ufs/shared/i...ne_Map_Col.pdf
(though the above PDF map omits some important zonal boundary lines in
the middle of the Tyne river).

Thankfully these don't come into play when you want a day ticket -
they're only relevant for the weekly, monthly or annual multi-
operator

The numbering logic behind the zones seems bizarre at first sight -
the zone numbers ascend in a sort of diagonal sweep from the south
west to the north east of the metropolitan county of T&W. However I
think it may be designed this was to make it easy to issue and -
crucially - verify the validity of tickets with zonal combinations
that are in a row or in a ring (think of a busy bus driver checking
tickets). Note that the Tyne ferry has zone 38 all to itself.