Walter Briscoe wrote:

In message
of
Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:47:27 in uk.transport.london, Andy
writes

This Saturday there is engineering work which means the the West
Ruislip - Marylebone services are diverted to Paddington. Currently
Oyster PAYG is valid on the Marylebone route, but not into Paddington
(this being on the list for spring 2008). Does anyone know if
provision has made for people touching in at West Ruislip and then not
being able to touch out at Paddington during the diversion? Will the
be posters saying that PAYG is not available or will people have to
phone up about unresolved journeys.


I think authority to travel for a given service should be valid on a
replacement. I think it is otherwise not a replacement.

A few weeks ago, I went on an advertised replacement service to Amersham
via Beaconsfield from Marylebone while there was no Metropolitan service
north of Harrow-on-the-Hill.

I touched in and out at both ends of the journey to avoid grief.

I spoke to a CSA at Amersham and was told I was within my rights. At
22.00 on a Saturday night, I thought I was unlikely to meet a Revenue
Protection Inspector.


If it was advertised as a replacement service by LU, that all sounds
legit. Whether staff at Amersham had been briefed that this might
happen is another question!


I don't know the details, but believe TfL has the ability to suspend the
need to touch out. I would not be surprised to find the system does not
work smoothly.


When the Chelsea Flower Show is on, I understand that a side door to
Sloane Square Underground station is opened specifically for Flower
Show bound punters - there is no gate and no facility for passengers
to touch-out. However what then happens is that these same passengers
are presumed to make a return journey by Underground, and so will pass
through the gates of Sloane Square to enter the station - when they so
do, everything get resolved properly. However if they do not, they
incur the £4 maximum fare. This implementation attracted some negative
comment last year - people obviously got refunded if they complained,
but of course that's a pain nonetheless - so it might be done
differently this year. We shall see.

Separately, I've encountered a journey being "auto-completed" once. On
New Year's Eve 2006/07 I was making a rather inadvisable late hop
between parties with a friend (who was using a Travelcard). I touched-
in as normal through the gates, but on exit at Camden Town at 23.40
(i.e. 5 minutes before NYE free travel officially begins) the gates
were already open and what's more were completely turned off (Oyster
pads and all). Whatever, I was in a rush!

The next day I returned from Camden Town, and *before* going through
the gates I checked my journey history on a ticket machine - my
journey was shown as being "Bank - Auto-completed" (Bank is an example
start point of course... or maybe I was partying with the Old Lady of
Threadneedle Street, it's all a bit hazy). So there was some
configuration change which meant I didn't get charged the max fare on
entry (which is normal, as it is then adjusted later) - perhaps the
whole system was changed from say 21.45 on the 31st so as to only
charge people the minimum fare.

I intended to keep a permanent record of this journey history entry,
but alas I didn't.

Anyway with regards to the specific situation - what you seem to be
proposing is that for the duration of the engineering works the max
fare charging element is turned off at West Ruislip, however that
would mean that passengers entering or exiting West Ruislip were only
charged the minimum fare from that station, which is £1 at any time.

Or the more sophisticated alternative is that the max fare on entry
debited at West Ruislip was adjusted to be that of a zone 1-5 journey
(£2, or £3.50 weekdays between 7am-7pm), and that any unresolved
journey to/from West Ruislip was also included in the daily capping
that day - with the presumption that any journey to/from West Ruislip
that was unresolved (i.e. only an entry or exit) was a journey to or
from Paddington/zone 1.

I don't know how difficulty it would be to make the latter changes, or
even if it was possible, but if it was then I'm pretty sure it would
cover the situation that will arise when Chiltern trains divert to/
from Paddington.


That reminds me, I must chase a charging mistake. On Sunday, I reached
my cap. At Earls Court, I asked a question of a CSA at the Manual Gate
and touched in as I followed him to some information. The system made a
different notation of the event and started a new cap accumulation. By
the time I realised there was a problem, it was too late to get ticket
office staff to resolve the issue. Unfortunately, there is insufficient
detail on the website journey history to explain.
--
Walter Briscoe


That sounds a bit peculiar, however it might be as a result of the
fact that system does not know whether you were coming or going -
touching on an Oyster pad, unlike touching on a gate, doesn't provides
any indication as to whether you were entering or exiting the system.

Where had you been earlier - I'm not looking for an account of all
your movements (!), just some basics - i.e. Had you exited Earls Court
earlier on? If so how much earlier? If not had you exited another
station earlier on?

My experience thus far has indicated that the Oyster system is fairly
robust, and can cope with unusual events, so I'm interested in what
comes of this..