wrote:

Gentlemen,
Thank you so much for the most excellent and very useful information.
Some of the fare & journey calculations seem to have changed perhaps
for the better or worse ? Expanding on what Mizter T said about
changing at Willesden J and touching out and then in again. Well, in
the past I have touched out and then back in again in quick
succession, at several different stations and this has not registered
on my card, e.g. last year I travelled from Camden Road - Stratford
( via LO) , touched out at Stratford for less than 5 minutes, met a
friend, touched in again and we both continued on to Mile End.
Inspection of my Oyster usage showed that I was charged for Camden
Road - Mile End journey, with no reference to Stratford.

Question - when you say you touched-out and back in at Stratford last
year, did you go all the way outside through the main gateline and out
on to the street outside the station entrance?

In this situation there is a difference between touching-out/in on the
standalone Oyster validators that are *within* Stratford station (i.e.
within the fare paid area inside the gates) and leaving and then re-
entering the station through the gates. It sounds to me as though you
may have just used one of these 'interchange validators' (more on this
later).


Hence, on
Saturday's journey I thought perhaps such quick touching out and back
in to try to force a z2-6 cap (at both Willesden J and Stratford)
would not count as a journey. I have read other examples where
passengers have quickly got out of a station to pick up some dry
cleaning or shopping, touched back in again within a space of 0-15
mins and not been charged for this break of journey nor has this break
been registered /noted on their Oyster usage.

OK. My understanding is that if you exit and then re-enter *the same
station* *through an automatic gate* then this will finish your
previous journey and start a new journey.

At stations where there are no gates, just standalone Oyster
validators, the situation might be different. At these stations it
*might possibly* be the case that if you touch-out and then touch-in
after a short space of time your journey is considered as continuing.
This basically depends on how the standalone Oyster validators are
configured - they can either be set up to simply end journeys when
they detect there is an 'open journey' on the card (i.e. it has been
touched-in somewhere else), or if no existing journey is detected then
they will start a new journey. (This is how most of the standalone
Oyster validators work at DLR stations - plus I think it's how they're
generally set up at other ungated stations which aren't significant
interchange points.)

Otherwise they can be set as 'interchange validators' - touching-in on
these doesn't finish a journey that has already started, instead it
tells the card that the journey may be finished, or it may carry on to
somewhere else. In other words if you don't touch-out somewhere else
in the next hour or two then the journey will be considered as having
finished, if you do touch-out somewhere else then the journey will be
extended on to that next station.

And because of the way the system is currently set up, it means that
you will only be charged for the journey between your starting station
and your ultimate destination station - hence the fact that you got
charged for a direct Camden Road to Mile End journey, despite the fact
that you touched on a standalone Oyster validators in Stratford
station (at least that's what I'm assuming you did - right?).
Thankfully though this situation looks likely to change in the near
future which will mean that Oyster will be capable of charging cheaper
fares for cheaper routes.

Another situation where one might well only get charged for one
journey despite going off and doing other things in between is where a
person exits from one station, let's say Shepherd's Bush (Central
line), goes and does there stuff (returning some hideous pink and lime
green footwear bought during a lapse of taste at a shop in Westfield),
and then goes and gets on a train from Shepherd's Bush LO/ WLL
station. As the two Shepherd's Bush stations are tied together as an
out-of-station interchange (OSI, or 'outerchange' as we often
colloquially call them on here) then the system will consider the
previous journey as being continued.

Note that there is a time limit to how long the OSI stays 'live' on
the Oyster card - in other words how long you've got to get from one
station to the next - but TfL often set this very generously for ultra
slow people (or people who get lost, say in Hammersmith between the
District/Pic station and the H&C station!).


On Saturday my
assumptions of past experiences were wrong. Touching out and back in
at Stratford ( I was outside Stratford for less than 2 mins) did now
register as a journey as would have doing the same at WJ.
Consequently, I was charged a separate Stratford - Camden Rd fare,
which on last years experience I may have not been charged.

This time you went all the way out of the main gates and then back in
right? Unlike the standalone Oyster validators there's nothing
ambiguous about exiting through some gates and then re-entering the
same gates.

Note that gates can be set to allow for an OSI of course - this is how
they are set up at the two Shepherd's Bush stations (the cause of all
these issues in the first place!). In cases such as this, leaving one
station and continuing from the other will obviously simply extend the
original journey.

There's an Excel spreadsheet list of OSIs here (thanks to Walter
Briscoe and others who asked TfL for them) - I've created a TinyURL
because the original is massive:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/dd7dka

(Excel spreadsheets can be viewed using a free Excel viewer or also
via the free online Google Docs service.)


Also last
year Willesden Junction - Stratford was priced as a via Z1 fare.
think there was a lot of debate over this and other NLL/WLL//LO
oyster pricing of fares in another forum. ( courtesy of Yorkie(?) )

I believe TfL have indeed made a number of changes regarding what
routes the system assumed people took between stations. I'd think this
was because via z1 fares were being charged for some NLL journeys,
such as Willesden Jn to Stratford.


Mizter T. I caught the 12.17 from SB to WJ and had a 2 min wait at
WJ for the 12.29 train to Stratford. I think I may have been cutting
it short if I attempted touching out and then back in again !

Indeed! Either one or the other (or both!) trains were late running,
or else the timetables were different for whatever time you were
travelling. By the by, I do think Fig's idea of taking the 266 bus
from North Acton to Willesden Jn is a good one - it's a very short bus
journey on a frequent, reliable main route, and it would sidestep all
these issues about fares.


Just as a footnote. Just after Xmas I was wrongly charged for a South
Ruislip - Clapham Junction ( via Central line and changing at
Shepherd's Bush onto LO to CJ). I was charged double the fare but was
recently reimbursed. Customer services staff explained to me that
there had been some gating problems at Shepherd's Bush ( LO ) which
have now been resolved.

I presume you were charged an off-peak £1 or £1.10 fare twice then
(that's last year's and this year's fares). That's interesting, it
sounds as though there was some issue with the OSI facility being set
up on the Shepherd's Bush gates. If there was indeed such a mistake
then it's a bit shabby that these things happen. There have been a
number of times which involved incorrect data being sent out across
the system when updates occurred - I wonder if this was possible the
result of dodgy data being included when the new fares information was
being sent out? (The timing would appear to fit.)


thanks in advance
:-)

No problem.

I have one last solution for you, by the way - and I think you might
like it!

Because Oyster PAYG fares are currently charged based on the origin
and destination stations and disregard any intermediate touch-ins on
standalone Oyster *interchange* validators (i.e. ones *within*
stations that exist for interchange passengers - they are actually
really for people swapping between Oyster PAYG and paper tickets),
then what you could do is go from Shepherd's Bush/ Willesden Jn to
Stratford, touch-in on a standalone Oyster validator *within* the
station (e.g. next to the NLL platforms) but *don't* exit the
station's main gates. You could then meet your friend within Stratford
station and continue back along the NLL to Camden Road (or wherever) -
I'm pretty sure the Oyster system would then charge you for a
Shepherd's Bush/ Willesden Jn to Camden Road journey and would
disregard the Stratford touch-in.

And it would be completely legit because you would have touched-in at
Stratford - indeed, you can touch-in as many times you want on all the
different interchange validators there and it wouldn;t make a
difference! And *all* the standalone Oyster validators at Stratford
are set up as interchange validators (apart from the one next to the
manual gate to get in and out of the station) - and yes I have tested
this very recently!

Of course this 'solution' will only work until the PAYG system is
upgraded, likely later on this year - when this happens, interchanging
between the Central line and WLL Shepherd's Bush should ensure you pay
the cheaper non-z1 fare but it would also mean that touching-in at
Stratford is likely to mean you pay for a journey out to zone 3. In
your case this wouldn't matter though, as you'd be in line for the
z2-6 cap anyway. But it will be interesting to see whether a journey
from Greenford (z4) to Camden Rd (z2) with an intermediate touch-in at
Stratford (z3) would count as one continuous journey, or two separate
journeys (Greenford - Stratford, then Stratford - Camden Rd).

I hope that helps - sorry this post is so epic in length!