On 16 Feb, 13:17, Mizter T wrote:
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.

The thing about this is that the Shepherds Bushes seem to be treated
not as an outerchange but as a more-like-Stratford situation where
it's all one station. The poster seems to have been charged for
travelling via the Central Line despite entering a building from which
it isn't possible to access the Central Line.

If the Shepherds Bushes were set up as separate stations with an
outerchange, you'd think he'd be charged the non-zone 1 fare.