On May 7, 11:53*am, MIG wrote:
On 7 May, 07:49, asdf wrote:



On Tue, 5 May 2009 16:17:40 -0700 (PDT), D DB 90001 wrote:
Surely they are not expecting passengers to validate oysters in the
middle of the journy?!!!! It's complicated enough at interchange
stations about whether you need to touch in or out, making it
compulsory to validate the oyster in the middle of a journey where
there are no barriers would be even more confusing. Surely if you
touch in at Wimbledon and out at Heathrow the system would be
configured so that a greater journey time was allowed to take account
of the doubling back. Why should it be up to the passenger to take
responsiblity for it when it could be automated. I seriously doubt
that there would be a mandatory oyster validation requirement for
passengers mid-journey. That's non-sensical.

From Paul C's informative post, it appears that the reason for the
software upgrade at stations like Rayners Lane is to allow passengers
to get a cheaper fare by taking a longer route avoiding Zone 1, rather
than anything to do with variable time limits.

This would still involve validation mid-journey, of course.

This still leaves a few unexplained stations on the list (Mile End,
Earl's Court, Bond Street, etc), but perhaps a few extra ones were
just included for testing purposes.

This raises the old Bank mystery in my mind again ... I wonder if
correspondingly one will be expected to touch during journeys via zone
1 that are normally priced as not via zone 1 (or else get penalty
fared) *... or whether all such journeys will be redefined as via zone
1 by default unless you touch elsewhere on the way?

Presumeably the only way to make passengers validate their oyster mid-
journey would be to increase the standard fare to a via Z1 level fare
and keep it at the higher rate unless the oyster card is validated at
a non-Z1 station which proves that they did not travel via zone 1. If
it was the other way round, people would simply travel via zone 1 and
not bother validating their oyster to confirm the route.

I am thinking of DLR-related journeys that could be via Bank or
Stratford, but there must be other examples.

Still speculation overload.

Presumeably the validation en-route would only take place at a station
where interchange *has to* take place, I can't imagine it being a very
popular idea for people to pile off a NLL service at Gospel Oak, just
to validate their oyster, and then rush back to the train only to find
that it's left without them. Incidently where would you validate your
oyster on that kind of route to prove that you weren't just travelling
from stratford to Willesden Junction via Z1?