On Sep 7, 2:36*pm, Roy Badami wrote:

On 07/09/10 13:54, Mizter T wrote:

However in the case of OEPs I find it really rather hard to imagine a
TOC would actually attempt a prosecution,

Yeah, I understand where you're coming from. *I don't think it's
incredibly likely to happen - but there have been several instances in
recent years where a decision to prosecute has on the face of it been
rather disproportionate, which is why I remain cautious.

Nonetheless I think it's really rather unlikely to happen - and
certainly not at the moment.


* and if they did I think the case would fall apart very quickly. IANAL
* etc.

My concern is that it wouldn't fall apart. *You'd be on a train without
a valid ticket, and you wouldn't really have much of a leg to stand on.
* The offence under the byelaws is an absolute offence, so intent
doesn't matter.

IANAL, natch.

I disagree, I think if a case was brought to court now it'd fall apart
in a second.

Ganesh Sittampalam wrote:
It seems this case was overturned on appeal, though that's relatively
hard to find - http://home.vicnet.net.au/~safari/newsletters/No58.pdf
(near the bottom of the last column on the last page) says:

[...]
The court noted that passengers were not warned to check for a green
light and a beep when touching their cards onto the reader -

Seeing as its either (as I recall) a round green light or a
round red light, is there also a colour-blindness defence?
And do the readers not sometimes beep (but maybe twice?) also
on a failed read? Hmm. Since I don't seem to remember very
clearly, perhaps I better hope there's a "hopelessly confused"
defence as well.

#Paul

On Sep 7, 3:46*pm, wrote:

Ganesh Sittampalam wrote:
It seems this case was overturned on appeal, though that's relatively
hard to find - http://home.vicnet.net.au/~safari/newsletters/No58.pdf
(near the bottom of the last column on the last page) says:
[...]
The court noted that passengers were not warned to check for a green
light and a beep when touching their cards onto the reader -

Seeing as its either (as I recall) a round green light or a
round red light, is there also a colour-blindness defence?
And do the readers not sometimes beep (but maybe twice?) also
on a failed read? *Hmm. Since I don't seem to remember very
clearly, perhaps I better hope there's a "hopelessly confused"
defence as well.

There's a double beep on an error which is at quite a different pitch
to a single beep on success. The double error beep actually covers a
lot of bases - failed read, not enough credit, passback attempt etc.
There's also a further multi-beep for those using concessionary 'Zip'
Oyster cards for young people.

All validators on buses do the beeping thing, though I recall being on
one bus where the beep element appeared to be broken - caused a lot of
confusion amongst boarding passengers as they weren't sure if they'd
successfully touched in or not.

Standalone Oyster validators at stations and tram stops also do the
beeping thing too.

MIG wrote:

Anyway, just thougth I'd remind about the posters in SET trains which
don't mention OEPs or travelcards at all when encouraging people to
use Oyster. They talk about "use your Oyster card on our Greater
London Metro trains" or something similar.

It's similar on National Express although there are some additional posters
at stations about where the outer boundary is beyond which you can't use
Oyster. Nothing about OEPs at all.

On Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:13:46 +0100, Roy Badami
wrote:

Interesting, but I'm just not comfortable relying on it. If it were
just the risk of a PF that might be one thing, but there's always the
risk that they might prosecute.

So how would this situation be treated:
I and a colleague travelled from Euston to Richmond. I have PAYG, he
has a Z1-2 season.

Outward journey from Euston on Overground, via Willesden Jn. Touched
in at Euston, £1.30 PAYG for colleage indicated on exiting Richmond
station.

On the return journey, just missed Overground so caught the first
Waterloo train, changing at Vauxhall. Colleague charged £1.50 on
exit. As we didn't decided to use NR until the last minute, should my
colleague have tried to set an OEP for the return? Should the
barriers at Vauxhall NR have alerted someone to the absence of an OEP
and not have allowed him to leave?

Oyster FAQ is of little help...
You only need to set an Oyster Extension Permit when you start a
journey within the zones covered by your Travelcard and want to travel
outside those zones on National Rail

We didn't "want to travel" on NR, it was simply more convenient at the
time...

Ivor The Engine wrote:

Oyster FAQ is of little help...
You only need to set an Oyster Extension Permit when you start a
journey within the zones covered by your Travelcard and want to travel
outside those zones on National Rail

We didn't "want to travel" on NR, it was simply more convenient at the
time...

Has anyone ever pointed out the inconsistency between NR policy on
permitted routes and the London Zones?

e.g. take the former Manchester to Derby Voyager service. Tickets M-D
were valid on it because it was a through train, even though it went via
Birmingham, and M-D tickets were not valid there. In contrast, the Zonal
validity is applied when trains pass through zones, even if they are
through services.



--
http://gallery120232.fotopic.net/p9632955.html
(43 082 at Longbridge, 10 Jun 1995)

On 07/09/10 17:32, Ivor The Engine wrote:

So how would this situation be treated:
I and a colleague travelled from Euston to Richmond. I have PAYG, he
has a Z1-2 season.

Outward journey from Euston on Overground, via Willesden Jn. Touched
in at Euston, £1.30 PAYG for colleage indicated on exiting Richmond
station.

On the return journey, just missed Overground so caught the first
Waterloo train, changing at Vauxhall. Colleague charged £1.50 on
exit. As we didn't decided to use NR until the last minute, should my
colleague have tried to set an OEP for the return?

No. When your colleague touched in at Richmond, this would have
initiated a PAYG journey, since Richmond is outside his zones - so no
need for an OEP.

If you'd used NR on the outwards journey he would have needed an OEP,
though. That's because touching in at Euston wouldn't normally start a
PAYG jouney since it's within his zones - the OEP makes sure that it does.

Basically NR are worried about people touching in within their zones and
then leaving the system at an ungated NR station without touching out -
therefore never having touched an Oyster reader outside their zones and
hence not paying for their journey. What the OEP does is force the
system to use the normal PAYG rules even if you start your journey
within the zones; in that case (i.e. with the OEP) the normal PAYG rules
would apply and he'd be charged a maximum fare if he failed to touch out.

-roy

On Sep 7, 5:32*pm, Ivor The Engine wrote:

On Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:13:46 +0100, Roy Badami
wrote:

Interesting, but I'm just not comfortable relying on it. *If it were
just the risk of a PF that might be one thing, but there's always the
risk that they might prosecute.

So how would this situation be treated:
I and a colleague travelled from Euston to Richmond. * I have PAYG, he
has a Z1-2 season.

Outward journey from Euston on Overground, via Willesden Jn. *Touched
in at Euston, £1.30 PAYG for colleage indicated on exiting Richmond
station.

On the return journey, just missed Overground so caught the first
Waterloo train, changing at Vauxhall. *Colleague charged £1.50 on
exit. *As we didn't decided to use NR until the last minute, should my
colleague have tried to set an OEP for the return? [...]

No - OEPs are *only* for those starting journeys within the zones
covered by their Travelcard and heading out of them to elsewhere in
PAYG-land (which is the London zones plus Watford Jn and four stations
on c2c).

Your colleague was in full compliance with the rules. (The difference
in fares reflect the fact that a z3&4 journey on NR is charged at a
different rate to a z3&4 journey on TfL services, i.e. LU/LO/DLR.)

[...] Should the
barriers at Vauxhall NR have alerted someone to the absence of an OEP
and not have allowed him to leave?

No - see above.

If you'd decided to travel on NR *from* Waterloo to Richmond, then to
ensure they comply with the rules they should set an OEP before
departing from Waterloo (it could be set before starting the Tube
journey at Euston or wherever, or at Waterloo - worth noting that SWT
ticket machines don't provide for Oyster at all so at Waterloo it
could only be done at the Tube station). The logic is that they should
set an OEP before they leave the zones covered by their Travelcard,
i.e. before they leave zones 1&2.

However, even if they hadn't set an OEP then the gates at Richmond
would have deducted the correct extension fare for travel in z3&4 (so
long as they touched-in properly when passing through the NR gates at
Waterloo to access the platforms) - the gates do *not* complain about
the lack of an OEP whatsoever, they don't flag it up in any way to
gate staff, nada - as I said above, OEPs aren't something that anyone
seems to pay much attention to, let alone actually try to enforce.


Oyster FAQ is of little help...
You only need to set an Oyster Extension Permit when you start a
journey within the zones covered by your Travelcard and want to travel
outside those zones on National Rail

We didn't "want to travel" on NR, it was simply more convenient at the
time...

You've missed the crucial wording "start a journey within the zones
covered by your Travelcard and want to travel outside those zones on
National Rail" - at Richmond, your colleague was *not* starting a
journey within the zones covered by his Travelcard, hence there was no
requirement for him to set an OEP.

On Sep 7, 6:46*pm, Mizter T wrote:

On Sep 7, 5:32*pm, Ivor The Engine wrote:

So how would this situation be treated:
I and a colleague travelled from Euston to Richmond. * I have PAYG, he
has a Z1-2 season.

Outward journey from Euston on Overground, via Willesden Jn. *Touched
in at Euston, £1.30 PAYG for colleage indicated on exiting Richmond
station.

On the return journey, just missed Overground so caught the first
Waterloo train, changing at Vauxhall. *Colleague charged £1.50 on
exit. *As we didn't decided to use NR until the last minute, should my
colleague have tried to set an OEP for the return? [...]

No - OEPs are *only* for those starting journeys within the zones
covered by their Travelcard and heading out of them to elsewhere in
PAYG-land (which is the London zones plus Watford Jn and four stations
on c2c).

Your colleague was in full compliance with the rules. (The difference
in fares reflect the fact that a z3&4 journey on NR is charged at a
different rate to a z3&4 journey on TfL services, i.e. LU/LO/DLR.)

[...] Should the
barriers at Vauxhall NR have alerted someone to the absence of an OEP
and not have allowed him to leave?

No - see above.

If you'd decided to travel on NR *from* Waterloo to Richmond, then to
ensure they comply with the rules they should set an OEP before
departing from Waterloo (it could be set before starting the Tube
journey at Euston or wherever, or at Waterloo - worth noting that SWT
ticket machines don't provide for Oyster at all so at Waterloo it
could only be done at the Tube station). The logic is that they should
set an OEP before they leave the zones covered by their Travelcard,
i.e. before they leave zones 1&2.

However, even if they hadn't set an OEP then the gates at Richmond
would have deducted the correct extension fare for travel in z3&4 (so
long as they touched-in properly when passing through the NR gates at
Waterloo to access the platforms) - the gates do *not* complain about
the lack of an OEP whatsoever, they don't flag it up in any way to
gate staff, nada - as I said *above, OEPs aren't something that anyone
seems to pay much attention to, let alone actually try to enforce.

Argh - substitute Vauxhall for Waterloo and everything I've written
above is still valid.

On Sep 7, 6:34*pm, Roy Badami wrote:

On 07/09/10 17:32, Ivor The Engine wrote:

So how would this situation be treated:
I and a colleague travelled from Euston to Richmond. * I have PAYG, he
has a Z1-2 season.

Outward journey from Euston on Overground, via Willesden Jn. *Touched
in at Euston, £1.30 PAYG for colleage indicated on exiting Richmond
station.

On the return journey, just missed Overground so caught the first
Waterloo train, changing at Vauxhall. *Colleague charged £1.50 on
exit. *As we didn't decided to use NR until the last minute, should my
colleague have tried to set an OEP for the return?

No. *When your colleague touched in at Richmond, this would have
initiated a PAYG journey, since Richmond is outside his zones - so no
need for an OEP.

If you'd used NR on the outwards journey he would have needed an OEP,
though. *That's because touching in at Euston wouldn't normally start a
PAYG jouney since it's within his zones - the OEP makes sure that it does..

In that scenario, because Vauxhall Tube and NR stations are actually
separate, then it would have been equally possible to set an OEP at
Vauxhall (though it's only possible to do so at the Tube station,
because there's no facilities to set one at the NR station - SWT
ticket machines cater for their own smartcard system and not Oyster).

Indeed, they could have travelled to Clapham Junction or even Putney
(last station in zone 2 - actually on the z2/3 border), alighted and
touched-out and then gone to find somewhere to load an OEP onto the
card before recommencing the journey - though that place would have to
be an Oyster ticket stop, given that SWT stations have no facilities
to set OEPs (do I sound like a stuck record yet). Of course getting
off at CJ and Putney in order to do this would also be absurd - hence
do it at Euston or Vauxhall (or else don't worry about it).


Basically NR are worried about people touching in within their zones and
then leaving the system at an ungated NR station without touching out -
therefore never having touched an Oyster reader outside their zones and
hence not paying for their journey. *What the OEP does is force the
system to use the normal PAYG rules even if you start your journey
within the zones; in that case (i.e. with the OEP) the normal PAYG rules
would apply and he'd be charged a maximum fare if he failed to touch out.

Yep.