Oyster ticketing developments
 

"Michael R N Dolbear" wrote in message
news:01cbd873$e0769ea0$LocalHost@default...

For Reading and Basingstoke via Reading to London I assume GWR gets to
set the fares ?

That was definitely the understanding when SWT introduced the Super Offpeak
tier of fares a few years ago. Basingstoke was an anomaly, in that the
differential was pennies, rather than the few pounds (£4 or £5 when I saw a
tabulated list) for nearly everywhere further. At Basingstoke only there is
an SWT priced 'route Woking' available which undercuts the 'any permitted'
by a trivial amount - which suggests FGW do set only that fare, but I have
no means of checking.

All fares from Winchester to London are probably set by SWT, you could
however buy a ticket from Winchester to Basingstoke and a combined ODTC
from Basingstoke to London..

Who sets Weymouth to London fares ?

SWT I believe

Paul S

Oyster ticketing developments
 

In article
,
(Mizter T) wrote:

For outboundary Travelcards, my assumption is that there is an agreed
sum from each outboundary Travelcard (Day - whether Anytime or off-
peak - or season) which gets paid into the 'Travelcard pot' to cover
the Travelcard element of the ticket. I'd imagine this sum is rather
less than the price of an inboundary z1-6 Day Travelcard (let's ignore
seasons for the moment). However I find it hard to imagine that
different TOCs pay different amounts into the 'Travelcard pot' - i.e.
I reckon an outboundary Day Travelcard from Brighton, Cambridge,
Reading, Southend and Winchester all result in an identical payment
into the 'Travelcard pot' for the Travelcard element of the ticket.
(Bear in mind it's not TfL charging the TOCs, it's the TfL and the
TOCs collectively charging the TOCs.)

Therefore it comes down to what a TOC can extract from a punter -
albeit in the context of the rail fares regulatory regime, inc. the
fares baskets and RPI limits on fare increases and all that. Some TOCs
only charge a small premium for the Travelcard add-on - presumably
they think it's worthwhile doing so in order to attract punters to
travel with them (thinking here of off-peak Day Travelcards, which are
aimed at leisure pax), and perhaps they might actually end up netting
less than a CDR to London (?) - other TOCs, such as FCC, seem to
regard it as a way of milking punters. (The chunk of the ticket price
that doesn't go into the 'Travelcard pot' will go into the railway's
complex ORCATS system for allocating revenue amongst the appropriate
operators - from Cambridge, say, the predominant chunk of ticket sales
income for any permitted tickets to London and Travelcards to London
will go to FCC, who provide the fastest service with lots of capacity.)

The 'Travelcard pot' is then divvied up by what I can only imagine is
a mindbendingly complicated formula as agreed by TfL and the TOCs
(through the ATOC London Schemes Council), based on all sorts of usage
data.

Which is a long way of saying that this is not a case of TfL deciding
they don't like FCC because they smell and charging them lots, whilst
being nice to say c2c because they bring cakes along. FCC or any other
TOC claiming its all TfL's fault would simply be talking nonsense
(though I wouldn't be remotely surprised if that's what you get from
the lower echelons of a TOCs customer service bods - though to be fair
it's a complex issue, and inevitably, they'll have been told f-all
about it, and so will just be following the line to take - though if
you come across the more senior TOC managers, don't let them brush you
off with the lame blame game).

Do we have more to go on than your assumptions?

When I started working in London in 2001 the outboundary travelcard addon
from Cambridge was much smaller than now (£1 without railcard discount) so
it can't be historic. What I don't know is what the equivalent figure for,
say, Oxford was then.

On the other hand, I think First told me the amount that they had to put
into the pot was based on surveyed usage or something like that.

What is utterly unacceptable in a publicly subsidised system is that there
is no transparency at all.

In article ,
(Graham Harrison) wrote:

I wonder whether these differentials are historic - maybe they go
right back to NSE days?

Can't be. See above.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Oyster ticketing developments
 

wrote in message
...
In article
,
(Mizter T) wrote:


Do we have more to go on than your assumptions?

When I started working in London in 2001 the outboundary travelcard addon
from Cambridge was much smaller than now (£1 without railcard discount) so
it can't be historic. What I don't know is what the equivalent figure for,
say, Oxford was then.

When the outboundary travelcard was invented I feel sure that the add on
fare to the "day return" was a fixed amount regardless of which NSE station
you started from.

tim

Oyster ticketing developments
 

In article ,
(tim....) wrote:

wrote in message
...
In article
,
(Mizter T) wrote:

Do we have more to go on than your assumptions?

When I started working in London in 2001 the outboundary travelcard
addon from Cambridge was much smaller than now (£1 without railcard
discount) so it can't be historic. What I don't know is what the
equivalent figure for, say, Oxford was then.

When the outboundary travelcard was invented I feel sure that the
add on fare to the "day return" was a fixed amount regardless of
which NSE station you started from.

Can anyone here stand that up? I hardly used Capitalcards or Day
Travelcards before 2001.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Oyster ticketing developments
 

On 2/28/2011 4:46 AM, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 16:33:14
on Sun, 27 Feb 2011, redcat remarked:

My VISA card has one number, but it's in two separate names -- mine
and Mr Cat's. So wouldn't that confuse the mechanism to have two of
the same card numbers in a row touching the thingie?

This may have been already considered as part of the paywave
specification - for example, is the limit (for non-TfL purchases) ten
per day per card, or ten per day per account (which might have two cards).

Thanks, yes, they'd have to be living in a cave not to consider this.

BTW -- I noticed your credit cards tend to have that chip on them. Mine
do not. Is this chip what will make them work on LT? or is a traditional
magnetic strip ok?

Oyster ticketing developments
 

On Sun, 06 Mar 2011 11:24:44 -0500, redcat
wrote:
BTW -- I noticed your credit cards tend to have that chip on them.

The cards that will work are the ones with the contactless "payWave"
ones. Current chip and PIN or magstripe ones won't.

Neil

--
Neil Williams, Milton Keynes, UK

Oyster ticketing developments
 

On Mar 6, 4:24*pm, redcat wrote:

On 2/28/2011 4:46 AM, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 16:33:14
on Sun, 27 Feb 2011, redcat remarked:

My VISA card has one number, but it's in two separate names -- mine
and Mr Cat's. So wouldn't that confuse the mechanism to have two of
the same card numbers in a row touching the thingie?

This may have been already considered as part of the paywave
specification - for example, is the limit (for non-TfL purchases) ten
per day per card, or ten per day per account (which might have two cards).

Thanks, yes, they'd have to be living in a cave not to consider this.

BTW -- I noticed your credit cards tend to have that chip on them. Mine
do not. Is this chip what will make them work on LT? or is a traditional
magnetic strip ok?

Neither - the 'pay and wave' functionality is buried, unseen, within
the card.

EMV-compliant RFID payment cards are marketed by Visa as "payWave" and
by Mastercard as "paypass".

Visa payWave cards feature a stylised radiowave type logo, whilst
Mastercard paypass cards just seem to feature the "paypass" logotype.
I've referred to them as 'pay and wave' cards so as to encompass all
of them.

Oyster ticketing developments
 

On 3/6/2011 11:40 AM, Mizter T wrote:

On Mar 6, 4:24 pm, wrote:

On 2/28/2011 4:46 AM, Roland Perry wrote:

In message5eWdnbzIf8qwXvfQnZ2dnUVZ_uqdn...@earthlink .com, at 16:33:14
on Sun, 27 Feb 2011, remarked:

My VISA card has one number, but it's in two separate names -- mine
and Mr Cat's. So wouldn't that confuse the mechanism to have two of
the same card numbers in a row touching the thingie?

This may have been already considered as part of the paywave
specification - for example, is the limit (for non-TfL purchases) ten
per day per card, or ten per day per account (which might have two cards).

Thanks, yes, they'd have to be living in a cave not to consider this.

BTW -- I noticed your credit cards tend to have that chip on them. Mine
do not. Is this chip what will make them work on LT? or is a traditional
magnetic strip ok?

Neither - the 'pay and wave' functionality is buried, unseen, within
the card.

EMV-compliant RFID payment cards are marketed by Visa as "payWave" and
by Mastercard as "paypass".

Visa payWave cards feature a stylised radiowave type logo, whilst
Mastercard paypass cards just seem to feature the "paypass" logotype.
I've referred to them as 'pay and wave' cards so as to encompass all
of them.

Oh, got it. Thanks. This is new to me!

redcat

Oyster ticketing developments
 

On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 03:54:05PM -0000, Mizter T wrote:

I disagree with the notion that ticketing integration is being eroded - what
is an annoyance is that the situation on National Rail is subtly different
(e.g. no free travel for accompanied children aged 5-10), but that's not
TfL's fault.

Errm, yes it is. It's TfL that decided to make travel for 5-10 year
olds free, breaking ticketing integration :-)

--
David Cantrell | Cake Smuggler Extraordinaire

[OS X] appeals to me as a monk, a user, a compiler-of-apps, a
sometime coder, and an easily amused primate with a penchant
for those that are pretty, colorful, and make nice noises.
-- Dan Birchall, in The Monastery

Oyster ticketing developments
 

On Tue, Mar 01, 2011 at 05:04:58PM -0800, Mizter T wrote:

However I find it hard to imagine that
different TOCs pay different amounts into the 'Travelcard pot' - i.e.
I reckon an outboundary Day Travelcard from Brighton, Cambridge,
Reading, Southend and Winchester all result in an identical payment
into the 'Travelcard pot' for the Travelcard element of the ticket.

I'd not be at all surprised to find they were different. Southern, for
example, will sell a HUGE number of them, whereas Scotrail will sell
very few (they will sell some though - IIRC you can buy a sleeper ticket
plus travelcard, but by default you get a sleeper + a single zone 1/2 tube
ticket). I would therefore expect them to contribute different
proportions of the revenue because their costs per ticket in doing so
are radically different.

--
David Cantrell | Nth greatest programmer in the world

In this episode, R2 and Luke weld the doors shut on their X-Wing,
and Chewbacca discovers that his Ewok girlfriend is really just a
Womble with its nose chopped off.