What a nightmare.

I travel from London Bridge down to East Croydon on the overland using my
Oyster Travelcard 1-4, expecting to use pre-pay at the other end to pay
the extra. Oh no, "pre-pay doesn't work here". So, I queue behind six
(SIX!) people waiting to buy their zone extension tickets and/or get
fined.

I was lucky - East Croydon is, for the trains, zone 5, so it was a simple
zone extension. However, the woman in front of me only had a zone 1-2; she
was fined £10 (and was most indignant about it, since she was under the
impression that her pre-pay would have covered her, and nobody told her
otherwise).

And, just to make life more bewildering, get out of the zone 5 station,
and hop on a tram which works on a zone 1-4 travelcard...

(Oh, and when entering Wimbledon at the other end of the tram, use
Oystercard to get in, but with no opportunity to use it on the way out in
Waterloo, I now have an unresolved journey. Nice.)

This is anything *but* simple.

I was lucky - East Croydon is, for the trains, zone 5, so it was a simple
zone extension. However, the woman in front of me only had a zone 1-2; she
was fined £10 (and was most indignant about it, since she was under the
impression that her pre-pay would have covered her, and nobody told her
otherwise).


I agree its ridiculous that they couldn't have got Oyster to work with NR
but in their defence (at least on the Eastern side of London Bridge) they've
got huge great posters saying it doesn't work on NR services - so she/you
wouldn't have had a valid excuse. Did you use Central services or not see
the posters ("Using Oyster From This Station")?

In article ,
(JB) wrote:

I agree its ridiculous that they couldn't have got Oyster to work with
NR
but in their defence (at least on the Eastern side of London Bridge)
they've
got huge great posters saying it doesn't work on NR services - so
she/you
wouldn't have had a valid excuse. Did you use Central services or not
see
the posters ("Using Oyster From This Station")?

I didn't see those posters at all: having walked onto the platform and
straight onto the train.

And, since six people were in front of me from one
not-particularly-crowded mid-Saturday train, I wasn't the only one:
there's a major problem here, and bunging up a few posters isn't going to
fix it.

j

On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 22:57:33 +0000 (UTC) james007
said...

What a nightmare.

I travel from London Bridge down to East Croydon on the overland using my
Oyster Travelcard 1-4, expecting to use pre-pay at the other end to pay
the extra. Oh no, "pre-pay doesn't work here". So, I queue behind six
(SIX!) people waiting to buy their zone extension tickets and/or get
fined.

The most logical solution would be for National Rail to fall in line with
LUL when it comes to a pricing structure for single or return journeys
within the 6 zones. In other words all fares on a zone to zone basis
rather than point to point. Therefore you could fully integrate concepts
like Oyster Pre-pay for all forms of transport no matter where you start
or end your journey in what basically is Transport for London's domain.

--
Phil Richards
London, N4

Phil Richards wrote in message ET...
On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 22:57:33 +0000 (UTC) james007
said...

What a nightmare.

I travel from London Bridge down to East Croydon on the overland using my
Oyster Travelcard 1-4, expecting to use pre-pay at the other end to pay
the extra. Oh no, "pre-pay doesn't work here". So, I queue behind six
(SIX!) people waiting to buy their zone extension tickets and/or get
fined.

The most logical solution would be for National Rail to fall in line with
LUL when it comes to a pricing structure for single or return journeys
within the 6 zones. In other words all fares on a zone to zone basis
rather than point to point. Therefore you could fully integrate concepts
like Oyster Pre-pay for all forms of transport no matter where you start
or end your journey in what basically is Transport for London's domain.

I don't mean to be a pessimist, but would that mean that NR would have
to lower their fares and/or change their fare schedule to allow people
to pay less for journeys? If so, then IMVHO it might be resisted - if
for no other reason than that it means less money for NR.

But it would be nice if ALL of the NR TOCs inside the Greater London
area switched to a zonal fare system - then the Oyster validators
would start popping up and the NR system wouldn't be so confusing to
people (the NR system makes less sense to me than the bus system...)

Brad

I don't mean to be a pessimist, but would that mean that NR would have
to lower their fares and/or change their fare schedule to allow people
to pay less for journeys? If so, then IMVHO it might be resisted - if
for no other reason than that it means less money for NR.

But it would be nice if ALL of the NR TOCs inside the Greater London
area switched to a zonal fare system - then the Oyster validators
would start popping up and the NR system wouldn't be so confusing to
people (the NR system makes less sense to me than the bus system...)

Brad

I don't know much about tickets but I would think a few NR fares would rise
if they went the zone system. Some cheap day returns, etc are far less than
two singles and they've got that 4 friends travel ticket (whatever each TOC
calls it). Certainly be nice and simple though. Then they could extend
free underground travel to TOC employees :-)

(TheOneKEA) wrote in message om...
Phil Richards wrote in message ET...
On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 22:57:33 +0000 (UTC) james007
said...

What a nightmare.

I travel from London Bridge down to East Croydon on the overland using my
Oyster Travelcard 1-4, expecting to use pre-pay at the other end to pay
the extra. Oh no, "pre-pay doesn't work here". So, I queue behind six
(SIX!) people waiting to buy their zone extension tickets and/or get
fined.

The most logical solution would be for National Rail to fall in line with
LUL when it comes to a pricing structure for single or return journeys
within the 6 zones. In other words all fares on a zone to zone basis
rather than point to point. Therefore you could fully integrate concepts
like Oyster Pre-pay for all forms of transport no matter where you start
or end your journey in what basically is Transport for London's domain.

I don't mean to be a pessimist, but would that mean that NR would have
to lower their fares and/or change their fare schedule to allow people
to pay less for journeys? If so, then IMVHO it might be resisted - if
for no other reason than that it means less money for NR.

Lower their fares! If only. NR fares are already *significantly*
lower than LU fares for all the equivalent return journeys that I am
aware.

A return journey from my station to central London costs £2.20. Zonal
cash fare for that would be £4.60!

But it would be nice if ALL of the NR TOCs inside the Greater London
area switched to a zonal fare system - then the Oyster validators
would start popping up and the NR system wouldn't be so confusing to
people (the NR system makes less sense to me than the bus system...)

Let's just consider that "the NR system makes less sense to me than
the bus system...". Well, buses have a flat cash fare of £1 anywhere
so I'm not surprised you find them less confusing than NR, which has a
far more complex fare structure.

But what's the drawback of that really? Is it so terrible that you
don't know /exactly/ how much you're going to pay until you buy your
ticket? It's certainly not a problem if you know it's going to be
cheaper than the zonal equivalent. In fact when you know it's more
than 50% cheaper than the zonal equivalent it makes you all smug about
not paying zonal fares

Here's another thing while I'm on a roll, I can buy a weekly season to
central London (train only, admittedly) for £7.70!

To simplify it along zonal lines would be a bit like Orange's
fantastic roaming charge "simplification" of a couple of years ago.
All the differing roaming rates were jacked up by between 20% and 200%
to have one, flat, /simple/ rate. Great! You've achieved price
transparency - but you're ripping everyone off.

Apart from helping out a few (poor diddums) confused north Londoners,
introducing zonal charging on NR would be a bad idea for everyone who
actually lives south of the river.

Well actually I just thought of one thing, if you're going from Zone 2
on NR to Zone 2 on LU via Zone 1 then it would be cheaper to have
zonal fares. So maybe they should be an option. They should
certainly not replace the current fare structure though, merely
supplement it. Confusing I know. But I'd rather have a choice of not
being ripped off.

(Steph Davies) wrote in message m...
(TheOneKEA) wrote in message om...
I don't mean to be a pessimist, but would that mean that NR would have
to lower their fares and/or change their fare schedule to allow people
to pay less for journeys? If so, then IMVHO it might be resisted - if
for no other reason than that it means less money for NR.

Lower their fares! If only. NR fares are already *significantly*
lower than LU fares for all the equivalent return journeys that I am
aware.

Hmmm, didn't know that - I've never used the NR system and only have a
basic
knowledge of some of the fares.


A return journey from my station to central London costs £2.20. Zonal
cash fare for that would be £4.60!

But it would be nice if ALL of the NR TOCs inside the Greater London
area switched to a zonal fare system - then the Oyster validators
would start popping up and the NR system wouldn't be so confusing to
people (the NR system makes less sense to me than the bus system...)

Let's just consider that "the NR system makes less sense to me than
the bus system...". Well, buses have a flat cash fare of £1 anywhere
so I'm not surprised you find them less confusing than NR, which has a
far more complex fare structure.

SNIP

It's not the fares, it's the maps...

Show me an Underground-style map of the NR routes and I will find it
less confusing. THAT'S why I never use it, because I can never figure
out where the hell I may end up!

Brad

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, TheOneKEA wrote:

Show me an Underground-style map of the NR routes and I will find it
less confusing. THAT'S why I never use it, because I can never figure
out where the hell I may end up!

Search for a map called "London Connections". This may be its
present-day embodiment (located thanks to Google):

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/info/maps/connections.pdf

(but not the different map of the same name on the Thameslink site).

The tube web site also offers a london connections map, but it
emphasises the LUL lines - the NR lines are shown more as incidentals.

http://tube.tfl.gov.uk/content/tubem...onnections.pdf

hope this helps (and you have a decent printer ;-)

"Alan J. Flavell" wrote in message .gla.ac.uk...
On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, TheOneKEA wrote:

Show me an Underground-style map of the NR routes and I will find it
less confusing. THAT'S why I never use it, because I can never figure
out where the hell I may end up!

Search for a map called "London Connections". This may be its
present-day embodiment (located thanks to Google):



Or there's an even more tube-like map, at least for south london rail
services, he

http://www.overgroundnetwork.com/pdf...etwork-map.pdf

Dan