"Neil Williams" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 12:12:05 -0000, "Rich Mallard"
wrote:

What about National Rail season tickets? I pay about 50 quid less for a
monthly season ticket from Bexley (Z6) to London for a rail-only season
ticket rather than buy an inflated-price Travelcard which I don't need
(carnets fine for occasional tube use, and can't say I can remember the
last
time I used a bus). Loss of NR season tickets would mean something
approaching a 50% increase in my monthly commuting cost!

It may well be worth TfL offering a rail-only zonal season, but
whether they will or not is another matter. Similarly, it may be
worth their while offering a Cheap Day Return, but I suspect they'll
go for increased ODTC revenue instead.

No doubt they'll go for the ODTC option and substantially increase the price
of the fairly lightly-used off-peak rail services in Bexley and Bromley. If
this ever comes about and NR seasons are scrapped, it will even be cheaper
for me to get a rail-only season from outside the TfL zones (Dartford, 20
quid per month more) than to buy a Travelcard (50 quid a month more).

I don't understand why this is happening at all really. We already have a
zonal ticket - it's called a Travelcard. The argument about
"simplification" is just a ruse to introduce higher fares across the board
which are then channeled into TfL's central funding pool. I would be happy
to pay more for rail-only journies to pay for rail-specific enhancements (ie
getting my dilapitated station painted), but of course that is not an
option.

In the PTEs, where rail season tickets tend to be controlled by the
PTE rather than the train operator, there are several approaches -
Merseyside do not offer a rail-only season, while Greater Manchester
do. I don't know about the others. It does surprise me, and has for
a time, that despite TfL generally having more control over bus and
light rail services within its boundaries than the PTEs do, that it
has so little control over heavy rail.

I thought this was mainly because it wouldn't make sense to seperate out the
responsilbities for fragements of services either side of the fairly
arbitrary Greater London/TfL boundary, of which there are many.

Why do I get the feeling it would be so much better if London, paricularly
in terms of transport, was more properly managed as an integral part of a
much larger South East region, rather than being cut-out and divorced from
it.

Rich