Hi,

This is more out of curiosity than anything else, but it may be handy
to know one day!...

If one makes a journey using Oyster Pre-Pay between two stations where
there are two reasonable routes for which different fares apply, what
does Oyster charge for the Journey?

For example: West Harrow to Holland Park would be £3.50 (assuming
daytime travel) via Baker St or &1.80 via Ealing Common and Ealing
Broadway.

Regards,
Simon.

wrote:
Hi,

This is more out of curiosity than anything else, but it may be handy
to know one day!...

If one makes a journey using Oyster Pre-Pay between two stations where
there are two reasonable routes for which different fares apply, what
does Oyster charge for the Journey?

For example: West Harrow to Holland Park would be £3.50 (assuming
daytime travel) via Baker St or &1.80 via Ealing Common and Ealing
Broadway.

Difficult question. The Oyster publicity says somewhere that some routes
will automatically be treated as routing via Zone 1 - for example, I
imagine that West Hampstead - Fulham Broadway is always charged as a
Zones 1&2 journey, as although the alternative is possible, it's not
particularly reasonable (changing at Wembley Park, Rayners Lane and
Earl's Court).

Unfortunately, the charge for West Harrow to Holland Park is anyone's guess.


--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

On Fri, 10 Jun 2005 15:49:43 +0100, Dave Arquati
wrote:

wrote:
Hi,

This is more out of curiosity than anything else, but it may be handy
to know one day!...

If one makes a journey using Oyster Pre-Pay between two stations where
there are two reasonable routes for which different fares apply, what
does Oyster charge for the Journey?

For example: West Harrow to Holland Park would be £3.50 (assuming
daytime travel) via Baker St or &1.80 via Ealing Common and Ealing
Broadway.

Difficult question. The Oyster publicity says somewhere that some routes
will automatically be treated as routing via Zone 1 - for example, I
imagine that West Hampstead - Fulham Broadway is always charged as a
Zones 1&2 journey, as although the alternative is possible, it's not
particularly reasonable (changing at Wembley Park, Rayners Lane and
Earl's Court).

Unfortunately, the charge for West Harrow to Holland Park is anyone's guess.

You can find out by going to West Harrow or Holland Park and looking
at the "Fares from this station" tables posted on the wall. The prices
shown will be for paper single tickets, but you should be able to work
out from this which of the two routes is charged for.

You can find out the same information by going to the ticket machine
at West Harrow, asking it for a single to Holland Park, and seeing how
much it charges. (Or vice versa of course.)

The policy does tend to throw up some odd situations - for example,
the fare from Hammersmith to Harrow-on-the-Hill is always charged via
Zone 1, despite the fact that TfL's own Journey Planner says that the
"cheaper" route changing at Rayners Lane is actually the quickest
route! In fact, if, while changing trains at Rayners Lane, you
temporarily leave the station to buy a drink or newspaper or just to
walk around, you actually get charged *less* than if you don't!