On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:47:23 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:

On Tue, 4 Oct 2005 13:16:11 +0100, "Paul" Paul @whydoyoucare.co.uk
wrote:

A single Tube journey in zone one will cost £3 instead of £2 while a
single bus journey will rise from £1.20 to £1.50, said Mayor Ken
Livingstone.

Absolutely ridiculous.

£3 per Tube ride is a sick joke, while £1.50 per bus ride is not far
off what you'd pay for a few miles elsewhere in the country, but is
offensively expensive for a short journey.



Why is why paying either £1 or 80p on Oyster makes good sense.

Particularly as cashless bus is coming next year....

Rob.
--
rob at robertwoolley dot co dot uk

Neil Williams wrote:

But what is the principle? It's effectively no different from buying a
book of ten stamps when you only have an immediate need for one, is it?

You are not penalised for buying one stamp on its own instead. The
price of a book of 12 stamps is 12 times the price of one.

The point Chris is trying to make is that like Oyster, it is for
convenience. The only difference is that TfL are offering you a financial
benefit as well as convenience with Oyster whilst the Royal Mail aren't
with stamp books.

--
Phil Richards
London, UK
Home Page: http://www.philrichards1.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

In message , Robert Woolley
writes

Why is why paying either £1 or 80p on Oyster makes good sense.

Particularly as cashless bus is coming next year....

I still pay 65p a journey, using a very large stock of Saver tickets I
bought at this price some years ago (following a suggestion on this
newsgroup).

The investment is bringing in a better return than any of my savings.

--
Paul Terry

In message , at 07:04:39 on Thu, 6 Oct
2005, Neil Williams remarked:
A solution for infrequent
travellers could be the sort of flexible, disposable contactless card
I've used in Lisbon. There isn't a deposit, rather a charge, of 50
cents and it can be reused for a year. These cards *may* only be
capable of storing "normal" tickets bought from a machine or human,
the publicity is of course not very technical (and in Portuguese!).

This sounds a very good idea, especially for tourists etc. There is
another precedent in the Washington DC Farecards, where you buy a card
of a specific value and credit is deducted from it for each journey.
It's a magstripe technology, but I don't see why a non-contact
smartcard version shouldn't be feasible, if at a slightly greater
cost.

New York subways also have a mag-stripe card which you can load with
money for several journeys. One disadvantage for the infrequent
traveller (and tourist) is that the credit expires after a year.
--
Roland Perry

On Thu, 06 Oct 2005 07:04:39 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:

This sounds a very good idea, especially for tourists etc. There is
another precedent in the Washington DC Farecards, where you buy a card
of a specific value and credit is deducted from it for each journey.
It's a magstripe technology, but I don't see why a non-contact
smartcard version shouldn't be feasible, if at a slightly greater
cost.

Kuala Lumpur did that when I went. You got the final trip cheap if
there wasn't enough credit remaining on the throw-away card. Of
course, the two different metros in KL didn't accept each other's
tickets :-) (though I think that's been changed now)
--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

Barry Salter wrote:

Not really...With the £1.20 Cash Fare, you need to make 10 bus journeys
in a week for a Bus Pass to be worthwhile. With the increase, that comes
down to 9. Okay, it's not *much* of a difference, but it's better than a
smack in the face with a wet kipper (unless you happen to like that kind
of thing),


But if you compare Oyster to Bus Pass:

2005:

Bus Pass 11.00 pounds
Oyster peak fare 1.00 pound
Oyster off-peak fare 0.80 pounds

So you get need to make 12 peak trips or 14 off-peak trips to make a
weekly Bus Pass worthwhile.

2006:

Bus Pass 13.50 pounds
Oyster peak fare 1.00 pound
Oyster off-peak fare 0.80 pounds

So you get need to make 14 peak trips or 17 off-peak trips to make a
weekly Bus Pass worthwhile.

One of the main reasons for the existence of Bus Passes was to speed up
boarding, but pre-pay is just as quick as an Oyster Bus Pass so there
is now no need to offer a substantial discount.

I expect that once cash is no longer available, I expect that the gap
between single trips and season tickets will grow further, both for
Travelcards and Bus Passes.

Mizter T wrote:
TfL would love the Oyster Pre Pay system to go London-wide and be
rolled out across the whole National Rail network in the capital.

I have a sneaking suspicion that TFLs long term aim is to get rid of
travelcards altogether and move everyone on to pre-pay oysters (with the
daily cap thing still applying).

--
Paul

Arthur Figgis wrote:
On Thu, 06 Oct 2005 07:04:39 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:

This sounds a very good idea, especially for tourists etc. There is
another precedent in the Washington DC Farecards, where you buy a card
of a specific value and credit is deducted from it for each journey.
It's a magstripe technology, but I don't see why a non-contact
smartcard version shouldn't be feasible, if at a slightly greater
cost.

Kuala Lumpur did that when I went. You got the final trip cheap if
there wasn't enough credit remaining on the throw-away card.

The trams in Geneva are the same.

--
Paul

James Farrar wrote:
On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 12:36:00 +0100, Paul
paulroberthill_NOSPAM wrote:
If you use a travelcard on national rail stick to a paper ticket. With
Oyster you pay *more* money. What a con.

If you buy your Travelcard on Oyster from South West Trains (not sure
about other TOCs) they give you the same discount for poor performance
that you'd get with their paper version.

How many SWT stations in London have the facility to sell Oyster cards?
It's only 2 or 3. Same for SET.

If you care about the discount, you'll go out of your way once a year
to buy your Travelcard.

I buy monthly (as I think the majority of people do). An annual Z1-5
travelcard is a lot of money to pay in one lump sum.

--
Paul

Paul wrote in uk.transport.london on Thu, 06 Oct 2005 10:38:02 +0100
:

Mizter T wrote:
TfL would love the Oyster Pre Pay system to go London-wide and be
rolled out across the whole National Rail network in the capital.

Not an unreasonable aspiration; as the original project pre-dated any
of the TOCs becoming privately-run franchises it does seem a bit
unfair to criticise TfL for what seem to be the TOCs foot-dragging,
not having a medium/long-term view, or wanting to re-invent circular
objects.

I have a sneaking suspicion that TFLs long term aim is to get rid of
travelcards altogether and move everyone on to pre-pay oysters (with the
daily cap thing still applying).

I'd be very surprised indeed if this was their aim, apart from
anything else there would be quite a hefty decrease in cashflow as a
result. I suspect there would also be a substantial workload in
unresolved journey queries.

--
hike
- a walking tour or outing, esp. of the self-conscious kind
Chambers 20th Century Dictionary