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Oyster fare evasion
On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 08:59:52 +0100, Richard M Willis wrote:
I have been thinking about some flaws in the Oyster system and was wondering if anyone knew the legal situation in the following case. If I have a zone 2-6 travelcard and travel from Highbury & Islington to Richmond via the North London Line I am staying within my zones so no money is deducted - no problem. It is my understanding that the Oyster Fare between any two stations on the LUL network is the cheapest, even if you go out of zone to get there. E.g. I've been told that Boston Manor to Uxbridge does not need to involve zone 1 and so doesn't, even if you do go via Baker Street. Not necessarily. I gather that the system is hardcoded with the zones required for a journey between each pair of stations. For example, it reckons Harrow-on-the-Hill to Barons Court requires Z12345. It thinks Harrow-on-the-Hill to Ravenscourt Park requires Z2345. In the former case, you'd be charged for going via Z1 even if you went via Rayners Lane. In the latter case, you wouldn't be charged for going via Z1 even if you did (I don't know what happens if you go via Marylebone, which involves an out-of-station interchange). On p20 of the TfL 2006 fares leaflet, where it discusses Capping, it says the following: "Some journeys have been defined as requiring travel via Zone 1 and will be charged and capped accordingly, irrespective of the actual route taken." Oyster allows greater possibility for fare-evasion because you don't have to have "the correct ticket BEFORE you travel": the money is only deducted at the point of leaving the system. I've often gone from say, Baker street to Krapy Rubsnif, to get a WAGN/FCC service, but could easily have not touched-out at the Krapy Rubsnif interchange (I already had a valid FCC/WAGN ticket) so, indeed, how do they know ? All anyone can see who looks at the logs will see "unresolved journey" without knowing whether it was a simple intra-Zone1 journey, or a Z1-Chalfont+L. At some point they may start charging the maximum fare, or some kind of penalty, for having an unresolved journey. At the moment it would just be the Z1 fare, but they're already charging a £5.00 penalty for every unresolved PAYG journey at the NR termini where PAYG is valid. I was also told at an LU ticket office that your card might be disabled if you have too many unresolved journeys. Question: If I were to travel from Highbury to Richmond via Zone 1 on a daily basis, knowing full well I was not being charged the correct fare, is this fare evasion? Or could I say that as I am following the instructions by touching in and out correctly it is not my fault that the money is not being deducted correctly. With a paper ticket there is always the small risk of a ticket inspection within zone 1, but if I have a validated Oyster with sufficient Prepay on it there is nothing a ticket inspector could do. Question 2: If I am honest and want to pay the extra £1.50 to go via zone 1, how would I do this? The only way would seem to be to touch a validator on a platform in zone 1, however there aren't any at most stations. I don't think you could pay the "correct" fare even if you wanted to. Even if you managed to find and touch a validator in Z1, I don't think the system contains the logic to charge you the "correct" fare in this case. I'd like to know the answer to your first question, particularly in light of this, but I think we're unlikely to get a definitive one. I think that this problem will only get worse when Oyster is rolled out to National Rail services as there will then be many possible routes for a given journey. Actually, it's sort of moving closer to the current NR system, where you pay a fixed fare to travel between two named stations, although several routes may be available. That's the reason it's not being rolled-out so quickly onto NR: they are waiting for OysterNextGen where the cards can be read at a distance of several meters without a touch in/out and without the passenger knowing they've been read. In this way, they can check for invalid routings if wanted. Better keep your Oyster card in a tin foil wrapper ;-) |
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