Almost all Oyster fares remain the same except:
-- off-peak bus journeys (from £0.80 to £1.00)

Ouch, 25% fare increase.

Cash fares go up significantly:
-- via Zone 1 singles from £3 to £4 (!)
-- bus singles from £1.50 to £2
-- but paper daily bus passes are frozen, as are non-Z1 travelcards

Surely it is about time they announced a date when cash fares will be
abolished, at least for buses, so at least the punitive increases would make
more sense.

- Under-16s get a 50p Tube single or £1 daily cap on Oyster

How nice for them. I am one of those unconvinced by all these incentives,
especially free bus fares. What is wrong with learning to pay your way in
life at an early age instead of learning to be subsidised?

It is bad enough that school kids bundle onto buses for a two or three stop
journey instead of a five minute walk, preventing other passengers boarding,
but free fares encourages them to bundle on the rear doors as well. If they
wish to encourage the use of public transport by children then fine, but how
about limiting it to evenings, weekends and school holidays instead so it is
encouraging leisure use?

- £4 penalty charge to be introduced on Oyster PAYG for those who do not
touch in and out (from November this year)

Fine, as long as they make an effort to explain exactly where you are
supposed to touch in and out. For example at Farringdon the correct
procedure, verified with TfL, when changing from London Underground to
National Rail and vice versa is to touch out on one platform and touch in on
the other. All the signs do is tell PAYG users to touch the validators, not
under what circumstances and whether they need to look for one.

G.

Almost all Oyster fares remain the same except:
-- off-peak bus journeys (from £0.80 to £1.00)

OK, so that's an extra £1 a week for me then. I can't help wondering,
what's the reasoning behind abolishing off-peak fares on the busses?

Probably so there is a simple marketing message of £1 oyster or £2 cash. i.e
double the price. It is not as effective a message if there is an element of
complexity.

Graham J wrote:
Almost all Oyster fares remain the same except:
-- off-peak bus journeys (from £0.80 to £1.00)

Ouch, 25% fare increase.

Cash fares go up significantly:
-- via Zone 1 singles from £3 to £4 (!)
-- bus singles from £1.50 to £2
-- but paper daily bus passes are frozen, as are non-Z1 travelcards

Surely it is about time they announced a date when cash fares will be
abolished, at least for buses, so at least the punitive increases would make
more sense.

- Under-16s get a 50p Tube single or £1 daily cap on Oyster

How nice for them. I am one of those unconvinced by all these incentives,
especially free bus fares. What is wrong with learning to pay your way in
life at an early age instead of learning to be subsidised?

It is bad enough that school kids bundle onto buses for a two or three stop
journey instead of a five minute walk, preventing other passengers boarding,
but free fares encourages them to bundle on the rear doors as well. If they
wish to encourage the use of public transport by children then fine, but how
about limiting it to evenings, weekends and school holidays instead so it is
encouraging leisure use?

- £4 penalty charge to be introduced on Oyster PAYG for those who do not
touch in and out (from November this year)

Fine, as long as they make an effort to explain exactly where you are
supposed to touch in and out. For example at Farringdon the correct
procedure, verified with TfL, when changing from London Underground to
National Rail and vice versa is to touch out on one platform and touch in on
the other. All the signs do is tell PAYG users to touch the validators, not
under what circumstances and whether they need to look for one.

G.

They should abolish that £3 Oyster deposit for prepay.
And should start selling them in vending machines as suggested.
And out them into corner shops and supermarkets.

For example. I've got some relatives coming down next week.
We are planning on travelling on the choob.
They probably come down once a year.
It's a pain queuing up and paying £3 deposit.
Would be much easier if we could just get them from a machine free when
you put a tenner on.

As for free/cheap fares for kids.
The buses have been ruined by kids.
I used to use the bus regularly. Now I cant get on them
They got about two stops. OR just get on for fun.
Or have to tolerate loud and abusive kids for most of my journey.
They should pay their way just like anyone else.
Reduced rates are fine. But totally free is insane.

Kev wrote:

I am absolutely staggered by this increase. Last year it double from
£1.40 to £3, now it is going to £4. A 167% increase in a little over
a year. A little over 10 years ago it was £1, so 400% in just over 10
years.

£1.40 to £4.00 is a rise of 185%, not 167%

£1.00 to £4.00 is a rise of 300%, not 400%.



--
Bob

On 12 Sep 2006 02:13:02 -0700, "Neil Williams"
wrote:

sweek wrote:

Well you should simply get an Oyster, even as a tourist.

It's all very well to say that, but walking into a Tube station or
joining a bus it is *not* obvious.

Sure it is. There's posters all over the network comparing the cash
and Oyster PAYG fares.

--
James Farrar
. @gmail.com

James Farrar wrote:

Sure it is. There's posters all over the network comparing the cash
and Oyster PAYG fares.

There might be. But, if you've never heard of Oyster? Likely answer
is that you'll tune out.

If the Mayor wants to go Oyster-only, fine, I have no issue with that.
There are, I believe, other cities where public transport is pre-paid
only, with no cash accepted at stations or on buses. However, there
needs to be a simple, step-by-step set of instructions, and it needs to
be more accessible.

Everyone in this NG knows what Oyster is, how to get one, what it costs
etc, thus if anyone on this NG pays one of these rip-off fares they
have only themselves to blame. You cannot, however, apply this
argument to a non- or poor-English-speaking tourist, or visitor to
London who doesn't frequent big cities and their transport systems, who
would just go to the ticket machine and prod the likely looking button.
You also can't apply this to purchasers of out-boundary through
tickets on LUL and cross-London tickets, which I believe are also
indirectly being hit by these punitive fares.

Neil

Londoncityslicker wrote:

They should abolish that £3 Oyster deposit for prepay.

I don't think that's a problem, indeed it's probably a good thing on
environmental and waste terms to prevent people throwing the things on
the floor. Singapore even charges a deposit on its single tickets,
which are issued on an Oyster-like card.

What there needs to be is a way to buy them from vending machines
everywhere, including supermarkets, hotels etc, and to trade them in at
the ticket machine at a station or elsewhere to get the deposit back.
The technology exists; Singapore already uses it. For sales, *any*
sweet machine would do - an Oyster in a small envelope would fit fine.

And should start selling them in vending machines as suggested.
And out them into corner shops and supermarkets.

Yep. They should be on sale at the tills, pre-credited, with the
mobile top-ups and stamps, in every supermarket within the Zones.
There is absolutely no reason why not.

As for free/cheap fares for kids.
The buses have been ruined by kids.
I used to use the bus regularly. Now I cant get on them
They got about two stops. OR just get on for fun.
Or have to tolerate loud and abusive kids for most of my journey.
They should pay their way just like anyone else.
Reduced rates are fine. But totally free is insane.

Agreed.

Neil

On Tue, 12 Sep 2006 09:36:25 GMT, Graham J wrote:

Almost all Oyster fares remain the same except:
-- off-peak bus journeys (from £0.80 to £1.00)

Ouch, 25% fare increase.

Indeed. Especially the way they spin it as being a 2/3 discount on
what it would have been if they hadn't run everything so brilliantly.

- Under-16s get a 50p Tube single or £1 daily cap on Oyster

How nice for them. I am one of those unconvinced by all these incentives,
especially free bus fares. What is wrong with learning to pay your way in
life at an early age instead of learning to be subsidised?

Could this be to do with the introduction of a policy a few years ago
that bus drivers must not leave a child stranded? This meant that any
child could get a free bus ride just by pretending to have no money.
Perhaps they are just formalising it so that all children can travel
for free, not just the dishonest ones.

Besides, at least they'll learn to use public transport, rather than
being taxi'd everywhere by mummy and daddy until they reach 17, when
they graduate to going everywhere in their own car.

- £4 penalty charge to be introduced on Oyster PAYG for those who do not
touch in and out (from November this year)

Fine, as long as they make an effort to explain exactly where you are
supposed to touch in and out.

And if they give Tube ticket offices more power to resolve unresolved
joruneys, and if the Oyster helpline will do so for unregistered cards
(if these changes haven't been made already).

For example at Farringdon the correct
procedure, verified with TfL, when changing from London Underground to
National Rail and vice versa is to touch out on one platform and touch in on
the other.

Seriously? I always just change over without touching any readers at
all, just like changing between Tube lines, and it works fine.

Incidentally, acceptance of PAYG at the barriers at London Bridge
STILL hasn't been fixed. Worse, the barrier staff seem to have been
trained to tell you that it isn't valid, only letting you through if
you insist it is. The following exchange is typical:

Me: [walks up to side gate with Oyster card]
Him: [points to Oyster reader on adjacent ticket gate. I assume he
needs to see the error code]
Me: [touches card on reader; as usual, it is rejected]
Him: "Your Travelcard has expired." [points to excess fares window]
Me: "I'm using pre-pay."
Him: "It's not valid." [still pointing] "You need to buy a ticket."
Me: "It is valid, on Thameslink."
Him: "No it isn't."
Me: "Yes it is. You're standing next to a poster that says it is."
Him: "Where have you come from?"
Me: "Farringdon."
Him: [lets me out through the gate]

I've been through a similar routine every time I've passed through (3
times in total) over the past couple of months, so I'm pretty sure
it's deliberate. (Incidentally, I do touch in/out on the platform
validator as well, and it does always charge the correct fare with no
unresolved journeys.)

On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 21:01:17 +0100, Dave Arquati wrote:

- TOCs will introduce zonal fares in January 2007, thus paving the way
for an easy PAYG rollout

This point seems to be the most intruiging, and the biggest shake-up.
It seems that the same fares will apply across all TOCs. I suppose
this means that fares on some routes will go up and on other routes
will go down. What will happen to CDRs and Railcard discounts? Will
the changes spread outside the zones, or could it be cheaper to buy a
return from the first station outside the zones if travelling from
Zone 6 to Zone 1? How will fares from NR to Tube stations be
calculated? What about if the NR journey starts outside the zones?

No mention of the PAYG trials on Southern, either - has that fallen by
the wayside?

Kev wrote:

Why don't they just put signs up at
Heathrow and on the boundary of London saying **** off if you are a low
life visitor we don't want you in London.

Does seem odd, especially if TfL said on London Tonight that the vast
majority of people now use Oyster (presumably tourists mostly buy
travelcards) anyway. If that's the case, how are they able to say the
extra money will be reinvested in public transport? What extra money?!

It seems that the higher price we already pay is enough, so what's the
justification for a further £1 increase?

Jonathan