On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:53:52 +0100, Paul Corfield wrote:

It also means that when one is forced to leave through another exit because
of overcrowding, such as happened to me when I went to Surrey Quays to
watch the London Marathon and we were made to go through another non-gated
exit, it means filling in a bloody form (and no doubt waiting a couple of
weeks for the refund). A bit unfair, really.

I would have insisted on validating my card or else wanting to
understand that the system was set up to deal with an open exit - as was
done for Sloane Square during the Chelsea Flower Show when an ungated
exit has to be used.

Are you saying that the system treated all unresolved journeys at the
time of the Chelsea Flower Show as being journeys to Sloane Square? If
so, how did it update the balance on the card?

* * * * *

Incidentally what would happen to one guy who I saw last week, who arrived
in Plaistow station, went through the open baggage gates, forgot to touch
in, turned around and validated his PAYG by touching out on the normal
gates before resuming his journey. He clearly genuinely thought he was
doing the right thing, but I bet you he'd end up under the new rules with
£8 penalty charge for two unclosed journeys (two journeys without touch-
ins). Well, it would be capped, I guess, so not the full £8 - or does the
penalty charge not count towards the daily cap?

I don't understand why this would trigger anything. Judging from your
description you are saying he leant over and touched his card on the
reader on the exit side of the gate - if so no problem.

I think you've misunderstood - the man in question had entered the
station from the street and was just starting his journey.

You clearly haven't been to many European cities then.

Well, I think I've seen quite a lot. Then again, before London I lived
in Germany, and probably comparing everything mostly to German public
transport (which I believe is very good).

I understand of course that Tube is victim of its age and can't do much
about it...

On 12 Sep 2006 08:46:38 -0700, wrote:

For the first time, I obtained an Oyster card today, because I wanted a
1-week Zone 1 and 2 Travelcard. It cost me £22.20 - no £3 deposit was
charged. Was this a mistake?

No. While the TfL fares leaflet says you have to pay it, as a sort of
introductory special offer they're actually not charging it yet if
you're getting a weekly season.

On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 10:48:02 GMT, Olof Lagerkvist
wrote:
I don't quite get this... A single 6 zones from/to/through Z1 will be
6.80 and an off-peak day travelcard for Z 1-6 will be 6.70. Ok, hope
they will not sell singles at off-peak time then if a day travelcard
would be 10p cheaper... Or am I missing something here?

No, that sounds reasonable. After 0930 you'd be sold the Travelcard
instead. What bothers me is that I don't see the point unless
National Rail and Underground fares are to be fully integrated - why
should it matter which system I use? Unfortunately if they did that
with these fares, a return from my house (zone 6) into Waterloo would
cost £6.70 instead of £4.20. Something's got to give!

Richard.

On 13 Sep 2006 04:08:44 -0700, "sweek"
wrote:


Neil Williams wrote:
sweek wrote:

An Oyster is a little card that you touch in and touch out the gates
with. On buses, you only touch in. Get a PAYG one and you do not have
to worry about how much it costs. It will be the cheapest way for you
to get around. A trip will cost you 1 pound on the bus, and one fifty
on the tube. Put enough money on the card to make sure you can travel
around. You can check your balance at every station using the machine.

This is roughly the level it needs to be at, yes, though I think you
may be intending to be ironic. It needs to be put above the ticket
machines (or before you reach them) in tube stations to prevent the 4
quid rip-off occurring, and in several languages.

Next, you need to make it easier to obtain an Oyster by having it sold
from several machines pre-credited, rather than having to queue for
ages at the ticket office. (Note: many tourists will want to avoid the
ticket office as the language barrier may be an issue, let alone the
invariably long queue).

Neil
No I wasn't being ironic. Just trying to keep it very simple, and
ignore the things that probably won't affect tourists in the first
place. I was just thinking that something about getting to Heathrow and
Camden Town costing more should be in there, since those are the only
tourist destination outside of zone 1 that I think people might go to.

Greenwich. Which is likely to be accessed by rail. Oops...

If you're a tourist in a place you don't know I think you're actually
way more likely to go to the ticket counter anyway, but yes, machines
that show you everything clearly would be nice.

I tend to use machines abroad, as a) many of them speak something
resembling English b) you can play with the options to find a suitable
product on offer.

I've had completely blank looks when I've asked at ticket offices for
an all-day ticket in cities which actually use 24 hour tickets (which
are not quite the same thing), but with machines you can have a guess
at what a "24 oer fhfbwfblwfwfbwfw" or "1 taaaage-kaaart" option might
be able to sell you.

One thing I've noticed abroad is that sometimes day passes have
special names, which can be tricky. "One day travelcard" offers a
clue, "24 hour ticket" is explict, but some places offer "superdooper
mega saver ticket", with no clue as to what they actually let you do.

I've found that my knowledge of foreign lingo is now rather focused on
"valid for two adults and a dog on weekends and bank holidays", and
stuff from beer mats.
--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

Paul Corfield wrote:
Quite why he didn't just use the manual gate validator I do not know -
these work in both entry and exit mode depending on what your card says.
If your last transaction was an entry at a logical location and within a
logical time then the validator will assume you are exiting. It employs
the same logic to determine if you are entering.

What appears logical to the designers of the fare system may not appear
logical to the passenger.

Where can the public obtain a table of these logical locations and
logical times?

On my two brief visits to London since Oyster was launched, I managed to
thoroughly confuse the Oyster system several times. And, although I
really shouldn't be looking over random strangers' shoulders while they
use the ticket machines, I couldn't help but notice that many of their
cards triggered the unresolved journey warning.

I agree with Tristán that this is a problem.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

Neil Williams wrote:
David of Broadway wrote:

If you ever ride the River LINE (yes, that's really how it's spelled) in
southern New Jersey (USA), be careful! I once watched an ticket
inspector fine a poor passenger THREE times because, to kill time while
waiting for the train, he punched his ticket four times (in four
different locations).

Sounds like he was an idiot - surely you can't travel more than once
with one invalid ticket?

Which man, the passenger or the inspector?

There was only one ticket. After purchasing a ticket, the passenger
must validate (time-stamp) it before boarding the train, and the ticket
is valid for a specified period (90 minutes?) thereafter.

This passenger, out of boredom, validated it on all four edges.

It seems quite obvious to me that the earliest time stamped is the
relevant one.

Or perhaps the ticket is invalidated by multistamping, and the inspector
was being a stickler for the rules. In that case, the passenger was
riding without a valid ticket and should be subject to a fine -- but not
to /three/ fines!

And the instant he presented his college ID, the inspector should have
informed him of the promotion and moved on to the next victim.

OH! Now I see why you were confused. By "four different locations" I
meant four spots on the ticket, not four stations. My fault for not
being clear! (But, technically speaking, I believe that a River LINE
ticket is valid for any number of trips within the relevant time limit,
although I could be wrong.)
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

Stephen Farrow wrote:
David of Broadway wrote:
Stephen Farrow wrote:
Arthur Figgis wrote:

I found Budapest airport a bit rude, as the transport information desk
would only sell transport+museum passes to us phrasebook-wielding
tourists, but not the equivalent of a travel card, even though we knew
what to ask for. They just don't sell 'em. There was some sort of
ticket machine, but it was OOU.

At one point, at LaGuardia airport in New York, it was possible to
buy an MTA "fun pass" (day pass) only from *one* newsstand - which
was helpfully located on the departures level, rather than in
arrivals. I've no idea whether or not this is still the case.

When was this? I doubt it's still the case, although I don't know for
sure.

About three years ago.

I'm surprised, then.

In any case, I was last at LGA in early 2004, but, having just been
assaulted on the M60 bus, I was more interested in obtaining ice than in
obtaining a MetroCard. (Really. My luggage brushed against somebody's
leg and he took out his aggression on my eye.)

But ever since the price jumped from $4 to $7, the Fun Pass has been
an incredibly bad deal for nearly everyone. What most people want is
a $10 pay-per-ride MetroCard; longer-term tourists might opt for a $24
7-day unlimited MetroCard.

Which is what I've done every time since. That trip, though, I needed a
one-day pass - I was arriving in the morning (from Toronto), meeting a
friend in Midtown, heading over to Lincoln Center to do some research at
the Performing Arts Library, then heading to Penn Station in the evening
to catch a train out to Hofstra University, where I was going to a
conference. And, of course, I arrived without exact change for the bus,
and a cab to Manhattan was beyond my graduate student budget. It was
only by asking around in the terminal that I got directed to the one
newsstand that sold the Fun Pass.

If you remember, did you pay $4 or $7 for the Fun Pass? (The price
changed in 2003 -- May, I think it was.)

The $4 version was a good deal in many cases. But if you paid $7, and
those were the only trips you made, you /still/ would have been better
off paying per ride. And even if there were other trips that you didn't
list, with a bit of planning, it's often possible to pair up trips to
take advantage of free bus-subway transfers. (For instance, if you
weren't spending much time at the library, the Midtown - Lincoln Center
- Penn Station triple could have been done on a single fare by taking
the subway in one direction and a bus in the other. I don't know where
in Midtown you were coming from, but the M10 and M20 buses run directly
from Lincoln Center to Penn Station.)

Obviously, this all depends on your understanding the MetroCard transfer
policy and its implications. As a reader of this newsgroup, I'm sure
you do, but the average tourist certainly doesn't.

(For everybody else: The MetroCard system provides a single free
transfer from bus to bus or from bus to subway or from subway to bus.
The transfer is valid for 2 hours and 18 minutes, swipe to swipe. It is
not valid for a round trip on a single bus route, but if a particular
trip can be made by either bus or subway, the system doesn't know or
care if you make a round trip by going one way by bus and the other way
by subway. With two exceptions introduced in 2001, subway-to-subway
transfers are all inside fare control.)

Mind you, Toronto airport isn't really any better. There's the very
overpriced Pacific Western bus downtown, which is fairly easy to find
from the arrivals level of each terminal. There's a very good TTC bus
service to the subway, but you need exact change or metropass or a
token, and as far as I know none of the newsstands in any of the three
terminals sell tokens or tickets (or TTC day passes, which are also
valid), despite the fact that convenience stores all over the city are
set up to sell TTC tickets and passes.

I fondly recall my visit last summer to Prague. Upon arrival from
Vienna at the Holešovice train station, I promptly went to an ATM to
obtain cash.

After spending a few minutes finding the appropriate direction to walk
towards the tram I needed -- you see, I had identified the numbers of
the tram lines that would get me to my hotel, but the signs only gave
terminals, not numbers -- I walked up to a ticket machine.

It accepted coins only. ATM's don't dispense coins.

So I walked up to the ticket window. It was closed. In the middle of a
weekday afternoon, at a major railroad station.

I then went down into the underpass to the trams (down the stairs with
my luggage -- there were no elevators/lifts or even ramps). The
underpass had two exits, again, with stairs. Neither one was signed.

Eventually, I found a second ticket window, this one open, at the top of
the second staircase, around the corner from the tram stop I needed.

(While in Prague, I visited the downtown Tesco. It was most incredibly
unlike any of the Tescos I came across in London.)
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

David of Broadway wrote:
Stephen Farrow wrote:
David of Broadway wrote:
Stephen Farrow wrote:
Arthur Figgis wrote:

I found Budapest airport a bit rude, as the transport information desk
would only sell transport+museum passes to us phrasebook-wielding
tourists, but not the equivalent of a travel card, even though we knew
what to ask for. They just don't sell 'em. There was some sort of
ticket machine, but it was OOU.

At one point, at LaGuardia airport in New York, it was possible to
buy an MTA "fun pass" (day pass) only from *one* newsstand - which
was helpfully located on the departures level, rather than in
arrivals. I've no idea whether or not this is still the case.

When was this? I doubt it's still the case, although I don't know
for sure.

About three years ago.

I'm surprised, then.

In any case, I was last at LGA in early 2004, but, having just been
assaulted on the M60 bus, I was more interested in obtaining ice than in
obtaining a MetroCard. (Really. My luggage brushed against somebody's
leg and he took out his aggression on my eye.)

But ever since the price jumped from $4 to $7, the Fun Pass has been
an incredibly bad deal for nearly everyone. What most people want is
a $10 pay-per-ride MetroCard; longer-term tourists might opt for a
$24 7-day unlimited MetroCard.

Which is what I've done every time since. That trip, though, I needed
a one-day pass - I was arriving in the morning (from Toronto), meeting
a friend in Midtown, heading over to Lincoln Center to do some
research at the Performing Arts Library, then heading to Penn Station
in the evening to catch a train out to Hofstra University, where I was
going to a conference. And, of course, I arrived without exact change
for the bus, and a cab to Manhattan was beyond my graduate student
budget. It was only by asking around in the terminal that I got
directed to the one newsstand that sold the Fun Pass.

If you remember, did you pay $4 or $7 for the Fun Pass? (The price
changed in 2003 -- May, I think it was.)

$4. This was March 2003. When I've been since, I've arrived at Newark
(often despite booking a flight to LaGuardia. I seem to encounter a
*lot* of flight cancellations when travelling to New York).


The $4 version was a good deal in many cases. But if you paid $7, and
those were the only trips you made, you /still/ would have been better
off paying per ride.

If it had been $7, I'd have bought a stored-value metrocard instead.

And even if there were other trips that you didn't
list, with a bit of planning, it's often possible to pair up trips to
take advantage of free bus-subway transfers. (For instance, if you
weren't spending much time at the library, the Midtown - Lincoln Center
- Penn Station triple could have been done on a single fare by taking
the subway in one direction and a bus in the other. I don't know where
in Midtown you were coming from, but the M10 and M20 buses run directly
from Lincoln Center to Penn Station.)

Obviously, this all depends on your understanding the MetroCard transfer
policy and its implications. As a reader of this newsgroup, I'm sure
you do, but the average tourist certainly doesn't.

Quite. Since I don't drive, I make a point of figuring out the public
transport systems *in advance*, before I travel (and, anyway, I've spent
enough time in New York that I've a reasonable grasp on the system there).

Of course, the *real* challenge to a tourist would be figuring out bus
fares etc somewhere like Manchester, where there's a deregulated bus
service, multiple operators (sometimes on the same route), and no
standard overall fare structure.

--

Stephen

BUFFY: How've you been?
AMY: Rat. You?
BUFFY: Dead.

David of Broadway wrote:

Or perhaps the ticket is invalidated by multistamping, and the inspector
was being a stickler for the rules. In that case, the passenger was
riding without a valid ticket and should be subject to a fine -- but not
to /three/ fines!

That was what I meant - wasn't clear how to explain it!

It may well be the case that defacing the ticket (e.g. by stamping it
outside of the designated area) invalidates it, in which case one fine
- under no circumstances should three be due, as only one offence of
travelling without a valid ticket has been committed.

Neil