wrote:
The cheap day return fares are completely pointless though as a
travelcard would be cheaper. So the actual price would be £4.90
for CJ-FP and £6.30 for Orp-WH.

Clapham Junction - Finsbury Park should really be £4.30 - a Z2-6
ODTC (CJ to Highbury and Islington - perhaps changing at Willesden
X, then Victoria Line)

According to the TfL Journey Planner:
Clapham Junction - Vauxhall, then Victoria Line to Finsbury Park: 31 -
37 minutes.
Clapham Junction - Willesden J.(or Richmond) - Highbury & Islington,
then Victoria Line to Finsbury Park: 57 - 83 minutes.

On that basis, the natural route is definitely via zone 1.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

Anonymouse wrote:
On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 15:53:52 +0100, Richard wrote:
[my rant about 35% fare increase]

Did you not read the press release? Fares are not - on average -
increasing.

I did, but I didn't notice that statement the first time I read it. I
am surprised though - maybe my assumption was wrong, but a significant
proportion of journeys, particularly at peak times, are straight into
zone 1, and these are the fares that see the biggest rises. Where the
rise is less, or there's a decrease, it seems to me that it's a journey
with a significant radial part, "around" a zone, or indeed across
London, so that a fare determined by distance can be a lot more than one
based on the number of zones travelled through. Good luck to those with
such a journey!

I can see how, considering every pair of stations, there is on average
no increase, but I would have thought that the most popular journeys
have more increases than decreases. If this is not the case, then I
apologise and take it back - except I still wonder about the use of
rail-only not-really-zonal fares when proper integration should be the goal.

I wonder why TravelWatch consider that "complexity is reduced
significantly"? Unless the fares are marketed as zonal, which it seems
they cannot be completely, I'm not sure how the average passenger will
notice a difference.

Richard.

Anonymouse wrote:

snipp-ex

Did you not read the press release? Fares are not - on average -
increasing.

That depends how they calculate the average.

I can well believe that, if you write down all the different
combinations of fares before and after the change, and take the mean
or median difference, it will be close to zero.

I can equally well believe that most of the fares that they are
reducing are sold in very small numbers, and most of the fares that
they are increasing are sold in very large numbers - so the average
fare paid will be substantially higher under the new scheme.

--
Stevie D
\\\\\ ///// Bringing dating agencies to the
\\\\\\\__X__/////// common hedgehog since 2001 - "HedgeHugs"
___\\\\\\\'/ \'///////_____________________________________________

On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:41:05 +0100, Stevie D wrote:

Anonymouse wrote:

snipp-ex

Did you not read the press release? Fares are not - on average -
increasing.

That depends how they calculate the average.

I can well believe that, if you write down all the different
combinations of fares before and after the change, and take the mean
or median difference, it will be close to zero.

I can equally well believe that most of the fares that they are
reducing are sold in very small numbers, and most of the fares that
they are increasing are sold in very large numbers - so the average
fare paid will be substantially higher under the new scheme.

You might be able to believe that but do you have any evidence?

A

wrote:

The cheap day return fares are completely pointless though as a travelcard
would be cheaper. So the actual price would be £4.90 for CJ-FP and £6.30 for
Orp-WH.

Clapham Junction - Finsbury Park should really be £4.30 - a Z2-6 ODTC
(CJ to Highbury and Islington - perhaps changing at Willesden X, then
Victoria Line)

Thinking about this, rolling out PAYG on to NR services will cause all
manner of "valid route" confusion in terms of zones crossed: I know
this has been discussed before with respect to *some* tube routes, but
there would be far greater potential for dispute with the orbital rail
services, even as they are at the moment (let alone in 5 years, if the
current plans are realised).

For instance: Richmond to Maida Vale (do you have to go through Z1)?

Jase

In terms of NR adopting Oyster PAYG I guess how this will work is that
for any A to B journey a fare will be set according to the most likely
route taken - i.e. which zones will a passenger on this journey pass
through. Then if the passenger goes a more roundabout route, avoiding
zone 1 for example, if they touch-in their Oyster at the interchange
points they'll be charged for the cheaper journey.

It's too late for me to start working out elaborate examples. However I
think in many cases a passenger would encounter a set of gates on their
journey - say when changing from NR to the Undergound at termini - that
means this isn't actually as much of an issue as some think.

Off the top of my head I can think of one situation where it would seem
that Oyster PAYG couldn't cope with working out what route passengers
had taken. Peckham Rye is in zone 2 and has a half-hourly service via
Lewisham to Dartford. It also has very regular services to London
Bridge. Let's say a passenger is travelling to Lewisham - as the
passenger can change at London Bridge onto a Lewisham-bound train
without encountering barriers the system won't have any record of
whether their route was via London Bridge - and hence zone 1 - or not.

Any notion that the time-elapsed between touch-in and touch-out would
be IMO impractical - who's to say the passenger wasn't at Peckham Rye
waiting for 29 minutes for the direct train. So I guess the solution is
simply that the cheaper journey prevails, regardless of the actual
route taken.

Of course it gets much more complex when you consider the journey might
start and finish elsewhere - say Tulse Hill to Blackheath. Did the
passenger go via London Bridge or not? Perhaps once again the
presumption must be made that they took the cheaper route.

Perhaps the solution for this is to require passengers using PAYG to
touch-in at every interchange station. For many journeys this might not
be strictly necessary for the system to determine the route taken, but
for others it would be necessary. This could be explained to passengers
thus "Please touch-in at every interchange to ensure you recieve the
best fare". If they didn't touch-in at the interchanges then by default
there'd be charged the more expensive fare.

If this was how the system worked then it still wouldn't know which was
the route taken for a Peckham Rye - Lewisham journey (that would just
have to be charged as a zone 2 only journey), *but* for a Tulse Hill -
Blackheath journey the presumed route might well be via London Bridge
(and thus zone 1). A passenger could override this by changing at
Peckham Rye and touching in there, thus they wouldn't get charged for
zone 1.

There are I'm sure people working on this now at TfL - I just hope that
they have a good idea of what they're doing and are going to be
consistant in it's implementation, and they don't bog it up.

In article ,
(Walter Mann) wrote:

"Michael R N Dolbear" wrote in message
news:01c6f527$72c23e20$LocalHost@default...

Someone on this NG claimed that he touched in on the 2nd Bus and
found he had been charged nothing.

Forgive a slightly off-topic question..

How can you, or can't you, track your usage on Oyster PAYG? All I
find is that I'm emailed when I get topped-up; I have looked on the
website, but can't find anything to help. Do I just have to track
my own journeys and see whether they (sort of) match the cost?

Look at it on any suitable ticket machine or go to a ticket office and
they will give you a print out.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Richard J. wrote:

wrote:
The cheap day return fares are completely pointless though as a
travelcard would be cheaper. So the actual price would be £4.90
for CJ-FP and £6.30 for Orp-WH.

Clapham Junction - Finsbury Park should really be £4.30 - a Z2-6
ODTC (CJ to Highbury and Islington - perhaps changing at Willesden
X, then Victoria Line)

According to the TfL Journey Planner:
Clapham Junction - Vauxhall, then Victoria Line to Finsbury Park: 31 -
37 minutes.
Clapham Junction - Willesden J.(or Richmond) - Highbury & Islington,
then Victoria Line to Finsbury Park: 57 - 83 minutes.

On that basis, the natural route is definitely via zone 1.

I agree.

If one wanted to go the West London Line - North London Line - Victoria
Line route avoiding zone 1 then the theoretical Train/Tube CDR would
cost £5.80, so the off-peak zones 2-6 Day Travelcard at £4.30 is what
one would actually buy.

What would be interesting is whether a plain-vanilla *single*
Train/Tube ticket could actually be issued for that same journey. The
single Train/Tube fare for zones 2&3 is £3.40 - could one actually buy
this for a journey to Finsbury Park from Clapham Junction? I guess it
would merely show "U23" as the destination - but would it be issued as
"route via Willesden Junction"? Would anyone of the ticket office staff
actually sell this ticket to a punter?

Mizter T wrote:

In terms of NR adopting Oyster PAYG I guess how this will work is that
for any A to B journey a fare will be set according to the most likely
route taken - i.e. which zones will a passenger on this journey pass
through. Then if the passenger goes a more roundabout route, avoiding
zone 1 for example, if they touch-in their Oyster at the interchange
points they'll be charged for the cheaper journey.

And yet the Underground has been slow to adopt this, for examples such as
Harrow on the Hill to Hammersmith (particularly relevant this weekend
because of engineering works on the route involving changing at Baker
Street) as well as possibly the North London Line - will travelcard on
Oyster holders get charged extensions for a "most likely route" involving
zones they don't have, even if they've travelled within their own zones.

(Also how is a "single fare for any route" compatible with a strategy aimed
at encouraging people to bypass zone 1 on orbital routes, using cheaper
fares as an incentive for potentially longer journeys?)

It's too late for me to start working out elaborate examples. However I
think in many cases a passenger would encounter a set of gates on their
journey - say when changing from NR to the Undergound at termini - that
means this isn't actually as much of an issue as some think.

I'm not so sure - a good number of interchanges have NR and Underground all
together behind the gatelines - e.g. Barking, Stratford, Moorgate,
Farringdon, Highbury & Islington, Willesden Junction, Ealing Broadway,
Wimbledon, Richmond, New Cross & Gate... to name but several. And some of
these (particular Stratford, bar the Jubilee Line) are so mixed together
that there's no real way to put barriers in.

Off the top of my head I can think of one situation where it would seem
that Oyster PAYG couldn't cope with working out what route passengers
had taken. Peckham Rye is in zone 2 and has a half-hourly service via
Lewisham to Dartford. It also has very regular services to London
Bridge. Let's say a passenger is travelling to Lewisham - as the
passenger can change at London Bridge onto a Lewisham-bound train
without encountering barriers the system won't have any record of
whether their route was via London Bridge - and hence zone 1 - or not.

Another obvious one are the three Lewisham to Dartford lines - how does the
system know if someone's travelled via Lewisham (zone 2/3), Dartford
(outside the zones) or the track between Crayford and Barnehurst or Slade
Green (all within zone 6) shown on the map but possibly not having a very
good service (I have no idea) providing all four combinations?

Perhaps the solution for this is to require passengers using PAYG to
touch-in at every interchange station. For many journeys this might not
be strictly necessary for the system to determine the route taken, but
for others it would be necessary. This could be explained to passengers
thus "Please touch-in at every interchange to ensure you recieve the
best fare". If they didn't touch-in at the interchanges then by default
there'd be charged the more expensive fare.

Is this practical though? Some interchanges get very busy and readers are
not easily located. Try doing this on the eastbound Central/Ilford-bound
platform at Stratford in the rush hour when you're also trying to work out
just which stations the train about to pull out calls at!

There are I'm sure people working on this now at TfL - I just hope that
they have a good idea of what they're doing and are going to be
consistant in it's implementation, and they don't bog it up.

So how do they handle it at present?

Stevie D wrote:
Anonymouse wrote:

snipp-ex

Did you not read the press release? Fares are not - on average -
increasing.

That depends how they calculate the average.

I can well believe that, if you write down all the different
combinations of fares before and after the change, and take the mean
or median difference, it will be close to zero.

I can equally well believe that most of the fares that they are
reducing are sold in very small numbers, and most of the fares that
they are increasing are sold in very large numbers - so the average
fare paid will be substantially higher under the new scheme.

It all depends on the journey being made. Here's a few examples from my
neck of the woods:

Enfield Town (Zone 5) to London Liverpool Street (Zone 1) currently
costs £3.50 for a Single, £4.30 for a Cheap Day Return, and £5.80 for a
Standard Day Return.

Under the new structure, those will go up to £3.80 Single, £4.70 Cheap
Day Return, £7.20 Standard Day Return. (Inflation busting increases of
8.6%, 9.3% and a massive 24.1%, respectively).

Oh dear...Not a good start.

Let's try Enfield Town to Zone 1, including tube, instead. Current fares
are £6.50 Single, £10.30 Cheap Day Return, £11.80 Standard Day Return.

Under the new fares, those go DOWN to £5.80 Single, £8.70 Cheap Day
Return, £11.20 Standard Day Return. (Reductions of 10.8%, 15.5% and
5.1%, respectively).

Now let's go for a local journey:

Silver Street (Zone 4) to Enfield Town (Zone 5). Currently this is £2.00
Single, £2.60 Cheap Day Return, £3.00 Standard Day Return.

Under the new structure, these change to £1.90 Single, £2.80 Cheap Day
Return, £3.30 Standard Day Return. (5% Reduction, 7.7% Increase and 10%
Increase, respectively).

At the end of the day, it's all swings and roundabouts, and there will
be some winners and some losers, the latter generally where the fares
have been kept artificially low by NSE/the TOCs.

Cheers,

Barry

"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 21 Oct 2006 08:19:01 +0100, Phil Richards
wrote:

Neil Williams wrote:

Plus the scenario when the bus gets terminated short of the destination
advertised on the blinds on the front at the time you boarded! I know
drivers are supposed to issue a transfer ticket, but I'm not sure that
happens often in practice. So if using PAYG Oyster you lose out by
paying for a 2nd ride.

I was on a 24 on Thursday and got booted off at Trafalgar Square as the
route controller decided our bus was to turn at Westminster. There was
another bus behind running through but it was only when someone said "do
we have to pay again" that the controller instructed everyone from the
previous bus just to get on and not validate or pay. No transfer ticket
was issued that I could see. I think this aspect of PAYG "policy" needs
a little more explanation because a transfer may happen at a point where
there is no official to answer a question and the first bus may have
driven off.

When this happened to me (an 8 that terminated at Berkeley Sq.) I validated
on the next bus and wasn't charged. ISTR the validator displayed a weird
message - something about a travelcard, even though I *only* have PAYG on my
card.

David A Stocks