On 19 Oct, 15:07, Ken wrote:
On 19 Oct, 11:38, Mizter T wrote:



asdf wrote:

(Or to be pedantic, Z1-D ODTCs, as that's what you actually get.)

And herein lies a slight anomaly - if you had a Z1-6 Gold Card
Travelcard (i.e. annual) and wanted to buy a discounted ticket for a
travelling companion, you yourself would not need to get one. However
you're travelling companion would actually end up with an ODTC valid
in Z1-D rather than Z1-6, i.e. it would cover more zones than your
Z1-6 Gold Card Travelcard. Of course they would not be able to use it
outside of Z1-6 as you would not be accompanying them, unless of
course you bought one yourself. But I can imagine even the most "with
it" LU ticket office might get confused by the idea that someone with
a Z1-6 Gold Card Travelcard would want a further discounted Z1-D ODTC
for themselves!

And if you had that Z1-6 Gold Card Travelcard loaded on Oyster, I can
well imagine the ticket office would simply suggest using Oyster PAYG
to allow you to travel to/from zones A-D - though in this case any
travelling companion's discounted ODTC would technically cease to be
valid when the travelling party entered zones A-D.

Indeed the existence of Oyster PAYG actually rules out any changes of
the rules regarding the necessity for Gold Card holders to buy a
discounted ODTC for themselves. Let me explain...

Let's say the rule that a Gold Card holder had to buy an all zones
ODTC for themselves (except if their season covered all Z1-6) was
ditched - and the rule rewritten so that the Gold Card holder could
buy discounted all zones ODTCs for their travelling companions but as
a group you could *only* use them within the zones covered by the Gold
Card holder's Travelcard (say zones 1-3).

Before the introduction of Oyster PAYG, notionally speaking this
could've been enforceable. However, since Oyster PAYG started, anyone
who held a Gold Card Travelcard loaded on Oyster can of course extend
their journey into any zone and the extension is automatically paid
for from their PAYG balance. Therefore the idea of restricting that
Gold Card holder plus travelling companions only to the zones covered
by the Gold Card holder's Travelcard becomes totally unworkable.

OK, my head hurts now


A question. If you buy a Railcard-discounted travelcard at a LU
booking office, it states it's valid in zones 1-D (before the
designation of zones A-D as such, they used to say something like,
"Also by rail to Amshm/Cheshm/Ongar" [anything beyond Loughton being
then out-of-zone]). Now, as I say, they say "123456D", which is clear
enough. But if you buy the ODTC at a NR ticket office, it just says
"From [issuing station] To R1256 Zones" with no mention of any
validity in zones A-D. Would such a travelcard be valid to
(eg)Amersham, being a "Railcard Travelcard"? The National Fares
Manuals http://www.atoc.org/retail/_download...7_Common_K.pdf
(Travelcards) and http://www.atoc.org/retail/_download...7_Common_F.pdf
(Railcards) seem to be silent about this.

If yes, then it needs to be clarified. If no, then you get more
mileage for (ostensibly) the same ticket if you buy it from LU rather
than NR.
--
Ken


You're second paragraph hits the nail right on the head! Railcard
discounted Day Travelcard bought from LU ticket offices give you more
bang for you buck (or more mileage for your money) that if they were
bought from an NR ticket office.

NR ticket offices will sell you a railcard discounted ODTC valid in
zones 1-6 only - this is absolutely *not* valid anywhere in zones A-D.

LU ticket offices meanwhile will sell you a railcard discounted ODTC
valid in zones 1-D - that is zones 1-6 plus A-D chucked in 'for free'.

I'm not entirely sure why LU does this. I guess one reason why they
might is that they run the ticket offices at Amersham, Chalfont and
Latimer, Chorleywood, and Rickmandsworth - stations where Chiltern
Railways trains stop at (and bear in mind that tickets are fully
interavailable on both LU and Chiltern here).

If this arrangement was not in place then pax from those stations who
wanted a railcard discounted ODTC would need to be sold some other
type of ticket - when one bears in mind that ODTC are available from
non-London stations in the South East that are effectively a day
return plus Z1-6 ODTC, one can see that some kind of ODTC ticket has
to be offered from these stations.

So perhaps LU just decided to keep things simple and instead of
offering two types of railcard discounted ODTC - one for zones 1-D
that was only sold from these stations, and another zones 1-6 sold
everywhere else (not sure whether other zone A-D Met line passengers
from say Watford or Chesham would even get a railcard discounted ODTC
at all under this scenario) - LU just decided to lump them all
together an have a single product available across their network, the
railcard discounted ODTC valid in zones 1-D.

I think that logic is pretty good, but perhaps others disagree.

I split my travel into 2 tickets - a point to point into zone 4 and a

Of course what your ticket combination doesn't cover is travel in
zones 5 & 6 - for better or worse the rule demands that you must have

Indeed it doesn't, though the point to point ticket allows travel along the
route through those zones, and that's all I need. Like most commuters I go
same route every day and rarely travel anywhere else. If I do go out
socially it's invariably within Z1-4 anyhow, at least this way I'm not
paying for three sides of London I never use.

... discount pointless, it's cheaper to buy the thing full rate.
I suppose that's the downside of splitting your ticket.

The upside being £400 saving a year, which pays for quite a few day
travelcards without discount, overall I'm quids in, but it would be nice to
have the discount for travelcards too

D

On 19 Oct, 16:02, DaveP wrote:
I split my travel into 2 tickets - a point to point into zone 4 and a

Of course what your ticket combination doesn't cover is travel in
zones 5 & 6 - for better or worse the rule demands that you must have

Indeed it doesn't, though the point to point ticket allows travel along the
route through those zones, and that's all I need. Like most commuters I go
same route every day and rarely travel anywhere else. If I do go out
socially it's invariably within Z1-4 anyhow, at least this way I'm not
paying for three sides of London I never use.


... discount pointless, it's cheaper to buy the thing full rate.
I suppose that's the downside of splitting your ticket.

The upside being £400 saving a year, which pays for quite a few day
travelcards without discount, overall I'm quids in, but it would be nice to
have the discount for travelcards too

D

Everything you say I well understand, as it's all perfectly
reasonable.

Having the discount for Day Travelcards would of course be great,
however so long as the discount is only available to zones 1-6 Day
Travelcards then there would be problems:

(1) Your travelling companions would have a ticket which on face value
would be valid for all the zones, but would in actually fact only be
valid for the zones covered by your Gold Card Travelcard. Arguably not
an insurmountable problem as their discounted Day Travelcard would
only be valid when accompanied by you and your Gold Card Travelcard.

(2) Even if there was a rule that their discounted Day Travelcard was
only valid in the zones covered by your Gold Card Travelcard, if you
had your Gold Card loaded on to an Oyster then you would easily be
able to travel outside of its zonal validity on routes where Oyster
Pay-as-you-go is available (i.e. the whole LU network and a few
limited National Rail routes) as Oyster PAYG allows holders of season
Travelcards to automatically get ticket extensions (i.e. the system
combines the Travelcard validity and PAYG to charge you the
appropriate excess fare).
Thus it'd be practically unenforceable to insist that your whole party
only travelled within the zones covered by your Gold Card - they'd
appear to have a valid ticket, as would you (especially given that
it'd likely be ticket gates examining your tickets, not a ticket
inspector).


The alternative would be to introduce discounted Day Travelcards for
each and every zonal combination so as to match the zones that might
be held by a Gold Card holder (bearing in mind that there are only
four existing Day Travelcard combinations - 1&2, 1-4, 1-6 and 2-6).
This is v unlikely to happen!

Also one needs to consider why all-zone discounted Day Travelcards
exist. I believe it is because otherwise railcard-discounted Day
Travelcards from stations just outside the zones would actually be
cheaper than those available within the zones, which wouldn't be fair
- hence the discount being available only for an all-zones Day
Travelcard.

Having the discount for Day Travelcards would of course be great,
however so long as the discount is only available to zones 1-6 Day

I've certainly had the GOLDC discount issued on Z1-4 travelcards from an NR
station in the past, physically it's possible but I guess it's not a
permitted product (though the kit certainly allows its issue).

I see what you're saying, it would complicate matters to allow it.

Hopefully when some form of integrated smartcard ticketing comes around
this won't be a problem anymore (though I suppose discounted tickets will
always need to be done on paper or loaded specially onto the card?).

Cheers,
Dave

Mizter T wrote:

You're second paragraph hits the nail right on the head! Railcard
discounted Day Travelcard bought from LU ticket offices give you more
bang for you buck (or more mileage for your money) that if they were
bought from an NR ticket office.

NR ticket offices will sell you a railcard discounted ODTC valid in
zones 1-6 only - this is absolutely *not* valid anywhere in zones A-D.

It is, however, possible for an NR ticket office to issue a discounted
Amersham, Chesham, Watford, Croxley, Chalfont & Latimer, Chorleywood or
Rickmansworth to R1256 Travelcard, all of which have the same validity
as their LU equivalents.

This is an exception to the usual rule regarding the validity of "out
boundary" Travelcards, which normally cease to be valid (except on
participating local bus services) when you return to your origin station.

HTH,

Barry

On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:03:46 +0100, Barry Salter wrote:

NR ticket offices will sell you a railcard discounted ODTC valid in
zones 1-6 only - this is absolutely *not* valid anywhere in zones A-D.

It is, however, possible for an NR ticket office to issue a discounted
Amersham, Chesham, Watford, Croxley, Chalfont & Latimer, Chorleywood or
Rickmansworth to R1256 Travelcard, all of which have the same validity
as their LU equivalents.

This is an exception to the usual rule regarding the validity of "out
boundary" Travelcards, which normally cease to be valid (except on
participating local bus services) when you return to your origin station.

Just to clarify, is an Amersham to R1256 Travelcard valid to Chesham?

On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:27:47 +0100, asdf
wrote:

Just to clarify, is an Amersham to R1256 Travelcard valid to Chesham?

Wouldn't it be a R1256 plus ABCD Travelcard? If so yes, if it's a
point-to-point plus Travelcard it's presumably a Chiltern fare and
thus no.

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

asdf wrote:

Just to clarify, is an Amersham to R1256 Travelcard valid to Chesham?

If issued at Amersham, yes. If issued at an NR Ticket Office then it
*should* be, as the existence of the ticket in question is a kludge so
that NR stations can issue TCs valid to the Met Line "out-boundary"
stations.

Never having had one from an NR office, I couldn't say for certain, but
as they're all the same price (£7.80 undiscounted, £4.80 Railcard), I
don't see why not.

Cheers,

Barry

On 20 Oct, 23:59, Barry Salter wrote:
asdf wrote:
Just to clarify, is an Amersham to R1256 Travelcard valid to Chesham?

If issued at Amersham, yes. If issued at an NR Ticket Office then it
*should* be, as the existence of the ticket in question is a kludge so
that NR stations can issue TCs valid to the Met Line "out-boundary"
stations.

Never having had one from an NR office, I couldn't say for certain, but
as they're all the same price ( 7.80 undiscounted, 4.80 Railcard), I
don't see why not.

Cheers,

Barry

I agree, a ticket bought at (say) Ponders End with origin Amersham to
R1256, with Railcard discount comes out at gbp4.80, and you say that
should be valid to Chesham as well. So, by that logic a (say)
Streatham Hill to R1256 (Railcard discount) should also be valid to
Amersham and Chesham. Otherwise the Amersham to R1256 becomes a point-
to-point and is only valid for one return trip, and not valid to
Chesham.

--
Ken