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Oyster PAYG query
MIG wrote: much snippage The 'max cash fare' wasn't part of the system originally, but PAYG users quickly discovered the benefits of only touching in at one end of a journey, so that loophole got closed pretty quickly... Paul S The "benefit" for me was that I paid the correct fare without having to get off the train and touch in/out at the point where I crossed into the area covered by my paper travelcard. �Now I get ripped off if I don't go through that ridiculous exercise. I have to say that if I regularly travelled outside the zones of my Travelcard (on Oyster PAYG routes) I would just get my Travelcard on Oyster. It's still not the easiest thing in the world if you are south of the Thames. I noticed recently that a major station like Lewisham has only just started offering Oyster in the last few weeks, despite being on the DLR (apart from a single machine that was often out of order). In the period referred to, Oyster was even less available than it is now. When the machine is out of order, one doesn't want to spend fifteen minutes finding a shop and missing trains, one just goes to the counter for a paper ticket. Oyster stops are not always on the way to the station. I'll address these points in a reply to your post upthread in which you raise similar points so as to avoid duplication (sorry, yesterday evening I hadn't noticed this post hence I raised some similar points in another branch of the thread). My main point was that the extent of not touching in/out, before the punitive rates were brought in, is inferred to be proof of fraud, which is a totally false assumption. I never intended to infer that this was a proof of fraud. However nor do I think it is OK to make the counter-assumption - i.e. that all those who failed to touch-in *and* touch-out were all acting in a legitimate and honest manner. I never touched in/out at boundary stations, but I always paid the correct fare. For example, I got on at Acton Town when I had a zone 1 -2 travelcard and didn't choose to jump out at Turnham Green. No fraud was committed and the correct revenue was collected. (Incidentally I've looked up the appropriate fares for 2006 for the examples I shall give, as it was in November 2006 that the 'max cash fare' began to be applied - you can see the relevant fares PDF here - http://snipurl.com/tfl_fares_1july_2006 ) In the particular example you gave there wouldn't have been a problem - if you merely touched-in at Acton Town (zone 4) and then failed to touch out, the fare charged would have been the minimum from that station, so £1 (at any time) - and the zones 3&4 fare was also £1 (at any time). So, as a holder of a Travelcard covering zones 1&2 you certainly weren't leaving TfL out of pocket, and at no point in that journey could you have been accused of travelling without a valid ticket (though the Oyster T&Cs do clearly state that users must touch- in and touch-out so technically you weren't complying with them). But let's extend this logic a bit - if someone, holding a z1&2 paper Travelcard, had started their journey from Heathrow using Oyster PAYG then their card would have been debited £1 upfront on entry, which is the minimum fare from a zone 6 station. However, during weekday daytimes (7am-7pm) the zones 3-6 fare was £1.80 - thus if that person had travelled into central London and then exited the network using their paper z1&2 Travelcard they would not have paid the correct fare and would have left TfL 80p out of pocket. Of course the problem for TfL is that it would have been virtually impossible to catch someone doing this, as if they were checked en-route outside z1&2 they could simply present a validated Oyster and that would be fine - hence the need to provide an incentive to users to touch-out, and a 'penalty' for those who don't. One last example, going back to Acton Town - literally. If someone did the reverse of the Acton Town example you gave above, i.e. travelled from central London to Acton Town whilst holding a z1&2 paper Travelcard then that person would *undoubtedly* have been breaking the rules, *even* if they intended to pay the extra using their Oyster card. On the District line the z1&2 Travelcard would cover them up to Turnham Green, but from Turnham Green to Acton Town they would have been travelling without a valid ticket - and thus if ticket checked by an RPI would have been liable to a Penalty Fare or prosecution. They could even have been checked as they exited the ticket gates at Acton Town - I saw RPIs who were very specifically only checking those who had used Oysters to exit the gates from the SSL platforms at KXSP, and then 'doing' those who hadn't touched-in before they began their journey (perhaps on the extremities of the Met line). (The same situation of course applies if they had travelling on a westbound Piccadilly line train beyond Hammersmith - the last zone 2 station on the Pic - unless it was one of the few Pic line trains that stopped at Turnham Green.) The above provides a few ideas about the clues I'm sure the revenue protection people would have been looking out for when trying to identify people who were travelling fraudulently, before the max cash fare 'penalty' was introduced. Just to be absolutely clear, I wish to make it very plain that I am not attempting to accuse you of any wrongdoing whatsoever, nor do I want my comments to be taken as an inference to that effect. And I do mean that. (The stuff about surveillance is interesting and worthy of a longer read and separate thread, because I've referred to it in the past, but it wasn't in my bonnet at this point.) I've expanded a bit on it elsewhere on this thread, but as you say it is an interesting issue and one that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, but one that is worthy of a more level-headed approach than the black helicopter conspiracy crowd provides. |
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