I've got some queries that might take a bit of working out and could
take a bit of time and money to test.

The PAYG fare from the southern end of the DLR to Bethnal Green (zone
2) is £1, which presumably means that it is assumed to involve going
via Stratford.

If one went on PAYG via Bank, touching only at the start and end of
the journey, it wouldn't know the difference and would charge £1, and
anyone checking on the way would see that you'd touched in and have no
complaint.

Question 1: If you touched at the mysterious readers at Bank DLR,
would it treat it as a continuation of a journey nevertheless always
priced at £1, or would it work out that you'd been via zone 1 and
charge £1.50/£2?

If you had a zone 1 and 2 travelcard loaded on the Oyster, went via
Bank and didn't touch beforehand, it would let you through the gates
at Bethnal Green and would be valid if it was checked on the DLR on
the way to Bank whether you touched in or not.

Question 2: If you touched the travelcard on entering the DLR, would
it just acknowledge that it was valid, or would it figure that you've
used a zone 1 and 2 travelcard on a journey priced as involving zone
3, and deduct the extension fare, in which case would it be one
extension or two?

(I think probably not, but if so I'd have hit on a way that you would
pay extra by touching a travelcard valid for the whole of the DLR
journey, nevertheless unfairly.)

Question 3: In the unlikely event of the answer to question 2 being
that you'd be charged an extension for zone 3, could this be avoided
by touching the mysterious readers at Bank?

On 28 Apr, 00:47, MIG wrote:
I've got some queries that might take a bit of working out and could
take a bit of time and money to test.

The PAYG fare from the southern end of the DLR to Bethnal Green (zone
2) is £1, which presumably means that it is assumed to involve going
via Stratford.

Indeed.


If one went on PAYG via Bank, touching only at the start and end of
the journey, it wouldn't know the difference and would charge £1, and
anyone checking on the way would see that you'd touched in and have no
complaint.


Yes, AFAICS that's fine.


Question 1: If you touched at the mysterious readers at Bank DLR,
would it treat it as a continuation of a journey nevertheless always
priced at £1, or would it work out that you'd been via zone 1 and
charge £1.50/£2?


You'd be charged the via zone 1 fare.


If you had a zone 1 and 2 travelcard loaded on the Oyster, went via
Bank and didn't touch beforehand, it would let you through the gates
at Bethnal Green and would be valid if it was checked on the DLR on
the way to Bank whether you touched in or not.


On the DLR you don't need to touch-in with a Travelcard if your
journey is entirely within the zonal validity of that Travelcard.

Note that whilst the Oyster T&Cs do not actually contain a specific
exemption from the requirement for users to touch-in if they have a
period Travelcard, such usage is nonetheless implicitly allowed when
one considers the relevant DLR publicity. In essence the same
situation applies on bendy-buses with Oyster users who have a period
Travelcard/ Bus Pass. (A while back I gathered a load of evidence to
support that but in the end never got round to posting it, so I'll try
and gather it up and get around to doing so soon.)

An Oyster loaded with a zone 1&2 Travelcard that hadn't been touched-
in would still be accepted as valid if checked on the DLR, and would
also still let someone out through the gates at Bethnal Green without
any issue (at least the way things are currently configured).


Question 2: If you touched the travelcard on entering the DLR, would
it just acknowledge that it was valid, or would it figure that you've
used a zone 1 and 2 travelcard on a journey priced as involving zone
3, and deduct the extension fare, in which case would it be one
extension or two?

(I think probably not, but if so I'd have hit on a way that you would
pay extra by touching a travelcard valid for the whole of the DLR
journey, nevertheless unfairly.)


Because the presumed route to Bethnal Green is via Stratford which is
in zone 3, aha I see what you're saying.

Interesting question, I'm not entirely sure, and I'm pretty sure I've
pondered on very similar issues in the past.

Touching-in on the DLR when using an Oyster loaded with a Travelcard
doesn't just lead to the system acknowledging it is valid, it acts as
an entry or exit to the system (and thus electronically 'marks' the
card as appropriate).

Like you, I think it quite possible that there's some leeway built
into the system that would mean one wouldn't get charged for
travelling via Stratford/ zone 3.


Question 3: In the unlikely event of the answer to question 2 being
that you'd be charged an extension for zone 3, could this be avoided
by touching the mysterious readers at Bank?


Yes, I'd certainly think so.

This touches (ho ho) on a number of issues with Oyster than I'm most
interested in, and I've got some evolving thinking about how Oyster
works in more complicated cases such as this. I'd thus be most
interested to hear about people's real experiences as to how things
actually work out on the ground.

Dare I suggest that the easiest way to get to the bottom of this
specific question is for it to be tried in practice!

On 28 Apr, 09:52, Mizter T wrote:
On 28 Apr, 00:47, MIG wrote:

I've got some queries that might take a bit of working out and could
take a bit of time and money to test.

The PAYG fare from the southern end of the DLR to Bethnal Green (zone
2) is £1, which presumably means that it is assumed to involve going
via Stratford.

Indeed.

You can also get to Bethnal Green without going to Z3, changing at Bow
Church/Road and Mile End.

Question 1: If you touched at the mysterious readers at Bank DLR,
would it treat it as a continuation of a journey nevertheless always
priced at £1, or would it work out that you'd been via zone 1 and
charge £1.50/£2?

You'd be charged the via zone 1 fare.

I don't know if you would. I think we've concluded before that you're
always charged based on your end points, regardless of where you touch
during your journey (within reason).

Interesting question, I'm not entirely sure, and I'm pretty sure I've
pondered on very similar issues in the past.

I believe the charging extra for out-of-zone journeys only applies if
you don't have Z1 and the presumed route is via Z1.

U

--
http://londonconnections.blogspot.com/
A blog about transport projects in London

On 28 Apr, 10:26, Mr Thant
wrote:
On 28 Apr, 09:52, Mizter T wrote:

On 28 Apr, 00:47, MIG wrote:

I've got some queries that might take a bit of working out and could
take a bit of time and money to test.

The PAYG fare from the southern end of the DLR to Bethnal Green (zone
2) is £1, which presumably means that it is assumed to involve going
via Stratford.

Indeed.

You can also get to Bethnal Green without going to Z3, changing at Bow
Church/Road and Mile End.

Ah right. That messes up my query. I wonder if there is another
route that is priced via outer zones making it normally cheaper but
which could be done via zone 1 with a period travelcard? Will need to
think. The original was due to the fact that I really was thinking of
going to Bethnal Green (although didn't).


Question 1: If you touched at the mysterious readers at Bank DLR,
would it treat it as a continuation of a journey nevertheless always
priced at £1, or would it work out that you'd been via zone 1 and
charge £1.50/£2?

You'd be charged the via zone 1 fare.

I don't know if you would. I think we've concluded before that you're
always charged based on your end points, regardless of where you touch
during your journey (within reason).

This one can be tested at some point.


Interesting question, I'm not entirely sure, and I'm pretty sure I've
pondered on very similar issues in the past.

I believe the charging extra for out-of-zone journeys only applies if
you don't have Z1 and the presumed route is via Z1.

U

--http://londonconnections.blogspot.com/
A blog about transport projects in London

Mr Thant wrote:

On 28 Apr, 09:52, Mizter T wrote:

On 28 Apr, 00:47, MIG wrote:

I've got some queries that might take a bit of working out and could
take a bit of time and money to test.

The PAYG fare from the southern end of the DLR to Bethnal Green (zone
2) is £1, which presumably means that it is assumed to involve going
via Stratford.

Indeed.

You can also get to Bethnal Green without going to Z3, changing at Bow
Church/Road and Mile End.


True, that's a good point and thus suggests that a straightforward
Lewisham to Bethnal Green journey may not actually be defined as being
via Stratford (zone 3), but instead via the Bows (and thus zone 2).

Perhaps the only way to tell would be to do some complicated
experimentation to see whether an Oyster with the zones 1&2 price cap
then shifted to having the zones 1-4 price cap after making a journey
from (for example) Bethnal Green to Lewisham DLR (i.e. to determine
exactly which way the system did define the route).

Of course if one changed at Bow Church/ Bow Road then one would have
to pass through some ticket gates, however from past experience simply
passing through gates (for an out-of-station interchange) which
clearly demonstrated that I didn't pass through zone 1 nonetheless
didn't ensure that I wasn't charged the via zone 1 fare, because the
presumed route between my start and end-points was defined as via zone
1 and hence the fare was charged as such. More on that later!


Question 1: If you touched at the mysterious readers at Bank DLR,
would it treat it as a continuation of a journey nevertheless always
priced at £1, or would it work out that you'd been via zone 1 and
charge £1.50/£2?

You'd be charged the via zone 1 fare.

I don't know if you would. I think we've concluded before that you're
always charged based on your end points, regardless of where you touch
during your journey (within reason).


I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one - because what would happen is
that the system would first of all regard your journeys as (for
example) Lewisham to Bank, and then on exiting at Bethnal Green that
journey would be extended so as to be Lewisham to Bethnal Green.

It would appear thus on your Journey History (if you checked it at a
Tube ticket machine)...

-----
Lewisham - Bank
Lewisham - Bethnal Green
-----

...with (if you were using PAYG) the appropriate fare being deducted
on the second line. However the via zone 1
fare would not be recalculated on exit at Bethnal Green simply because
a straightforward Lewisham to Bethnal Green journey is defined as
being via Stratford, because the foundation of the journey's fare is
the Lewisham to Bank leg if one touched-in at Bank DLR.

(Which would thus make it worthwhile ensuring that one does *not*
touch on one of the standalone Oyster readers at Bank DLR, at least
for certain journeys.)

The basic point being that if an end-to-end journey is charged as via
zone 1 for any of its length (because one touches-in/out in zone 1
even on a standalone Oyster reader), the whole journey is then charged
on the basis of being via zone 1 and one is not refunded as if one did
not travel through zone 1. (There was a recent example of this from a
poster here that I'll try and dig up.)

Anyway MIG has successfully piqued my interest enough to persuade me
to waste (yet) more of my money on conducting a few experiments, which
I will do in the not-too-distant future and then report back here.


Interesting question, I'm not entirely sure, and I'm pretty sure I've
pondered on very similar issues in the past.

I believe the charging extra for out-of-zone journeys only applies if
you don't have Z1 and the presumed route is via Z1.


OK, that kinda makes sense.

By the by, I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds it quite hard to
discuss these issues using unambiguous plain English!

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:22:58 -0700 (PDT), MIG wrote:

You can also get to Bethnal Green without going to Z3, changing at Bow
Church/Road and Mile End.

Ah right. That messes up my query. I wonder if there is another
route that is priced via outer zones making it normally cheaper but
which could be done via zone 1 with a period travelcard? Will need to
think. The original was due to the fact that I really was thinking of
going to Bethnal Green (although didn't).

Make the destination Hackney Wick instead of Bethnal Green.

On Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:47:00 -0700 (PDT), MIG wrote:

Question 1: If you touched at the mysterious readers at Bank DLR,
would it treat it as a continuation of a journey nevertheless always
priced at £1, or would it work out that you'd been via zone 1 and
charge £1.50/£2?

What happens here depends on whether the validator is (still) set to
"Entry only", as someone once said here.

What's the layout of barriers and validators at Bank/Monument? Am I
right in thinking it's as shown (logically) in the diagram below?
(Ignoring the current passageway/escalator closures.)

Exit Lift to KWS
| |
*---B---W&C |
| |
*---B------*-----*--V---DLR
|
C,N,D&C

B = Barrier line
V = "Mysterious" validator
KWS = King William Street

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:25:08 -0700 (PDT), Mizter T wrote:

I don't know if you would. I think we've concluded before that you're
always charged based on your end points, regardless of where you touch
during your journey (within reason).

The basic point being that if an end-to-end journey is charged as via
zone 1 for any of its length (because one touches-in/out in zone 1
even on a standalone Oyster reader), the whole journey is then charged
on the basis of being via zone 1 and one is not refunded as if one did
not travel through zone 1. (There was a recent example of this from a
poster here that I'll try and dig up.)

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....0411f7139b6538

Anyway MIG has successfully piqued my interest enough to persuade me
to waste (yet) more of my money on conducting a few experiments, which
I will do in the not-too-distant future and then report back here.

What experiments are you planning? I'd be interested in making a
prediction on the outcome beforehand and seeing if my understanding of
the underlying system is correct.

I believe the charging extra for out-of-zone journeys only applies if
you don't have Z1 and the presumed route is via Z1.

OK, that kinda makes sense.

It makes no sense at all to me. Are you saying that, if you had a Z34
Travelcard, and travelled from Alperton to Preston Road (both in Z4
but presumed route via Z5), you wouldn't be charged an extension fare?

On 29 Apr, 16:30, asdf wrote:
What's the layout of barriers and validators at Bank/Monument? Am I
right in thinking it's as shown (logically) in the diagram below?

Yes, although there's a behind barriers route between the W&C and the
rest of the station, and the lift to KWS is in the Lombard Street
ticket hall rather than anywhere near the validator.

(Ignoring the current passageway/escalator closures.)

Well, you now [sometimes] have to pass the validator when arriving on
the DLR due to the one way system, which sends you along the
departures platform (which doesn't have its own validator, does it?).

U

--
http://londonconnections.blogspot.com/
A blog about transport projects in London

On 29 Apr, 17:13, Mr Thant
wrote:
On 29 Apr, 16:30, asdf wrote:

What's the layout of barriers and validators at Bank/Monument? Am I
right in thinking it's as shown (logically) in the diagram below?

Yes, although there's a behind barriers route between the W&C and the
rest of the station, and the lift to KWS is in the Lombard Street
ticket hall rather than anywhere near the validator.

(Ignoring the current passageway/escalator closures.)

Well, you now [sometimes] have to pass the validator when arriving on
the DLR due to the one way system, which sends you along the
departures platform (which doesn't have its own validator, does it?).

Yes, there's one near the bottom of the stairs from the Northern Line
platforms.

(It's the one I touched "in" at when I forgot to touch in at Euston
and exited at Monument (for Cannon Street) and got charged the correct
zone 1 fare, as anecdoted before.)