[x-posted to uk.transport.london]
[original post at uk.railway]

wrote:

(snip quoted previous posts which included mention of a
new Borisism, "Oysterisation")

The problem mentioned in the Evening Standard last night was that
South West Trains wanted to have its own fare structure and was in
franchise negotiations with the Department for Transport.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standa...ils/article.do

"SWT wants to apply its own, more expensive, fares structure, and has
other demands to which TfL is unable to agree. As things stand, it
would only accept Oyster pay-as-you-go if readers across the Tube, bus
and rail network were compatible with planned ITSO transport
smartcards."

Given that South West Trains already doesn't have sole control of its
fares within Zones 1 to 6, I assume that this must mean that they
think the TfL Oyster fare structure is too low. However, I am minded
of the comment on South Eastern's website that Oyster fares on their
network would not be cheaper than paper fares. It would be
interesting to know what the revenue impact has been for operators
such as c2c, NXEA (West Anglia side) [1] or FGW where the TfL Oyster
scale has been adopted fairly comprehensively within London

http://www.southeasternrailway.co.uk...&q=90#answered

I guess we won't know how the fares are to be set for a few months
yet.


OK, so the Southeastern website says that Oyster PAYG fares for
journeys on their network aren't going to be any cheaper, i.e. they're
going to cost as much as their current (i.e. paper ticket) fares. And
their current (i.e. paper ticket) fares for journeys wholly within the
London zones have, since 2 January *2007* (i.e. over two years ago),
been set on a central basis by the DfT on the basis of zonal pricing -
i.e. tickets are priced according to what zones are travelled through,
though the actual tickets themselves are still issued on a point-to-
point basis. (The justification given for this at the time is that it
was in preparation for the introduction of Oyster PAYG, which indeed
it was.)

Crucially this applies across National Rail (NR) in London - in other
words to *all* TOCs, including SWT.

So, if we are to assume that what the Southeastern website says is
correct, these pan-London zonally priced fares that currently apply to
conventional paper tickets will also form the basis for the Oyster
PAYG fares for National Rail journeys as well. (These pan-London fares
are set centrally by DfT Rail, but I presume that both TfL and the
TOCs have a degree of input into the decision on the level of those
fares.)

So what SWT appear to be arguing for is utterly nonsensical - the ES
article suggests they want to charge a higher Oyster PAYG fare than
the other London TOCs, but that translates as either meaning that...
(a) SWT want to charge more for Oyster PAYG fares than conventional
paper tickets - which would just be ridiculous, or...
(b) SWT want to opt-out of the pan-London standard fare scale system
altogether, which is also ridiculous.

The latter point is ridiculous because SWT doesn't have any choice on
the matter - the pan-London fares are imposed on the TOCs by the DfT,
and I understand that each franchise was specifically altered so as to
make this a requirement.

So, *if* the ES article is to be taken at face value, my conclusion
would be that SWT are just playing awkward. Why might they do that
though? Well, their new franchise agreement obliged them to set up an
ITSO-based smartcard ticketing system from scratch, the first TOC to
have to do this. However AIUI the aforementioned franchise agreement
didn't spell out how this new smartcard system would play nice with
Oyster when it came to London. I would therefore contend that SWT are
after some kind of special treatment here. One example could be help
in rolling out readers/validators at stations that can cope with both
their own ITSO-based smartcards and also Oyster cards.

The other thing to say is that the ES article might have managed to
mangle things up somewhat. However it would appear that SWT is somehow
causing problems here - which is kind of funny, because when the new
South Western franchise was awarded there was some speculation that
its smartcard ticketing requirement might mean that Oyster PAYG
acceptance could piggyback on the new system which in turn would mean
that SWT would be one of the first TOCs to accept Oyster PAYG. This
somewhat suggests that it could turn out to be the last holdout!