On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:54:52 -0800 (PST), MIG
wrote:

Some time ago there was discussion of touching in with a travelcard on
Oyster on the DLR.

Obviously, if one subsequently goes beyond zones (eg has zone 1 - 2
travelcard and needs to go on to Stratford) one needs to have touched
in.

Also, if one enters or leaves at a point where the travelcard is
valid, it lets one through any barriers regardless of touching at the
other end.

I was wondering what would happen if one touched in when making a
journey in zones 1 and 2, where the PAYG journey would be priced as
via zone 3.

I had a zone 1 - 2 travelcard and touched in at Mudchute and went to
Hackney Wick via Old Street and Highbury (ie covered by the
travelcard). The Oyster single fare is £1.10, ie assumed to be zone
2/3 (and impossible without zone 3 at Stratford).

So did it just check that the travelcard was valid at each touching
point, or did it deduct £1.10 for an assumed PAYG journey via zone 3?

The former (good). It didn't deduct anything.

I think other posts have covered the basics but here is my understanding
although I am not 100% up to date.

A travelcard is checked at entry and exit against the zones held on the
ticket / card. If there is no out of zone travel then there is no PAYG
transaction initiated - i.e. the origin or destination are both in the
zones on the ticket. If either or both were outside the travelcard
zonal validity then I believe an auto extension transaction would be
initiated by creating a transaction in the PAYG part of the Oyster Card.

I believe, but am not 100% certain, that TfL introduced a rule
concerning "doughnut or polo mint" fraud. In other words people do not
have Zone 1 on their Travelcard but have some of the outer zones. I
believe the system does a secondary check to see if the origin /
destination pair for the journey (which may both be within the zonal
validity of the card) can *only* be achieved by travelling via Zone 1.
If that is the case then a PAYG transaction will be created to charge
for Zone 1 travel.

Clearly it becomes very complex when you have orbital routes that allow
legitimate travel on the TfL farescale that avoids Zone 1. TfL have
clearly decided to allocate particular journeys to zone 1 or non zone 1
fares. In your example your ticket included Zone 1 so the secondary
check for a Z1 PAYG charge was never initiated. As both origin and
destination were within the zones you'd bought then there is no need to
do anything to trigger a PAYG additional charge.

What I am not sure about is if you had taken a route involving JLE and
Stratford whether the JLE interchange gateline would have set a charge
for Zone 3 or not. Clearly that is a rare example as virtually no flows
have interchange gatelines on them. If you had gone solely via DLR and
not touched a validator inside the paid area I imagine there would be no
issue. Quite what a DLR train captain might have said or done I don't
know if he'd checked your card on the approaches to Stratford!

There is a proposal for the extended PAYG system (that will cover NR) to
have a concept of extension transactions so that if people exit LUL on
PAYG and then re-enter on NR (e.g. interchange at a London Terminal)
there will be a transaction set on exit from LUL that there may be a
further journey on NR. Once re-entry has taken place at the NR gateline
/validator line then the total permissible journey time will be extended
for the full through journey. This will recognise the full overall PAYG
fare due on exit while also preventing two journeys being charged
because maximum journey time would otherwise have been exceeded. That
was certainly the concept the last time I read about it but I have to
warn that the final implemented solution may differ. I'm sure I'll know
more later in the year as we get closer to implementation.

Sorry for a long explanation but I hope the "logic" is a bit clearer.

--
Paul C

On 31 Jan, 00:11, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:54:52 -0800 (PST), MIG
wrote:
Some time ago there was discussion of touching in with a travelcard on
Oyster on the DLR.

Obviously, if one subsequently goes beyond zones (eg has zone 1 - 2
travelcard and needs to go on to Stratford) one needs to have touched
in.

Also, if one enters or leaves at a point where the travelcard is
valid, it lets one through any barriers regardless of touching at the
other end.

I was wondering what would happen if one touched in when making a
journey in zones 1 and 2, where the PAYG journey would be priced as
via zone 3.

I had a zone 1 - 2 travelcard and touched in at Mudchute and went to
Hackney Wick via Old Street and Highbury (ie covered by the
travelcard). *The Oyster single fare is £1.10, ie assumed to be zone
2/3 (and impossible without zone 3 at Stratford).

So did it just check that the travelcard was valid at each touching
point, or did it deduct £1.10 for an assumed PAYG journey via zone 3?

The former (good). *It didn't deduct anything.

I think other posts have covered the basics but here is my understanding
although I am not 100% up to date.

A travelcard is checked at entry and exit against the zones held on the
ticket / card. If there is no out of zone travel then there is no PAYG
transaction initiated - i.e. the origin or destination are both in the
zones on the ticket. *If either or both were outside the travelcard
zonal validity then I believe an auto extension transaction would be
initiated by creating a transaction in the PAYG part of the Oyster Card.

I believe, but am not 100% certain, that TfL introduced a rule
concerning "doughnut or polo mint" fraud. *In other words people do not
have Zone 1 on their Travelcard but have some of the outer zones. *I
believe the system does a secondary check to see if the origin /
destination pair for the journey (which may both be within the zonal
validity of the card) can *only* be achieved by travelling via Zone 1.
If that is the case then a PAYG transaction will be created to charge
for Zone 1 travel.

Clearly it becomes very complex when you have orbital routes that allow
legitimate travel on the TfL farescale that avoids Zone 1. *TfL have
clearly decided to allocate particular journeys to zone 1 or non zone 1
fares. *In your example your ticket included Zone 1 so the secondary
check for a Z1 PAYG charge was never initiated. As both origin and
destination were within the zones you'd bought then there is no need to
do anything to trigger a PAYG additional charge.

Aha, that does explain things! So when it comes to Travelcards loaded
on Oyster, merely looking at the TfL Fare finder is misleading as it
doesn't take account of the other key factor which is the existence of
this secondary check for travel via z1.

Regarding my hypothesis (upthread, actually developed in a Nov '07
post that I link to) regarding a Richmond/ Kew Gardens/ Gunnersbury to
Stratford journey, the TfL Fare finder gives the fare as being via z1.
As I explained (probably badly!), my contention is that a holder of a
Travelcard for zones 2&3 or z2-4 would not be charged a via z1 fare
for this journey. Your explanation appears to support that - as
Richmond/ KG/ Gunnersbury to Stratford is a journey that can be
achieved without travelling via z1, then the secondary check on the
origin / destination pair would have revealed that the journey could
be made without z1, so the z1 fare would not be charged.

In other words, the situation with Travelcards on Oyster is different
from pure Oyster PAYG usage - and thankfully this system appears to
come out in favour of passengers.


What I am not sure about is if you had taken a route involving JLE and
Stratford whether the JLE interchange gateline would have set a charge
for Zone 3 or not. *Clearly that is a rare example as virtually no flows
have interchange gatelines on them. If you had gone solely via DLR and
not touched a validator inside the paid area I imagine there would be no
issue. Quite what a DLR train captain might have said or done I don't
know if he'd checked your card on the approaches to Stratford!

Actually MIG did say he'd touched in at Mudchute, therefore the train
captain could not possibly have any complaints (it would only be if he
hadn't touched in that he'd have been in the wrong, as he'd be
travelling out-of-zone with an unvalidated Oyster card).

Plus MIG also said he'd actually gone the via central London route via
Old Street and Highbury (presumably on the FCC's Great Northern route)
so he wouldn't have encountered a DLR train captain at all!


There is a proposal for the extended PAYG system (that will cover NR) to
have a concept of extension transactions so that if people exit LUL on
PAYG and then re-enter on NR (e.g. interchange at a London Terminal)
there will be a transaction set on exit from LUL that there may be a
further journey on NR. *Once re-entry has taken place at the NR gateline
/validator line then the total permissible journey time will be extended
for the full through journey. This will recognise the full overall PAYG
fare due on exit while also preventing two journeys being charged
because maximum journey time would otherwise have been exceeded. *That
was certainly the concept the last time I read about it but I have to
warn that the final implemented solution may differ. *I'm sure I'll know
more later in the year as we get closer to implementation.

Sorry for a long explanation but I hope the "logic" is a bit clearer.


Long explanations are more than welcome here Paul! Thanks very much,
that really does clear up some of the mysteries of the system.

The extension of PAYG to NR will be most interesting - things get
complicated south of the river! As well as working out what the
presumed route is for each pair of origin / destination stations (my
earlier example was Richmond to Wimbledon) - which could in itself be
rather contentious (from both a passenger and TOC point of view!) -
there's also then the question of Travelcards on Oyster.

Let's say someone has a z345 Travelcard and travels from Balham (z3)
to Wimbledon (z3). The obvious route is via Clapham Junction (z2) * -
but they could also have gone via the sightseeing route via the Sutton
loop, a bit daft but perhaps they wanted to see their friend off the
train at Sutton. The latter route would mean the passenger had stayed
within their zones. So, the question is whether or this Balham to
Wimbledon journey would be presumed to have gone via CJ and whether it
would thus incur a z2 extension fare - and if it were to incur an
extra fare, how would this mechanism work? As I see it, the current
secondary check as described by Paul above is currently too simplistic
for such a purpose, but U suppose it could be expanded.

One can then ask a similar question of a Selhurst to Wimbledon journey
- in that case, it's really ambiguous as to what the obvious route
would be, i.e. via Clapham Junction or via Sutton. As well as the
question of what the PAYG single fare would be, we can again ask how
would a holder of a z345 Travelcard be treated.

Note to Paul - don't worry, I'm not actually trying to give you an
inquisition on these things, I'm just thinking out loud, that's all! I
dare say some of these issues form part of the tortuous negotiations
between the TOCs and TfL with regards to implementation of Oyster
PAYG.


-----
* An equally obvious route is the Northern line to South Wimbledon and
then a bus. There's also Balham to Mitcham Junction then Tramlink to
Wimbledon.
-----
N.B. Readers of uk.transport.london may find this thread is missing
some important parts - it originally got started on uk.railway and the
version of this thread over there is currently more complete. It can
be seen via GG he
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....04535617844ac3

"Paul Corfield" wrote

I believe, but am not 100% certain, that TfL introduced a rule
concerning "doughnut or polo mint" fraud. In other words people do not
have Zone 1 on their Travelcard but have some of the outer zones. I
believe the system does a secondary check to see if the origin /
destination pair for the journey (which may both be within the zonal
validity of the card) can *only* be achieved by travelling via Zone 1.
If that is the case then a PAYG transaction will be created to charge
for Zone 1 travel.

Clearly it becomes very complex when you have orbital routes that allow
legitimate travel on the TfL farescale that avoids Zone 1. TfL have
clearly decided to allocate particular journeys to zone 1 or non zone 1
fares. In your example your ticket included Zone 1 so the secondary
check for a Z1 PAYG charge was never initiated. As both origin and
destination were within the zones you'd bought then there is no need to
do anything to trigger a PAYG additional charge.

Now that Oyster has been extended to London Overground there aren't many
journeys between Z2-Z6 starting and end points that can't be made by a route
avoiding Z1, and avoiding out-of-station interchanges where touching out and
in would be necessary, even if the route might be very convoluted - St
John's Wood to Whitechapel via Finchley Road, Rayners Lane, Earl's Court,
Kensington Olympia, Willesden Junction, Gospel Oak, and Barking. On PAYG
time outs would no doubt come into effect, and being charged the obvious
Z2-Z1 fare would not be unreasonable, but I can see issues if the passenger
held a Z2-Z5 season ticket on Oyster.

The issues with tweaking the system to cope fairly with the myriad of
possible journeys when Oyster is extended to the whole London rail network
seem to be incredibly complex, especially when LO starts running on the East
London Line, giving even more orbital possibilities, and interchanges which
don't involve a gateline.

Peter

On Jan 31, 9:40*am, "Peter Masson" wrote:
"Paul Corfield" wrote





I believe, but am not 100% certain, that TfL introduced a rule
concerning "doughnut or polo mint" fraud. *In other words people do not
have Zone 1 on their Travelcard but have some of the outer zones. *I
believe the system does a secondary check to see if the origin /
destination pair for the journey (which may both be within the zonal
validity of the card) can *only* be achieved by travelling via Zone 1.
If that is the case then a PAYG transaction will be created to charge
for Zone 1 travel.

Clearly it becomes very complex when you have orbital routes that allow
legitimate travel on the TfL farescale that avoids Zone 1. *TfL have
clearly decided to allocate particular journeys to zone 1 or non zone 1
fares. *In your example your ticket included Zone 1 so the secondary
check for a Z1 PAYG charge was never initiated. As both origin and
destination were within the zones you'd bought then there is no need to
do anything to trigger a PAYG additional charge.

Now that Oyster has been extended to London Overground there aren't many
journeys between Z2-Z6 starting and end points that can't be made by a route
avoiding Z1, and avoiding out-of-station interchanges where touching out and
in would be necessary, even if the route might be very convoluted - St
John's Wood to Whitechapel via Finchley Road, Rayners Lane, Earl's Court,
Kensington Olympia, Willesden Junction, Gospel Oak, and Barking. On PAYG
time outs would no doubt come into effect, and being charged the obvious
Z2-Z1 fare would not be unreasonable, but I can see issues if the passenger
held a Z2-Z5 season ticket on Oyster.

The issues with tweaking the system to cope fairly with the myriad of
possible journeys when Oyster is extended to the whole London rail network
seem to be incredibly complex, especially when LO starts running on the East
London Line, giving even more orbital possibilities, and interchanges which
don't involve a gateline.

Peter-

It would be a bit unbalanced if touching an outerchange, proving a non-
zone 1 route, doesn't let you off the zone 1 fare where the fare is
defined as via zone 1, but touching an outerchange in zone 1 adds the
via zone 1 fare when the normal fare is not zone 1.

But from other discussion, it seems that once the outerchange
recalculates as a continuation from A to B, it doesn't affect the
basic assumptions about the fare for the route, even though it proves
it one way or the other, so I wonder.

(Back to my situation, I also wonder if there would be a difference
between say doing the outerchange at Canary Wharf, indicating a
Stratford/zone 3 route but only touching in zone 2, and doing the
barrier at Stratford, which is actually in zone 3, and therefore
recalculates a continuation from an initial journey which would have
been charged [eg if I left the system at Stratford]).

On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:40:07 -0000, "Peter Masson"
wrote:


"Paul Corfield" wrote

I believe, but am not 100% certain, that TfL introduced a rule
concerning "doughnut or polo mint" fraud. In other words people do not
have Zone 1 on their Travelcard but have some of the outer zones. I
believe the system does a secondary check to see if the origin /
destination pair for the journey (which may both be within the zonal
validity of the card) can *only* be achieved by travelling via Zone 1.
If that is the case then a PAYG transaction will be created to charge
for Zone 1 travel.

Clearly it becomes very complex when you have orbital routes that allow
legitimate travel on the TfL farescale that avoids Zone 1. TfL have
clearly decided to allocate particular journeys to zone 1 or non zone 1
fares. In your example your ticket included Zone 1 so the secondary
check for a Z1 PAYG charge was never initiated. As both origin and
destination were within the zones you'd bought then there is no need to
do anything to trigger a PAYG additional charge.

Now that Oyster has been extended to London Overground there aren't many
journeys between Z2-Z6 starting and end points that can't be made by a route
avoiding Z1, and avoiding out-of-station interchanges where touching out and
in would be necessary, even if the route might be very convoluted - St
John's Wood to Whitechapel via Finchley Road, Rayners Lane, Earl's Court,
Kensington Olympia, Willesden Junction, Gospel Oak, and Barking. On PAYG
time outs would no doubt come into effect, and being charged the obvious
Z2-Z1 fare would not be unreasonable, but I can see issues if the passenger
held a Z2-Z5 season ticket on Oyster.

In future PAYG will be able to hold more than one fare and there will be
additional validators positioned on outer zone interchange routes to
allow people to register an intermediate routing point that the reader
at the final exit station can use to determine the fare to be charged.
This is certainly planned to be the case on LUL - whether it extends to
Overground and NR I do not know. I appreciate there are all sorts of
potential issues "I forgot to touch my card but I did go that way" etc
etc but at least something is being done to create some flexibility and
recognition that people opt to travel via longer but cheaper routes.

The same concept could be used on NR to deal with some of the examples
used by Mizter T - i.e. interchange validators at Clapham Junction. I
recognise people may be less inclined to use them if they were to be
charged more but it's an option. The other is to always default to a
higher charge but to provide for intermediate validation on the cheaper
route (assuming people change lines at one location) which would reduce
the PAYG charge or any supplementary charge on PAYG if a zonal
travelcard was held for part of the journey.

Where there are OSIs en route then the final exit validation process
will always read back through the history on the Oyster card to
determine original entry and also the interchange. At present Zone 1
OSIs would, I am sure, register the zone 1 routing to determine if a
charge on PAYG was needed for travelcard holders. It must the case in
future that OSIs will also be used for routing purposes too - it would
be daft not to use that information if the general concept of
intermediate validation is being introduced anyway.


The issues with tweaking the system to cope fairly with the myriad of
possible journeys when Oyster is extended to the whole London rail network
seem to be incredibly complex, especially when LO starts running on the East
London Line, giving even more orbital possibilities, and interchanges which
don't involve a gateline.

I agree this presents what people might term "a challenge" but there are
ways of dealing with this via assumed routes or else use of intermediate
validation. There will be compromises that some people will be unhappy
with but this is what happens when you have such a complex rail network
to deal with.
--
Paul C

On 31 Jan, 09:55, MIG wrote:

On Jan 31, 9:40 am, "Peter Masson" wrote:

"Paul Corfield" wrote

I believe, but am not 100% certain, that TfL introduced a rule
concerning "doughnut or polo mint" fraud. In other words people do not
have Zone 1 on their Travelcard but have some of the outer zones. I
believe the system does a secondary check to see if the origin /
destination pair for the journey (which may both be within the zonal
validity of the card) can *only* be achieved by travelling via Zone 1.
If that is the case then a PAYG transaction will be created to charge
for Zone 1 travel.

Clearly it becomes very complex when you have orbital routes that allow
legitimate travel on the TfL farescale that avoids Zone 1. TfL have
clearly decided to allocate particular journeys to zone 1 or non zone 1
fares. In your example your ticket included Zone 1 so the secondary
check for a Z1 PAYG charge was never initiated. As both origin and
destination were within the zones you'd bought then there is no need to
do anything to trigger a PAYG additional charge.

Now that Oyster has been extended to London Overground there aren't many
journeys between Z2-Z6 starting and end points that can't be made by a route
avoiding Z1, and avoiding out-of-station interchanges where touching out and
in would be necessary, even if the route might be very convoluted - St
John's Wood to Whitechapel via Finchley Road, Rayners Lane, Earl's Court,
Kensington Olympia, Willesden Junction, Gospel Oak, and Barking. On PAYG
time outs would no doubt come into effect, and being charged the obvious
Z2-Z1 fare would not be unreasonable, but I can see issues if the passenger
held a Z2-Z5 season ticket on Oyster.

The issues with tweaking the system to cope fairly with the myriad of
possible journeys when Oyster is extended to the whole London rail network
seem to be incredibly complex, especially when LO starts running on the East
London Line, giving even more orbital possibilities, and interchanges which
don't involve a gateline.

It would be a bit unbalanced if touching an outerchange, proving a non-
zone 1 route, doesn't let you off the zone 1 fare where the fare is
defined as via zone 1, but touching an outerchange in zone 1 adds the
via zone 1 fare when the normal fare is not zone 1.

But from other discussion, it seems that once the outerchange
recalculates as a continuation from A to B, it doesn't affect the
basic assumptions about the fare for the route, even though it proves
it one way or the other, so I wonder.


*But* what Paul has said in the past is that this will likely change
as a result of the PAYG system being reconfigured to handle National
Rail journeys - he hinted at that in this thread but he has said so
explicitly beforehand in a past thread - see this post from 12 Jan:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....7a77e389d447ad

Specifically this bit...
---quote---
Oyster can only deal with one PAYG fare between an origin and
destination at present. There is a further project underway to support
extension of PAYG to NR which will introduce the concept of
intermediate validation to confirm a route and also for more than one
rate between origin and destination pairs to be held.
---/quote---

Under this system going through an OSI aka 'outerchange' - or indeed
possibly just touching on an 'interchange validator' within the
gateline (if there is a gateline) at an outer zone station - would
prove to the system that you did take a non-z1 route and you would
thus be charged accordingly. In other words it would be balanced, and
non-z1 routes would be charged as non-z1 journeys.


(Back to my situation, I also wonder if there would be a difference
between say doing the outerchange at Canary Wharf, indicating a
Stratford/zone 3 route but only touching in zone 2, and doing the
barrier at Stratford, which is actually in zone 3, and therefore
recalculates a continuation from an initial journey which would have
been charged [eg if I left the system at Stratford]).

Sorry I'm being stupid and I'm not quite sure I see what you're
getting at.

If you're suggesting that you might get charged for a zone 3 route if
you went via Stratford and through the 'internal gateline' at the
Stratford Jubilee line platforms, that's an interesting question,
indeed one that was raised by Paul C upthread. It's also a highly
unusual situation, as it's the only 'internal gateline' out there [1].
The answer is to try it, I guess!


-----
[1] The gateline at Southwark tube station's direct entrance/exit from
the Waterloo East platforms isn't an 'internal gateline' per-se, more
just a gateline that controls access to the LU fare-paid area - it
doesn't do any revenue control duties for National Rail, and there are
sometimes Southeastern ticket checkers are stationed on the other side
to check if you have a valid ticket for NR.

I can nonetheless see a unique situation where people could get stuck
in a no-mans land after exiting the LU fare-paid area without holding
an NR ticket (the signs on the exit from the tube station do say
"ticket holders only", but people don't always pay attention!). I
guess the presence of LU ticket machines provides a sort-of way out,
in that they could be used to buy a Travelcard or otherwise a new LU
ticket to re-enter the tube - that's if the Southeastern ticket
checkers (if present) were to allow them to do this, which I imagine
they would. (This entrance to the tube station does have an LU ticket
office but it's no longer staffed.)

When NR eventually accepts Oyster PAYG then I think these gates will
probably have to be re-configured to allow for this, i.e. as well as
providing an exit from the Tube they'd provide for an entry onto NR
and vice-versa (they'd essentially be configured for interchange
traffic).

On Jan 31, 12:33*pm, Mizter T wrote:
much cut, just on this point

(Back to my situation, I also wonder if there would be a difference
between say doing the outerchange at Canary Wharf, indicating a
Stratford/zone 3 route but only touching in zone 2, and doing the
barrier at Stratford, which is actually in zone 3, and therefore
recalculates a continuation from an initial journey which would have
been charged [eg if I left the system at Stratford]).

Sorry I'm being stupid and I'm not quite sure I see what you're
getting at.

If you're suggesting that you might get charged for a zone 3 route if
you went via Stratford and through the 'internal gateline' at the
Stratford Jubilee line platforms, that's an interesting question,
indeed one that was raised by Paul C upthread. It's also a highly
unusual situation, as it's the only 'internal gateline' out there [1].
The answer is to try it, I guess!

Yes my thought was that an outerchange or standalone validator along
the way that was itself still in zone 2 might indicate that one was
going on a zone 3 route* but the entry and exit would only be
calculating and recalculating fares not involving zone 3 at the point
of touching.

But touching at Stratford** would presumably count as an exit from the
system in zone 3, which would be charged in my case, until it was
recalculated when I was shown to have continued the journey to Bethnal
Green or Hackney or wherever.

So the situation when it recalculated that it was a continuation would
be a possibility of keeping a fare already charged, as opposed to
adding a fare based on the evidence of the route I had taken.

*Actually Canary Wharf was not a good example, because I could be
doing London Bridge.

**Would the Jubilee gateline have any different effect from the
platform validator on the Central, say?