On May 21, 2:36*pm, MIG wrote:

On 21 May, 13:53, Mizter T wrote:

On May 21, 12:39 pm, "Recliner" wrote:

[snip]

Oyster definitely saves you money. Not only are Oyster fares much
lower than cash fares, but there is still day capping. However, the
rules are complex and the cap is now higher than before, as Oyster
is now valid on more NR routes. This means you're less likely to
benefit from it than in the past.

Thanks, that makes sense. I guess the peak fare capping was triggered
each day by us travelling after 4 pm. Well, who doesn't? :-) That
daily cap for us was £7.20.

No, the peak fare capping is triggered if you travel before 9:30 (or
such trips are left out of the off-peak cap).

Correct - however doing just a single z1 Tube journey before 09:30
will mean that one is capped at the peak UKP7.20 rate for z1&2 travel
- that is if one stays within z1&2 for the rest of the day of course
(or if one only ventures beyind on buses, which aren't zonal).

... because £5.60 plus £1.80 is more than £7.20 anyway, but a zone 2
peak journey wouldn't stop your off-peak travel being capped at £5.60,
resulting in a total of £6.90 no matter how much off-peak zone 1 - 2
travel you did.

Indeed.


One thing I am not clear on: now that there is no different peak fare
for buses, does a bus journey before 0930 get included in the off-peak
cap, or result in, say, £6.80?

A bus journey between 04:30 and 09:30 does *not* get included in any
off-peak cap, despite the fact the bus fare is the same price both
before and after 09:30. (Not just theorising, BTW - my personal
experience confirms this.)

AFAICS it's possible to have two caps in effect at the same time -
e.g. if you make four peak (pre-0930) bus journeys, leading to the bus
cap of £3.90, plus then make enough Tube and/or rail journeys to hit
the off-peak zones 1-6 cap of £7.50 - the total being £11.40, which is
less than the peak z1-6 cap of £14.80.
(Not confirmed by personal experience but I've long intended to try
this out - might be able to jimmy this experiment into a day's
travelling soon actually, if I can face the otherwise totally
pointless peak-time bus hopping that it would necessitate!)