On Feb 7, 4:30*pm, Neil Williams wrote:
On Feb 7, 4:56*pm, amogles wrote:

In a German style Tarifverbund, doubling back is normally allowed, as
the validity of the ticket is zone and time dependent but route
independent.

Indeed. *Essentially a "single ticket" in many such cases (not
Hamburg, interestingly, where it is genuinely a single ticket in the
manner of a zonal single Tube ticket) is the same as a day ticket, but
validity is limited to an hour or two.

To prevent silly situations, "you can board any bus within an hour of
first touching in on your first one" or similar is the easiest.

Neil

Having read through the "Vision," there really is nothing new in there
- its basically a more mainstream-friendly summary of TfL's HLOS2
response combined with the NERA report into Franchise Devolution that
TfL commissioned last March. Alongside that there's some fuzzy talk
about making sweeping changes to ticketing and fares without any real
acceptance of how much of a hot potato that'll be (and the whole
Oyster/ITSO battle is neatly dodged).

I'm not saying that's a bad thing certainly - just that this largely
reiterates a position that TfL have been pushing the DfT on for some
time, but doesn't address the key problem - which is how the GLA
actually goes about getting the DfT to accept devolution in the first
place. That's potentially a tough fight with lots of pouring over
specs and details, and the current mayoral administration has hardly
demonstrated a desire to take on that side of things so far. Boris is
an "idea's man" and not really into (to corrupt a Dr Who phrase) the
"Wibbley Wobbly Liney-winey" stuff.

That said, I do think 2012 is going to be the year of the big DfT/TfL
squabble over authority in the south east - both over Franchises and
Smartcard technology. Stuff like this Vision and the DfT's rejection
of the FCC/TfL deal to take Oyster out further into the sticks are
just the start.