Neil Williams wrote:
On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 10:16:48 -0000, "Solar Penguin"
wrote:


What's silly about that? In the present system, even if you just take a
*local* bus ride, just a couple of stops or so, you have to pay the same
as a journey the *whole length* of the bus route! Think how much money
you could save if you only paid for the short journey you actually
travel, instead of all those miles you don't!


I'd agree with that, but I think a more sensible arrangement (less
complex, and easier to understand, while fairer) would be to have a
few levels of fares defined either in terms of the Zones or in the way
some European systems do - by having a "short journey" ticket for
journeys involving no changes and up to a set number of stops in
addition to the full price ticket.


Face it, twenty years is *too* long. It's definitely time to get rid of
the zones by now. Long overdue in fact.


I disagree, and most European transport operations would also do so.


We should have a proper integrated fare structure, true. But it should
be based on point-to-point fares, not zones.

Face facts, the zones are just a con to make us pay for distances we
haven't travelled. snip


Do you know how the point-to-point fares system on, say, National Rail
works?

The answer is that it is based on a system of "key stations" for
longer-distance fares. Thus, a local station will have fares to
destinations within a limited radius of itself. It will then have key
stations from which it gains its longer-distance fares, which may
themselves have key stations from which they gain even longer-distance
fares. Often, there is no add-on fare for the additional distance
between the origin and the key station, or no discount for the
distance not travelled to the key station.

It would be a nightmare to manage a full set of separate fares to and
from every station on the National Rail system without doing this
unless we went to a kilometric system. There are arguments for this,
of course, but it too has its disadvantages.

Fare stages on buses have disadvantages as well - let's say there are
two bus routes from a city to a given estate or village, but one takes
a bit longer than another by going via a number of other estates. The
shorter journey is cheaper because there are fewer fare stages passed.
Why should the passenger be penalised for taking the longer route?
All most passengers want to do is travel from A to B as quickly as
feasible at their given departure/arrival time. The product being
sold is movement from A to B, not the actual bus ride, and traditional
fare stages are often incompatible with that.


Another example, you have a choice of fast Metropolitan Line trains or
slow Jubilee Line trains when travelling from Wembley Park to Baker
Street. Common sense says that the faster trains should be more
expensive.


Why?

In my mind, an integrated city transport system should involve modes
feeding modes with a single fare structure. The fare for a given
journey should be for the optimum journey, which in the case above is
the faster service. On a journey originating off LUL, that may
involve a combination of train, bus, tram and Tube.

"Encouraging" people to travel on slower services is only sensible
where the fast service is much more overcrowded than the slower one,
and it works both ways. Indeed, Virgin Trains used to have a cheaper
specific fare from Macclesfield to Manchester (they may still do) to
fill empty seats. This made it *cheaper* than the local service.

Indeed, I'd simplify it further to one fare set for all modes. A
single ticket (be it zonal or based on short/normal journey length)
would be valid by all modes for as many changes as required to
complete the single journey. To protect against fraud it could have a
time limit (say you must be on the last mode within 2 hours).

Separate bus and Tube fares only make sense in the context of wanting
to attract people off a crowded Tube, and even then (there is some
justification there) I find it ridiculous that one is effectively
penalised (unless using a one day bus pass or ODTC) for using
connections on buses or using a bus and a Tube. This is particularly
pertinent if there is no direct bus service between the start and end
of a given journey, because the passenger is being penalised because
TfL won't provide a direct bus, not for any fault of their own.

I believe TfL are planning a reduced fare for a combined bus + Tube
journey using prepay, but this could be a while off as they wait for
each new Oyster product to "embed" itself (initial prepay, then bus
prepay, then peak bus fares, and then probably capping).

A discounted "through" bus fare would be excellent but could be open to
abuse - if it were based on a reasonable time allowance (say, 45 mins
between touching in on the first bus and the second) then you could make
a short bus journey, get off and do something, and get back on the
return bus.

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London