Paul Corfield wrote:
On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 19:48:09 +0000 (UTC), David Jackman
wrote:


"Graham J" wrote in
:


Would there be any point in loading a one day Travelcard (say zones
1-4) onto an Oyster card on a day when I need it, or might I just as
well carry on buying paper tickets?

You can't actually load a one day travelcard onto an Oyster. Although
I'd find it useful myself I can see why they never bothered with it as
it is just as easy to hand you a paper ticket.

Is this one of the things that will change on Feb 27th? Or does capping
limit pre-pay deductions to the cost of a travelcard but not actually
create a travelcard (and thus not valid on national rail unless you could
use pre-pay for the journey you are making)?


Having seen some of the training materials today and looked through the
wide range of examples of how it will work your statement is broadly
correct. As many NR stations do not have pre-pay validity then it is
pretty pointless to opt for capping to One Day ticket prices when the
card cannot record your trips. People needing to use NR services are a
specific exception to the "best value" facility for capping and the
training literature advises the continued use of One Day Travelcards for
such customers.

It is stated in the TfL Board agenda papers for 9/2/05 that the DfT have
decreed that TfL zonal fares will apply to all NR journeys within the
zonal area by 2007. Implementation will be on a TOC by TOC basis
between now and 2007. Pre-pay will be part of the roll out of this
policy.

That's good news to me as a prepay user, and to potential rail users who
are put off by the complicated fare structure. Hopefully it will
encourage people to use rail services where they are perhaps currently
catching a bus to a Tube station just because the fare situation is so
odd - this must apply to a number of non-regular users in places like
Battersea which has good rail services but puts off single-journey users
by requiring you to pay separate rail and Tube fares to get to many
parts of central London.

I hope the lack of information on offical tfl sites does not mean the
details are still being worked out...

I think you can rest assured that a hell of a lot of detail has been
worked out.
(snipped useful info)

Thanks for all the info, Paul - it looks like the system is designed to
work as intelligently as possible. The only fall-down I can see is where
there are multiple possible routes you could take on your journey, but
this is the same issue as with current prepay anyway.

I never fully understood these borderline cases - are there generally
validators at interchange points on the "cheaper" route? I'm thinking of
routes such as White City - West Kensington which could be done via
Ealing Broadway (cheaper) or Notting Hill Gate (expensive). This will
become a lot more complicated when rail services are absorbed into the
prepay system, as many journeys will become possible avoiding Zone 1 by
using the North, West and East London Lines and the DLR.

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