Richard M Willis wrote:
"Mizter T" wrote in message You need not touch in or
out if you

However if you're going to
travel out-of-zone on the Underground - i.e. go beyond the zones that
are covered by your Travelcard - then you'll need to ensure you
touch-in at the beginning of your journey, and touch-out at the end.
This is because you are combining the Travelcard with the Oyster
Pre-Pay function (the Pre-Pay function provides the ticket extension
for your out-of-zone travels).

I wonder how this works for those situations where the "official"
routing for a journey involves zone 1, but you want to do it without
going through zone 1.

I had someone from Oyster explain to me the other day that Oyster
fares don't necessarily follow zonal conventions. She gave the example
of traveling from Saint John's Wood to South Ealing, saying that "The
System"
assumed such a journey would be made through zone 1, even if you managed
to do it without going through zone 1.

First and obvious point - most people would not choose to go that way.
I certainly wouldn't advise that as a route! But it's an interesting
academic question.

She said that if you have a Z2345 travelcard and you travel from SJW to SE
via
the Jub/Metro and Rayner's Lane lines, you need to pay for zone 1 even
though you
don't use it.

I think it's fair enough for the system designers to assume that with
this example the route taken would be via zone 1 on the Central Line. I
guess if you did want to go via Rayner's Lane then you can ensure you
don't pay for zone 1 by exiting and re-entering the station via the
gates - thus ensuring the system knows what you're doing.


This seems to throw up a contradiction:
a) if you have a Z2345 TC, you don't have to touch in/out so if you go that
route you have a valid ticket all the way.
b) if you have a Z2345 TC and *do* touch in/out, Oyster will charge you
for a zone 1 journey which you don't have on your TC, so will take it out
of your PP balance.

In reply to (a) at St John's Wood you'd be forced to touch-in most of
the time as you'd have to go through the gates. If so, then exit and
re-enter at Rayner's Lane. If the gates are open, you could *not*
touch-in and continue to travel via Rayner's Lane legitimately.

In reply to (b) - that's because of the assumption built into the
system, which in the case of the example given is, as I've said
already, fair enough!


This doesn't seem right to me.
Can anyone else explain how zones and Oyster PP interact ? It seems as if
it hasn't been throught through properly.

I think the system has been thought through in a very detailed way, and
any assumptions it makes would be regarded as reasonable by most
people.

The potential complexity comes when Oyster Pre-Pay is implemented
London-wide on National Rail (NR). The possible issues here would be
similar to the above, where an A to B journey could go via C or D where
changing at D might be a slower but cheaper route than changing at C -
(similar to the 'route -not London' tickets that are already sold by
NR). The solution I guess would be to have Oyster readers at the
station that passengers must touch whilst they change trains. The
difficulty comes in trying to communicate this simply to passengers.