Paul Corfield wrote:
On Sun, 29 Oct 2006 16:08:02 GMT, David of Broadway
wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:
I do not understand why you see the rules of using Oyster as being a
punishment. It's simple enough - touch in and touch out. There have to
be incentives to make sure that people do these simple tasks otherwise
we might as well have free travel everywhere.
Touch in and touch out within an unspecified time period (and if you
exceed that unspecified time period, you're subject to an £8 penalty).
And maybe at some interchange points too, but nobody seems to know for
sure (e.g., Bank).

Sorry but you'll have to explain that one to me.

There's a time limit associated with each trip. (I assume, although I
don't know for sure, that the time limit depends on the actual trip.)
If you exceed the time limit, the Oyster system will think you forgot to
touch out on one trip and forgot to touch in on another. That will cost
you £8.

What I don't understand is why the presumption is that PAYG users are
trying to cheat the system while TravelCard holders are traveling within
their zones. (If a dishonest TravelCard holder travels outside his
zones and exits the system at a station without gates, what possible
reason would he have to touch out? Why is nobody concerned with his
fare evasion? On the flip side, if the TravelCard holder is granted the
benefit of the doubt, why not treat the PAYG user with the same courtesy?)

I don't think it is how you describe it. I am not privy to the analysis
or design making process but I would assume that PAYG users have
displayed more fraudulent behaviour than travelcard holders. There is
certainly more likelihood that fares would not be correctly deducted for
sole PAYG trips than for extension trips beyond Travelcard validity.

That's probably a reasonable assumption. But the fact remains that,
with the new penalty, PAYG users are presumed to be dishonest while
Travelcard users are presumed to be honest.

It seems like the goal is to penalize infrequent riders, especially
tourists. Tourists generally don't stay in town long enough for a
TravelCard to be worthwhile. Now, when they get lost in the system and
take a bit longer than the system expects to reach their destination,
and they get hit with an £8 penalty, they can't get it eliminated at the
ticket window -- no, they have to call the Oyster helpdesk and then jump
through whatever hoops the helpdesk imposes to collect a refund.

Sorry but I think that is extreme cynicism. I may for TfL but I cannot
conceive of anyone designing a policy on the basis you describe. There
are many tourists for whom a Travelcard may well be worthwhile - it's
been recommended on this group enough times. The alternative is more
likely to be one day travelcards giving NR validity too which can be
useful for certain tourist destinations.

I've used Travelcards as a tourist myself. But a tourist who's in town
for only a few days will certainly not find one worthwhile, and even a
tourist who's in town for a week might be better off with PAYG, since
weekly Travelcards are priced to be competitive with peak hour fares,
when most tourists probably aren't traveling yet.

(I'm ignoring day Travelcards, which, if I understand correctly, will be
phased out once Oyster deployment is complete.)

I would also point out that I have yet to see a system where if tourists
participate in the standard ticketing product that they have any
preferential rights over residents in terms of refunds or correction of
problems. If they buy the overpriced rip off tourist ticket they might
get a quick refund if they surrender their ticket but I imagine most
tourists are not organised to do this before they leave their
destination and thus remaining value and deposit paid sit with the
operator.

Nobody's asking for preferential treatment for tourists. But if a
particular ticketing option is popular among tourists, it should be
designed to be problem-resistant, and when a problem does crop up, it
should be easy to resolve it.

My HK Octopus card failed on my penultimate trip when I was last in HK.
When I tried to get it read it could not be interrogated. I was told it
would take a week to organise the refund which was a tad inconvenient as
I was due to head off to the airport within 45 minutes! Thankfully the
supervisor was called and some discretion was exercised where I was
given a refund but it was quite clear that they were not very
comfortable with doing it. I can well understand why as they would not
wish to have a rule whereby cards could be surrendered and refunded on
the basis of a guess as to the remaining value from the customer.

Now imagine a similar scenario. Joe Tourist checks out of his hotel
room and walks to his friendly Piccadilly line station, where he plans
to board the train to Heathrow. As he tries to touch in, he discovers,
to his horror, that he was fined £4 (or £8!) on his last trip due to
malfunctioning gates. The ticket agent cannot help him. What does he do?

And to add insult to injury, the penalty was (supposedly) set at £4 to
reflect the maximum possible fare, yet the penalty doesn't count towards
a Z1-6 cap. If we're going to assume that somebody who forgot to touch
out might have traveled to the opposite end of the Underground map, we
could at least give him credit for that trip towards his daily cap.

I'm sorry but the whole point of this exercise is to get people to
comply with the system's rules.

I thought the point was to make it more difficult to evade the fare.
(After all, Travelcard users aren't expected to comply with those same
exact rules.) If I've already hit the Z1-6 cap, then I can't possibly
be evading a fare unless I venture into lettered territory. For all
intents and purposes, I'm now using a Z1-6 Travelcard.

If the Oyster readers at the exit gateline are not working, I've
complied with the system's rules, yet I'm charged a £4 penalty on top of
whatever cap I've hit.

If the system times out because the Northern line dies and it takes me
twice as long as it normally would to reach my destination or because I
get lost transferring at Green Park or because I take the Circle line in
the wrong direction, I've complied with the system's rules, yet I'm
charged a £8 (double) penalty on top of whatever cap I've hit.

And then it's up to me to jump through hoops to try to recover my money.

It seems from the adverse comments on this group that it was a gross
error by TfL / LU to launch PAYG on the basis of minimum fare deduction
rather than have the proposed system. People have got far too used to an
easy life and wish to have it preserved.

Why do I get the strong feeling that the people implementing this system
don't regularly use PAYG themselves?

Why should PAYG users have a harder life than Travelcard users?

This August, when I was in London for three weeks, I managed to pick up
two unresolved journeys. And last July, when I was in London for a week
and a half, I got two in one trip (see my first paragraph above). I
suspect that a large majority of unresolved journeys are not the result
of attempted fraud and are not the result of forgetting to touch in or
touch out.

But the new, more stringent system is still wide open to fraud.

If you say so. I accept the system design is a compromise (see below)
but something has to be done to ensure the majority comply with the
rules of the system.

Surely the vast majority comply with the rules already!

If you want to seriously reduce fraud, install gates at the stations
that don't have them.

Sorry but this was looked at very early on. It is not just gating
stations at their periphery but also installing gates on every open
interchange between LU and NR lines. Given the safety rules that apply
to monitoring and control of gatelines it is a non starter on that
basis. In addition there is the nonsense of making what is a simple
interchange walk a potential nightmare for passengers. Further there are
the issues about management of passenger flows and congestion. Then
there is creating the impression that the LU network is a "prison" which
I personally do not think is desirable. Finally there is the utterly
inordinate cost associated with trying to ensure validation in physical
environments that cannot practically be adapted to allow such.

I realize that there are practical difficulties. In my opinion, that's
a choice that needs to be made: find some way to fully gate the entire
system or live with the reality that some people will occasionally evade
the fare. Penalizing large numbers of people for every system hiccup is
not the answer.

Gates
down the middle of the island platforms at Stratford between NR and the
Central Line - err I think not.

Why not? That's exactly what you'll find at Newark Penn Station, where
the track that carries PATH trains (which operate on a fully gated
system) is in between tracks that carry NJ Transit trains (which don't
have gates). And it's a /very/ busy transfer point.

The Stored Value equipped networks in the Far East (Singapore and HK)
have the huge advantage of having designed their networks to be separate
and fully gated from day one. London is trying something not done
anywhere else - SVT that *demands* entry and exit validation to work
properly but without a fully gated network. That requires other
measures to incentivise validation. The most noticeable and powerful
incentive is without doubt financial - I can't see what else can be done
to get people to play by the required rules.

Fine. So impose it on everybody.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA