((delurks again))

On 12 Nov, 17:19, Mizter T wrote:

The preferable situation would be for all lines in London to accept
Oyster PAYG, and then all passengers could benefit from daily price
capping (which is in a way akin to a Day Travelcard except you don't
have to plan ahead before you start travelling that day).

Of course there would still be the tricky issue of which route the
Oyster system presumed you had taken, regardless of what actual route
you did in fact take.

And that tricky issue will get trickier and trickier with every new
line that accepts PAYG. You've already mentioned the Stratford/
Richmond problem that comes from adding PAYG on the NLL. There are
probably others that we haven't spotted yet. (e.g. West Brompton?
And what happens when Shepherds Bush WLL finally opens?)

TfL were able to get away with implementing the current PAYG on the
Underground/DLR because the network was small enough that it didn't
throw up too many anomalies. As the system expands, more and more
exceptions have to be specifically identified and programmed into the
system.

I've said this before, and no-one beleived me, but the best way to
keep things simple is by abandoning the idea of all route-based fares
(including zones that you pass through on route). Instead fares could
be based on the straight-line, as-the-crow-flies distance between the
journey's start and end points, no matter what route is taken. This
would solve all the zone-based and route-based anomalies, even the
ones that currently exist with paper tickets.