On Mar 24, 2:10 pm, wrote:
On 24 Mar, 13:52, "Paul Scott" wrote:



I noticed in one of last night's London freesheets that Ken is now taking a
different tack after his recent let off from a FGW penalty fare last week,
don't think I've missed a thread on it...

He appeared to be trying to turn things round into the usual TOC bashing
exercise, along the lines of 'I tried to get FGW to install barriers etc
years ago etc'. But on the route in question FGW DO accept PAYG, but only
as far as West Drayton, and clearly Slough is outside the 'zones'.

Now whenever the remaining TOCs [1] start accepting Oyster PAYG, there will
always be edge cases such as Slough, and all those other dormitory towns
that are just outside the zones, which are outside TfL's current ambit.

So what is the answer? In the expectation that Ken will eventually be able
to keep the issue alive by regularly attempting to make PAYG journeys to
places like Windsor, Weybridge, Epsom etc etc?

Whatever happens there will have to be cut off points somewhere, and as we
have discussed before, an ever expanding orbital zone system centred on
London isn't right for local journeys across the whole country, is it...

I think the correct approach is to have PAYG as far as the terminal
point on the inner suburban 'all stations' services. So far, Watford
Junction meets that criterion and spots like Slough, St. Albans,
Welwyn Garden City, Hertford (maybe both ways), Shenfield, Grays,
Dartford, Sevenoaks, Windsor (maybe both ways again) might be a good
idea. Of course, on some routes, there are no inner-suburban only
services. On some routes, such as Southern, the inner suburban
services already only run in the zones and so nothing would need to be
done.

I saw the same piece - think it was the London Lite.

Reading between the lines I got the impression that Ken's point was
his normal one - that FGW et al enjoy collecting penalty fares (and
excess ticketing values) from travellers far too much to reform their
ticketing practices without a serious kick up the arse.

Although why he felt that a letter to the Daily Mail (which appears to
be the original source) was a good way of getting this across is
beyond me. They're hardly his biggest fans.