View Single Post
  #22   Report Post  
Old June 18th 09, 08:56 PM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london
MIG MIG is offline
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Jun 2004
Posts: 3,154
Default Quality reporting on Oyster PAYG

On 18 June, 21:16, Mizter T wrote:
On Jun 18, 7:06*pm, MIG wrote:





On 18 June, 17:44, Mizter T wrote:


On Jun 18, 5:08*pm, Tom Barry wrote:


[snip]


The example I'd toss out would be Chiswick-Brentford (SWT), Chiswick
Park-Boston Manor (Tube) and Acton Main Line-Hanwell (FGW), all Z3-Z4
trips over broadly similar distances (2, 4 and 3 stops respectively). *I
know the first one is £2.10, the second is £1.10 and I'm pretty sure the
third is £1.10 as well, although I'm open to correction. *Can anyone
confirm; are the existing National Rail PAYG schemes all on the Tube
fare scale even when you aren't going between Tube stations?


[The £2.10 Chiswick-Brentford fare being the paper rail fare]


Yes - all the existing NR PAYG schemes are all on the LU farescale,
even if you don't go anywhere near an LU station. As I ponder above,
the question is whether they'll stay that way.


Would any interavailability agreement override that option?


Yes, I would think ticket interavailability trumps all else.

By the by, it's a bit of an uneven thing, this ticketing
interavailability stuff - for example the TOCs have to fall into line
and charge £4 single cash fares when there's interavailability with
LU. This already leads to some ambiguities - e.g. from White Hart
Lane, Bruce Grove and Norhumberland Park (all zone 3 stations), a
single rail fare to Liverpool Street is £3.10 (as per the zonally
priced NR farescale), and from Wood Street (zone 4) it costs £3.70 -
however from Seven Sisters, Tottenham Hale and Walthamstow Central
it's £4 as NXEA has to fall into line with LU's fares. Of course the
answer is simply to use Oyster PAYG from the latter three stations and
pay £270/peak or £2.20/off-peak.

And, just to make things more interesting, the Off-peak Day Return
(aka CDR) fare from Seven Sisters, Tottenham Hale and Walthamstow
Central is £4.10 - why? Because this is the fare for a CDR from zone 3
to zone 1 according to the pan-London NR farescale! So paper fares
from these stations actually utilise both farescales. (This is all
according to NRE.)


I guess all these have a single ticket office, which can't issue a
single less than £4 for the journey because they can't tell which way
you'd go.

It doesn't mean that NR cash fares will necessarily go up at non-
interchange stations when PAYG is introduced, but it's a worrying
thought that the cash fare might go up to the NR zone 1 - 6 fare.


However, for reasons unknown, there are no return fares showing for
Stratford to Liverpool Street - which on interavailability terms I
would have thought is basically the same as the three Tottenham/
Walthamstow way stations. Perhaps the crucial difference is simply
that the Central line directly links Stratford to Liverpool Street
too, whereas one wouldn't use the Tube to get from the Tottenham/
Walthamstow stations to Liverpool Street.


I just tried Barking to West Ham, and it offered £3.20 single and
£6.40 return (same day), so instead of confirming what happens where
the route is shared, it come up with something completely different.
Oh well.


Another thought: does any current PAYG acceptance incorporate an
interavailability agreement, but future PAYG maybe being negotiated in
a different way?


Errr... maybe! (A translation of which is "search me, I dunno!")- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -