On Jan 23, 2:20*pm, wrote:
In article
,

(Mizter T) wrote:
The outboundary Day Travelcard will of course continue to exist - the
TOCs sell a ton of them.

At extraordinarily widely varying prices. I've been having a
(non-)correspondence with FCC. I asked them to explain why, when a
Cambridge to London Terminals Off Peak Day Return is £20 (or £13.20 with
railcard) and the Oxford to London Terminals Off Peak Day Return is also
£20 (or £13.20 with railcard), the Cambridge Day Travelcard is £26.50
(£17.50 with railcard, a £4.30 addon) while the Oxford one is only £2
(with railcard discount) more than the London Terminals fare.

All I got back from First was this waffle:

"I have passed your thoughts to our fares Manager, who has replied saying
that the Travelcard fare within the Travelcard Area (Zones 1-6) are set by
Transport for London in conjunction with all the Train Operators that
operate services within the Travelcard Area."

Obviously ********.

What the letter failed to go on and say was that 'out-boundary
Travelcard fares are set by TOCs on the basis of a commercial decision
as to how much they can get away with charging (versus their desire to
attract traffic)'. Of course there will be a certain amount of money
from each out-boundary Travelcard that has to go into the Travelcard
pot, for sharing out, but that only accounts for some of it.

Re your examples - FGW probably price the Oxford fares in the context
of the competing coach services to London, a factor that doesn't exist
at Cambridge (NXEA arguably provide a bit of 'competition', but most
pax go the fast way via KX and FCC).