In message , at 15:35:47 on Thu, 7 Aug
2014, Michael R N Dolbear remarked:
My theory then, which I'm beginning to think is too simplistic, would
require some kind of new coding to cope with any additional stations,
and it's odd that National Rail acceptance on all the lines other than
the ones above stops dead at exactly the edge of Z6, when some of the
currently proposed extensions would make a lot of sense (eg extending
one stop to Epsom).

Stops dead because they moved Z6 (NR only) to suit.

So Hampton Court, Tattenham Corner and others

Why not also Brentwood, or did they want to differentiate it from
Shenfield.
--
Roland Perry

So Hampton Court, Tattenham Corner and others



Why not also Brentwood, or did they want to differentiate it from

Shenfield.



--

Roland Perry

The difference with Hampton Court and Tattenham Corner is that they are dead-end branches.

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

I have no proof but I get a "vibe" that the removal of Norman Baker
from the DfT has eased the "ITSO everywhere but no more Oyster"
stance. He was closely associated with the national smartcard concept
and I do wonder if he just stopped anything that might dilute the
adoption of ITSO. When Baroness Kramer moved across to Transport there
seemed to be a change because she was soon saying nice things about
Oyster possibly being accepted at Gatwick Airport. All crazy
speculation on my part but sometimes it is down to having the right
people in power to get things done.

Hmm. I know Norman Baker and Susan Kramer. I can see some sense in that,
based on how they might react to civil service pressure rather than their
own views as such. I'll do some digging.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Thu, 07 Aug 2014 13:52:10 -0500,
wrote:

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

I have no proof but I get a "vibe" that the removal of Norman Baker
from the DfT has eased the "ITSO everywhere but no more Oyster"
stance. He was closely associated with the national smartcard concept
and I do wonder if he just stopped anything that might dilute the
adoption of ITSO. When Baroness Kramer moved across to Transport there
seemed to be a change because she was soon saying nice things about
Oyster possibly being accepted at Gatwick Airport. All crazy
speculation on my part but sometimes it is down to having the right
people in power to get things done.

Hmm. I know Norman Baker and Susan Kramer. I can see some sense in
that, based on how they might react to civil service pressure rather
than their own views as such. I'll do some digging.

You don't *have* to go digging just on the basis of my wild guesses!

Might be interesting to know though. ;-)

That's what I thought. Norman is a pretty straight guy.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , at 15:43:27 on
Thu, 7 Aug 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:

Hang on a minute. To get any station added into oyster PAYG and / or
season ticket acceptance you need compatible equipment at the station,
a means to get data to and from that location,

That's been done 600 times already, so we have to assume the mechanical
aspects are well understood.

And of course every installation works perfectly, there are no site or
system or comms issues etc etc. You know as well as I do that all
sorts of issues can arise in the real world.

I'm sure they can be overcome. But if there's not a suitable "slot" in
the fares matrix to enable charging, it'll all have been a waste of
time.

for the relevant central systems to recognise the location and assets
there, for fares and season ticket validities to be held in the
relevant fares database and for the card itself to be capable to
accepting whatever description is used for the station and its related
fares and validities.

That's the part I'm concentrating on. Currently we have a 600x600 matrix
of fares!!

Including all the charging variants/discounts or just the combinations
of origins and destinations?

Just the origins and destinations. Each combination then has an entry
like:
CashNL £4.70 At any time.NLOysterNL £3.20 Monday to Friday from
0630 to 0930 and from 1600 to 1900.NL£2.70 At all other times
including public holidays.

And other discounts would be need to be calculated in addition to that.

Oh and you need the TfL and NR websites to be able to
cope with whatever fares and season ticket prices you set. I guess RSP
and its systems may also be lurking somewhere in this - depending on
how South Eastern's Oyster set up is configured.

If an Oyster card can cope when swiped, I'm sure the websites can be
adjusted adjusted too.

There have been enough woes so far with sites not working, NR fares
not really being able to cope with Oyster charges alongside cash fares
etc. I'm not convinced that the NR website presents Oyster and cash
fares properly especially when you add in routes requiring pink
validator activation.

If we add Shenfield, Chesham and Broxbourne as one-station "virtual
zones" that brings the total to the 'limit of fifteen' mentioned last
year. [And incidentally scupper the four extra stations out to Hertford
East].

My theory then, which I'm beginning to think is too simplistic, would
require some kind of new coding to cope with any additional stations,
and it's odd that National Rail acceptance on all the lines other than
the ones above stops dead at exactly the edge of Z6, when some of the
currently proposed extensions would make a lot of sense (eg extending
one stop to Epsom).

It might make sense to you but I doubt it would to the TOCs involved.

AIUI the Epsom one does make sense to TSGN (if not SWT) because they've
announced they'll be covering it, and looking at the map it ties
together two "flapping ends".

I think some of the Southern zone moves were facilitated because TfL
was prepared to "increment" the Southern franchise and this was done
as part of the tendering process. This hasn't been possible for South
Eastern or SWT and I wonder if SWT would even be interested.
Stagecoach paid a long way over other bidders to retain SWT so I doubt
there is much financial largesse. I expect they'd take a tough stance
over revenue compensation for perceived loss of fare and season ticket
income by moving a stop like Epsom into the zones.

Epsom wouldn't be moving into the zones, it'd be outside, like
Brentwood. On the other hand they *did* move the two Ewell stations into
Z6 at some point.

One fly in the ointment though is the Overground to Watford Junction,
where there have been "Special fares" to Watford Junction (a cludge to
get round virtual Zone 16?) but now that Oyster is accepted at
Carpenders Park, Bushy and Watford High Street then there has to be some
scheme already in place for "19 zones".

Or perhaps not a cludge but a recognition that London Midland price
Watford Junction fares and that they were not prepared to put on a
TfL-esque basis because of the impact of fares right throughout their
franchise area and for other TOCs? I suspect the possible revenue
compensation bill was too much for TfL.

Again, you are looking at what the fare might be for such an "outside
the zones" station, which is a matter for haggling. I'm looking to see
if there's a slot in the fares matrix to put that number.

The next phase of extensions (proposed and actual) will require being
able to recognise and do the sums for these stations outside Z6:

Dartford
Epsom
Cuffley, Bayford, Hertford North
Radlett, St Albans, Harpenden, Luton Airport Parkway (&Luton?)
Merstham, Redhill, Earleswood, Salfords, Horley, Gatwick
Potters Bar, Brookmans Park, Welham Green, Hatfield, Welwyn Garden City

[1] Later... Apparently Greater Anglia are committed to several, viz:
Theobalds Grove, Waltham Cross, Cheshunt (inside the exiting zones)
Brentwood, Shenfield (already delivered, outside the zones) plus
Broxbourne, Rye House, St Margarets, Ware and Hertford East (outside
the zones).

The latter 4 stations you mention to Hertford East are not covered by
Oyster. It doesn't reach beyond Broxbourne although the original
intent was that it would.

I wonder why DfT changed their mind? Insufficient demand or some
technical issue. If the latter, and it's now been resolved, perhaps that
extension will be revived.

I believe the reason was that the stations in Hertford are "grouped"
and FCC price Hertford. Therefore they needed to agree and needed DfT
agreement to accept Oyster at Hertford North if AGA offered it at
Hertford East. FCC were said to have been keen on extending Oyster
but the DfT said "no". Abellio could not act independently. This
came from some "informed comment" on another blog when the fares
revision a couple of years ago extended Oyster on Greater Anglia.

We do have the prospect, technical issues aside, that if the DfT agree
with TSGN to extend Oyster as indicated that Abellio would be able to
seek agreement to extend to Hertford East. In fact given the argument
I set out above it would be essential, because of the pricing and
interavailability rules, for Abellio to extend Oyster if TSGN do it.
We'll see what happens.

Govia Thameslink Railway (aka TSGN) are saying they'll extend Oyster
"as far as Epsom, Gatwick Airport, Luton Airport, Welwyn Garden City
and Hertford North" which if we count intermediary stations is quite
a few.

We must and see if this materialises if DfT say yes.

Is it part of the franchise commitment, or something Govia have cooked
up independently? I might have expected them to put more effort into
extending their "the Key" north of the river instead.

The Key will be extended to the entire franchise anyway so that meets
the DfT's "ITSO everywhere" requirement in every franchise. I can't
believe the Oyster thing has been publicised without at least a nod
from the DfT that it was a reasonable proposition.

I agree.

If you're going to put in Smartcard functionality there's probably
negligible cost in putting in multi card functionality at the start
than having to retrofit it later.

As long as you've done whatever needed to be done (assuming something
did need to be done) to extend Oyster beyond the "15 zones plus Watford
Junction".

I think Govia are smart enough to know that Oyster is a well known and
understood product and that accepting it in the wider "metro" area of
their franchise will do them no harm. In fact it's highly likely to
bring in plenty of extra revenue which the DfT won't be upset about
either given it's a management contract.

I have no proof but I get a "vibe" that the removal of Norman Baker
from the DfT has eased the "ITSO everywhere but no more Oyster"
stance. He was closely associated with the national smartcard concept
and I do wonder if he just stopped anything that might dilute the
adoption of ITSO. When Baroness Kramer moved across to Transport there
seemed to be a change because she was soon saying nice things about
Oyster possibly being accepted at Gatwick Airport. All crazy
speculation on my part but sometimes it is down to having the right
people in power to get things done.

There are some extensions which have a certain universal appeal to
passengers and hence politicians. Extending Oyster to Gatwick and Luton
airports for example. But as well as the issues we've both been raising
an extension to Luton Airport would probably require EMT accepting
Oyster as well, upgrading the gates at St Pancras and giving the
grippers the tools to check Oyster cards on the train. It may be that
the officials are giving the new minister some time to discover all this
for herself.

ps When looking at numerous documents earlier this week, it seems to be
accepted that Oyster won't be extended to Stansted in the foreseeable
future, even though that's probably an "obvious" place too.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at
08:29:39 on Thu, 7 Aug 2014, Matthew Dickinson
remarked:
So Hampton Court, Tattenham Corner and others



Why not also Brentwood, or did they want to differentiate it from

Shenfield.


The difference with Hampton Court and Tattenham Corner is that they are dead-end branches.

Which was probably the initial appeal of Hertford East as well.

Shenfield, while not being a dead-end, is very much the "edge of London"
(in a way that nether Harold Wood or Brentwood are) and a lot of trains
terminate there (6tph), also in future with Crossrail.
--
Roland Perry

On Thu, 07 Aug 2014 15:43:27 +0100, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Thu, 7 Aug 2014 09:29:56 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

That's been done 600 times already, so we have to assume the mechanical
aspects are well understood.

And of course every installation works perfectly, there are no site or
system or comms issues etc etc. You know as well as I do that all sorts
of issues can arise in the real world.

I doubt that after 600 installations over the Greater London area there's
any real potential for a new "not already been solved somewhere once"
issue to arise. The worst cases might involve running new copper or fibre
for a comms line, or needing to increase the capacity of the electricity
feed to the station, but these are everyday occurrences in the
telecommunications and electricity supply world. The requirements from
the physical and connectivity side are fairly straight forwards:

- A suitable point between the ticket office and the platform for
barriers (or possibly just a touch in / out pillar?)
- Sufficient electrical and comms links
- Space for any supporting equipment in a suitable equipment room

Perhaps a "2 platforms with bus shelters and a footbridge halt" might
need a new lineside cabinet style "equipment room" installed, but that's
probably about the limit of exceptional circumstances in such
installations.

--
Denis McMahon,

In message , at 10:43:48 on Fri, 8 Aug 2014,
Denis McMahon remarked:

Perhaps a "2 platforms with bus shelters and a footbridge halt" might
need a new lineside cabinet style "equipment room" installed, but that's
probably about the limit of exceptional circumstances in such
installations.

Here's a typical such station, and they manage to have an online TVM
(but it's not suitable for barriers at all). http://goo.gl/maps/5Dkw0
--
Roland Perry

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message ,
at 08:29:39 on Thu, 7 Aug 2014, Matthew Dickinson
remarked:
So Hampton Court, Tattenham Corner and others

Why not also Brentwood, or did they want to differentiate it from

Shenfield.

The difference with Hampton Court and Tattenham Corner is that they
are dead-end branches.

Which was probably the initial appeal of Hertford East as well.

Shenfield, while not being a dead-end, is very much the "edge of
London" (in a way that nether Harold Wood or Brentwood are) and a lot
of trains terminate there (6tph), also in future with Crossrail.

You probably know that area a lot better than me but I've never understood
why Shenfield has always been the limit of GE Main Line suburban services.
Why not Chelmsford, for example?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at 10:43:48 on Fri, 8 Aug
2014, Denis McMahon remarked:

Perhaps a "2 platforms with bus shelters and a footbridge halt" might
need a new lineside cabinet style "equipment room" installed, but that's
probably about the limit of exceptional circumstances in such
installations.

Here's a typical such station, and they manage to have an online TVM
(but it's not suitable for barriers at all). http://goo.gl/maps/5Dkw0

2 TVMs by the look of it. I'm sure barriers could be installed if
sufficiently desired, given the layout.

--
Colin Rosenstiel