Paul Corfield wrote in
:


But capping will work against the LT Card price and not One Day
Travelcards. It cannot work to ODTC prices and validity because there
would have to be validators / gates at every National Rail station in
the zonal area. These don't exist so therefore if you lived in an area
exclusively served by NR trains you would have no way in which to
register your trips and therefore contribute to your daily total of
rides that would be capped at the One Day Travelcard price.

It took me a long time to "click" that the LT Card price would be
trigger for the daily cap and not the One Day Travelcard.


I hope this isn't right! If you are going to have capping it has to work
properly - and include converting to a one day bus pass, off-peak
travelcard, etc etc. The One Day LT Card (only cost effective for tube
only users starting a tube journey before 09:30 from Zones 5 or 6 through
to zone 1 who don't have a period travelcard) must be one of the less
frequently used tickets!


If however, the one day travelcard (or hatting, or whatever you called
it, no, it wasn't so posh - capping, yes, that's it) mechanism were in
place, after a few people had entered, you're all now effectively
sharing a one day travelcard for the rest of the day. Or is there some
restriction on multiple entries that might have to swing into place
when this bonneting scheme occurs?

You cannot transfer a One Day Travelcard between users. Neither can you
transfer an Oyster card that has both Travelcard and Pre-Pay validity
on it. Therefore your example is not permitted - each traveller would
have to have an individual card.

A pre-pay only card is transferrable (but obviously not for use on the same
journey). Somebody can use the card for a trip in the morning and somebody
else (presumably) in the same household in the afternoon. When capping
starts this becomes a legitimately transferrable one day travelcard. The
benefit for TfL is that people will not drop it outside the station at the
end of their journey!

David

On Sun, 8 Feb 2004 15:47:01 -0000, "Anon"
wrote:

If I understand you right. When capping comes in it will work on the price
stucture for peak time travelcards and LT cards not off peak travelcards.

If this is correct most customers will still be better off with a paper
tickets.

When do you think capping will work at OPTC prices

Presumably when/if all the TOCs that participate in the Travelcard
scheme have validators/gatelines installed at all their stations.

Which will most likely be...erm...never, given the number of unstaffed
stations and stations only staffed part-time in the London area, which
surely defeats the point of Penalty Fares...

Cya,

Barry

--
Barry Salter, barry at southie dot me dot uk
Read uk.* newsgroups? Read uk.net.news.announce!

DISCLAIMER: The above comments do not necessarily represent the
views of my employers.

"Barry Salter" wrote in message
...

given the number of unstaffed
stations and stations only staffed part-time in the London area, which
surely defeats the point of Penalty Fares...

Why? Tickets won't get checked every day but if a TOC sends a group of
ticket inspectors to the station randomly then you catch people who haven't
a ticket and encourage them to get one in future.

Dave.

On Sun, 8 Feb 2004, Paul Corfield wrote:

But capping will work against the LT Card price and not One Day
Travelcards. It cannot work to ODTC prices and validity because there
would have to be validators / gates at every National Rail station in
the zonal area. These don't exist so therefore if you lived in an area
exclusively served by NR trains you would have no way in which to
register your trips and therefore contribute to your daily total of
rides that would be capped at the One Day Travelcard price.

Correct. However, it would work fine if you only used tubes. Since this
will result in people paying more than they really should, the error is in
favour of TfL, not passengers, and so it shouldn't stop the rollout.


tom

--
Michael Jackson had that idea back in the 80s. There was even a ride at Disneyland.

Tom Anderson wrote:

On Sun, 8 Feb 2004, Paul Corfield wrote:

But capping will work against the LT Card price and not One Day
Travelcards. It cannot work to ODTC prices and validity because there
would have to be validators / gates at every National Rail station in
the zonal area. These don't exist so therefore if you lived in an area
exclusively served by NR trains you would have no way in which to
register your trips and therefore contribute to your daily total of
rides that would be capped at the One Day Travelcard price.

Correct. However, it would work fine if you only used tubes. Since this
will result in people paying more than they really should, the error is in
favour of TfL, not passengers, and so it shouldn't stop the rollout.

How, in the aforementioned situations, would you use a pre-pay anyway, for a
single journey?
--
Ian Tindale

On Sun, 8 Feb 2004 20:48:50 +0000 (UTC), David Jackman
wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote in
:


But capping will work against the LT Card price and not One Day
Travelcards.

I hope this isn't right! If you are going to have capping it has to work
properly - and include converting to a one day bus pass, off-peak
travelcard, etc etc. The One Day LT Card (only cost effective for tube
only users starting a tube journey before 09:30 from Zones 5 or 6 through
to zone 1 who don't have a period travelcard) must be one of the less
frequently used tickets!

I think you will find it is right. I was involved in a long and
detailed discussion on another group and I got myself tied up in all
sorts of logical knots trying to work out how someone from Bromley North
or South Croydon or Norbiton (all ungated NR Stns) would record their NR
trips on their Oyster Card to allow capping to work in the context of
replicating One Day Travelcard validity. I eventually concluded that

(a) someone at TfL has got the spec wrong because NR stations aren't
being equipped with some form of pre-pay validation or
(b) that the current scheme cannot and will not work on the vast
majority of NR lines in London because there is no validation.

The next step back in validity terms is the LT Card because it covers
all TfL direct services plus those limited stretches of interavailable
NR Lines. This therefore helps to explain the push by TfL to expand the
number and range of interavailable NR services (linked partly to the
Overground Network branding).

Although there has not been an official announcement I met someone from
Prestige who confirmed that the LT card pricing and validity would be
used for capping purposes.

You cannot transfer a One Day Travelcard between users. Neither can you
transfer an Oyster card that has both Travelcard and Pre-Pay validity
on it. Therefore your example is not permitted - each traveller would
have to have an individual card.

A pre-pay only card is transferrable (but obviously not for use on the same
journey). Somebody can use the card for a trip in the morning and somebody
else (presumably) in the same household in the afternoon. When capping
starts this becomes a legitimately transferrable one day travelcard. The
benefit for TfL is that people will not drop it outside the station at the
end of their journey!

While I see the benefit in hopefully limiting reselling to touts (who
I'd quite like to see rendered incapable of touting anything for the
remainder of their lives) I think there could be some very interesting
conditions of carriage issues over such a ticket. The TOCs may also have
some things to say about it too! Perhaps why it (capping) is limited to
TfL services in the main?


--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

On Sun, 8 Feb 2004 15:47:01 -0000, "Anon"
wrote:

If I understand you right. When capping comes in it will work on the price
stucture for peak time travelcards and LT cards not off peak travelcards.

It will not work for peak time travelcards either - to cap at Travelcard
prices you have to be able to record all forms of Travelcard valid
travel. Hence you are back to the issue about almost all NR journeys not
being recorded and not being valid for Pre-Pay travel.

The ticket that aligns to the planned Pre Pay validity is the LT Card.

If this is correct most customers will still be better off with a paper
tickets.

Yes I think that is my conclusion too.

When do you think capping will work at OPTC prices

I have no idea on the timing. As I have said before it is clear that the
TfL business plan has as an option an extension of pre-pay facilities
and validity to the whole London rail network. That is not without some
interesting practical problems to solve but if it was to happen then
capping at ODTC prices would become feasible.

In the meantime the policy appears to be to negotiate with individual
TOCs and extend pre-pay validity where possible line by line. Therefore
the LT / NR interavailability rules expand at the same time.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

TC wrote in message

Personally I fail to see why we cannot just walk up to a ticket machine
to customize the properties of the card - so that the first time each
day we use the ticket, the amount for our chosen travelcard is taken off
and the ticket converted there and then for the rest of the day.

Then why not just buy a ticket? The advantage of oyster is supposed
to be that you don't have to go to ticket machines or ticket offices
every day.

Capping is probably going to be full of bugs when it first rolls out,
and is bound to have quirks for years on end. Personally I'd like to be
able to specify the ticket before I travel, without having to worry if
it is going to overcharge me - but still have the convenience of not
having to rip the oyster out of the wallet, or standing in an endless
queue at the station.

Rather like congestion charging Oyster is a brave attempt (don't get
me wrong - I'm using it and wish it success) to introduce an IT based
charging system at a time when the 'people tracking' technology isn't
quite good enough to deliver the sophistication ideally needed.

In time there is no reason in principle why the two systems could not
be merged although, not being an IT person, I would not seek to guess
the complexity. However, use might be made of a GPS based detection
system, as proposed for the national congestion-charging proposals.
If this system is going to be fitted to all road vehicles then why not
the railways too? A real personal 'Travel Card' could then detect
whether you're travelling on a train, bus, tube or car and then bill
the appropriate fare (including price caps) or congestion charge to
your bank account. Post-pay not pre-pay, a credit account just like
gas/phone etc debited once a month or whatever the customer prefers.

Civil liberties need not be an issue - unregistered pre-pay cards
could still be available to those who wish to travel incognito, might
just cost a bit more. Or, if you're a bona-fide criminal, you could
just steal one.

Paul Corfield wrote:

The ticket that aligns to the planned Pre Pay validity is the LT Card.


Maybe then, the complex legacy ticket structure is the thing that needs
modifying to match the Oysterability of the system (resisting the
temptation to use said revision to render it better value for the train
organisations rather than the consumer). Being that all of my journeys
start and end at a DLR station, I see that it would be relatively easy to
tell if my first use in a day is prior to the off-peak boundary or not.
Similarly with buses, I would expect. What communication is there between a
bus and the Oyster infrastructure at any point in time?
--
Ian Tindale

umpston wrote:
TC wrote in message


Personally I fail to see why we cannot just walk up to a ticket machine
to customize the properties of the card - so that the first time each
day we use the ticket, the amount for our chosen travelcard is taken off
and the ticket converted there and then for the rest of the day.


Then why not just buy a ticket? The advantage of oyster is supposed
to be that you don't have to go to ticket machines or ticket offices
every day.

I meant walk up to a machine once - to use some configuration options.
These would then be stored on the card, and used when you go through the
barrier. (until you change the settings back)

--
TC