On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 13:28:20 +0000 (UTC), Stephen Osborn
wrote:

Every can of beans / newspaper / magazine / item of clothing / etc you
buy is individually priced and you cope with that don't you.

Yes, but there is enough room in your average shop for all these items
to be out on display. With a probable average of, say, 5 or 6 ticket
types per relation (which would be N(N-1) where N is the number of
stations on the national system, or on LUL, as applicable), that ain't
practical. Even in the days of Edmondson (sp?) tickets, there was
duplication - I have somewhere a ticket from Liverpool Central to "any
station bounded by Rainford, Aughton Park or Formby" (or something
like that).

2. AFAIK, the reason, AFAIK, that fares structure takes 7 volumes or
whatever and it takes an age to buy a ticket is that BR had made
thousands of special terminal in the 1970s and these are what are still
being used by counter staff today. The memory capacity of these is very
limited indeed.

The complexity of the fares structure has nothing to do with the
machines which issue it, which as it happens are largely in the
process of being replaced with machines which do "know" the entire
fares structure.

A modern box (probably running Linux and with a cheap 80-120GB hard
drive) could easily cope with all of the data and spit out the cheapest
or quickest option in a fraction of a second. With a decent UI[*] that
is what the passenger accessible machines would have as well.

The cheapest/quickest *single* ticket, yes (where I mean one ticket,
not just a one-way). The number of possible fares *combinations* is
staggering, and because the fares system (if you'd call it that) is so
badly broken, it is necessary to investigate these for best value.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
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On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 13:39:59 -0000, "Solar Penguin"
wrote:

And why is being individually priced a bad thing? Look at the example I
gave elsewhere in the thread: the Northern Line ticket from Morden to
Waterloo costs the same as the ticket from Morden going all the way to
Mill Hill East. Passangers to Waterloo are paying for around twice as
much journey than they actually use. An individually priced
Morden-Waterloo ticket would solve this problem.

As would a fairly simple change to the zonal fares system, which would
be to count the number of zone boundaries crossed, rather than to
count which zones are entered. I'm sure I've seen this kind of
ticketing elsewhere. There are plenty of point-to-point systems which
"max out" like this one, as well - I believe Deutsche Bahn's
semi-kilometric InterCity fares system has a maximum fare.

All of which is a moot point, anyway. Given that a public transport
system has been planned and is being operated based on average traffic
etc, there is no direct cost that can be attributed to one person's
usage of the system, because whether that one person was there or not
the system would operate anyway, and the fuel cost attributed to one
passenger is tiny enough to be irrelevant. Whatever means is used to
define the fares is therefore a model.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
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On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 12:04:09 +0000, Mrs Redboots
wrote:

Why? It is probably cheaper (almost certainly, if you have Pre-pay) to
buy a ticket from Oxford Circus to Brixton & then take one of the 3 or 4
buses that go from there to Crystal Palace, and reverse it. There is no
obligation on you to buy a Travelcard if you don't want to.

And that, as I see it, is a serious fault with the way TfL, and much
of the rest of the UK's public transport, is operated.

A proper connectional public transport system (yes, one of those
things you don't see a lot of in the UK, not even in London) is made
up of a number of interlinked modes, and any one journey may use any
or all of those modes depending on the quickest or most practical
route from point A to point B.

As such, the fare from point A to point B (or over however many zones
- whether the system is zonal or not is irrelevant to the argument)
should be the same, for the use of any or all of those modes.

To do anything different, as the UK tends to, is to artificially
direct people into making long "trunk" journeys by bus rather than
bus+rail+bus, for example, which results in many miles of wasteful bus
routes that don't need to be there at all, and even worse to (often
commercial) bus routes competing against (often subsidised) rail
within a city transport system, which is nothing short of downright
scandalous, and an utter waste of money.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
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On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 12:12:10 -0000, "Solar Penguin"
wrote:

Oops. I forgot to add that CDRs etc. can be treated as a fixed premium
added to the single fare at this point. Should've double checked
everything before I pressed Send. Sorry.

Why, to go for a similar argument, should someone be given a discount
for returning on the same day over returning on the next?

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
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On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 15:29:51 -0000, "Solar Penguin"
wrote:

Would having seperate fares for Waterloo and Mill Hill East lead to
*significantly* increased costs for equipment, staff, gates etc.? To
turn the situation on its head -- Ken Livingstone's planning to force
TfL's zones onto NR fares in London. How much will *that* cost for new
equipment, staff, etc.?

It will probably cost very little for NR to go zonal, because the
existing equipment is capable of issuing and validating everything
that is required to do so (as APTIS can issue most LUL tickets, as I
understand it, and even if it couldn't you could fudge something by
using specified destinations as zones). More Oyster validators will
be required, but that would be the case anyway if Oyster is extended
fully to NR, regardless of what the fares are or who sets them.

For the Tube to go point-to-point there would be a massive cost,
because TfL's ticketing equipment is *not* geared up to
point-to-point. The barriers would probably be easily adaptable, but
there are vast numbers of old-style ticket machines out there with
only zonal buttons, and they'd all have to be replaced.

Neil

--
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When replying please use neil at the above domain
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In message , Neil Williams
writes
And that, as I see it, is a serious fault with the way TfL, and much of
the rest of the UK's public transport, is operated.

A proper connectional public transport system (yes, one of those things
you don't see a lot of in the UK, not even in London) is made up of a
number of interlinked modes, and any one journey may use any or all of
those modes depending on the quickest or most practical route from
point A to point B.

As such, the fare from point A to point B (or over however many zones -
whether the system is zonal or not is irrelevant to the argument)
should be the same, for the use of any or all of those modes.

Although I have some sympathy with such a system, London is so large and
complex (and busy), that charging a supplement for Underground travel
(which is effectively what happens when compared to buses) is I feel
justified in return for the faster journey. (Hamburg has - or had -
something similar for its express buses).

Paris also has no bus-metro transfer beyond the sort of passes available
in London.

The actual *price* of those fares is a different matter, of course.
--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 11:41:09 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:

For the Tube to go point-to-point there would be a massive cost,
because TfL's ticketing equipment is *not* geared up to
point-to-point. The barriers would probably be easily adaptable, but
there are vast numbers of old-style ticket machines out there with
only zonal buttons, and they'd all have to be replaced.

Actually this is incorrect. The system was designed before zonal fares
and thus it can [1] cope with point to point tickets on LUL. The big
issue would be the risk of far more confusion for ticket sellers and
much slower ticket transactions as passengers would need to press far
more buttons on the touch screen machines to get the fare on the screen.

With the few fare machines they would become less useful, as you point
out, because their range of ticket values would be very restricted.

If you then add in the possibility of the peak and off peak pre-pay
variants you would have a massive expansion of possible fare values for
the LUL system as a whole. This is before you deal with the through
ticketing from DLR, Tramlink and National Rail issues. The risk of
people paying the wrong fare thus increases causing more delays and
ticket rejections at gates. Also if the system becomes very complex then
the processing time at gates *could* increase marginally thus reducing
throughput - I would accept this is unlikely in most scenarios though.

While I vaguely understand the "we're being overcharged" argument from
the pro point to point people I think adoption of such a system on LUL
would create huge disbenefits. LUL has been trying to get a fare /
product range in place that gets rid of the need for a fare purchase
(and thus a queue) every trip. Now we're on the verge of getting to
something that is reasonable (though not ideal in my view) people want
to push us back to square one. Brilliant eh?

[1] it was certainly the case when I used to run the fare computer! It
is possible it has changed as a result of Prestige but I somehow doubt
that LU would have removed that part of the system design.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 11:51:24 +0000, Ian Jelf
wrote:

Although I have some sympathy with such a system, London is so large and
complex (and busy), that charging a supplement for Underground travel
(which is effectively what happens when compared to buses) is I feel
justified in return for the faster journey. (Hamburg has - or had -
something similar for its express buses).

It does, but not for that reason. The reason for the
Schnellbus-Zuschlag is not that the express buses are particularly
quick (they're not - most of the routes are surprisingly circuitous),
but because they provide a "value added" function of direct journeys
into the city centre without having to change. IOW, they're an
additional service on top of the normal service map.

That contrasts somewhat from the fact that the normal "integrated"
service map in London (which I'd say does, or should, consist of the
Tube, the city buses and the inner-suburban NR lines, especially in
South London) has different fares across all modes, with the
Travelcard being the only thing bringing them together.

Your point about a "Tube supplement" being a sensible add-on due to
the chronic overcrowding. especially in Zone 1, is a valid one.
However, the current system doesn't only provide that, it provides a
harsh penalty for someone making a single journey involving two buses,
or bus-Tube-bus, which is precisely the kind of journey you want to
encourage in that kind of system.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
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On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 12:07:49 +0000, Paul Corfield
wrote:

[1] it was certainly the case when I used to run the fare computer! It
is possible it has changed as a result of Prestige but I somehow doubt
that LU would have removed that part of the system design.

It's not so much whether the "mastering" system can cope, but the vast
array of 10-button "simplified" ticket machines certainly cannot, and
would all have to be replaced.

Neil

--
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'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

(Neil Williams) wrote in
:

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 12:07:49 +0000, Paul Corfield
wrote:

[1] it was certainly the case when I used to run the fare computer! It
is possible it has changed as a result of Prestige but I somehow doubt
that LU would have removed that part of the system design.

It's not so much whether the "mastering" system can cope, but the vast
array of 10-button "simplified" ticket machines certainly cannot, and
would all have to be replaced.

Neil


Why couldn't the existing system remain for Cash fares but a distance based
one applied for Pre-pay?