Hi

Any fans of Spike Milligan here? There's a new message board on the
Spike Milligan Tribute Site. The address is
http://www.messages.spikemilligan.co.uk/

Any comments or memories of Spike would be welcome

Cheers

Solar Penguin wrote:

Ahhh... You think it's those elusive across-London-to-Mill-Hill-East
passengers that TfL are so eager to attract with artificially low fares?

Welcome to Planet Earth. I hope you enjoy your stay.

TfL are not trying to attract passengers from Morden to MHE by
offering artificially low fares. They are not trying to penalise
Morden to Moorgate passengers by making them pay above the odds for
their journey to subsidise the MHE passengers. TfL don't give a toss
about passengers travelling from Morden to Mill Hill East, or even to
Mordor sodding Central.

What TfL have done, which is a very sensible approach in a busy city
that sees millions of tourists, is to implement a simple zonal system
made up of six concentric rings, with a set price for any station in
Za to any station in Zb. They have decided that this is the best
approximation to a fair fare system that can be achieved while
promoting simple, easy-to-understand fares and without compromising
ticket sales.

Artificially low fares to MHW or artificially high fares to zone 1?
Which are they really doing? Either way, it doesn't matter, as long as
they're stopped.

You make it sound as though there is some great conspiracy afoot
whereby all those passengers going from zone 6 through zone 1 and out
the other side are getting a free ride and that you personally are
paying for every one of them.

"As long as they're stopped" ... what are you on? They have
implemented a fare structure that works well, and has been working
well for years. As a result of this fare structure, a very small
number of journeys made have a surprisingly low "per mile" rate ... so
what? The extra money that it would cost to resolve this discrepancy
is far more than any such solution would raise in additional revenue -
ie, they are better off subsidising these passengers by a couple of
quid as they do now.

And that's exactly what I'm complaining about! Common sense says a
return should cost less than a Travelcard. The fact that it costs more
is **proof** that there's something seriously wrong with the current
system. What more evidence do you need!?!

We would need some evidence. Not "more" evidence, just some evidence.

Let's say that a Z1-Z4 return ticket costs the same as a Travelcard
[1]. What that means is that once you buy a ticket for a four-zone
return, you get anything extra thrown in for no additional cost. Or
another way of looking at it is that the Travelcard is the maximum
fare that they think anyone should be paying, but to price all return
journeys below this would result in some tickets not generating
sufficient revenue to cover costs.

There is nothing wrong with that. TfL can set fares at whatever they
feel is an appropriate level to manage demand. If they decide to offer
an effective discount on multi-use tickets, that is fine - it
encourages multi-modal PT usage, and it encourages passengers to buy
multi-modal tickets, which reduces the number of tickets sold for the
same number of passenger journeys made.

Why? That just gives the transport providers an excuse for not
increasing supply to match demand.

We live in a world that is overdeveloped, in a country that is
overdeveloped. I guess you live in or around London, which means that
you live in a particularly overdeveloped area of our overdeveloped
country.

What I am trying to say here is that we cannot afford to simply go on
increasing capacity willy-nilly to cater for people to travel on a
whim. That is just as true of public transport as it is of road
building. If widening the M25 is bad because it will encourage
profligate car use, building Crossrail is equally bad because it will
encourage profligate rail use.

We could cater for a never-ending increase in demand for peak-time
services. The more trains run at peak times, the greater the
proportion of passengers will travel at those times. But for the rest
of the day, this additional capacity will be sitting idle. We will
have used vast quantities of resources - and huge sums of cash - to
build a system that is hardly used for 20 hours a day. What a waste.

Instead, we should encourage people to spread their travel where
possible. By using ticketing systems to manage demand, we can make
much better use of the existing capacity, meaning lower fares for
everyone, by providing incentives for passengers to travel off-peak.
There will come a point when no more passengers will change their
travel plans - either because the off-peak trains are just as crowded,
or because their journey needs are inflexible - at which point, steps
must be taken to increase capacity.

But there is no point at all in increasing capacity for four hours a
day when that demand can be shuffled onto services with seats to
spare.

It works both ways. You can't aid the children without also
penalising the adults.

How many children buy their own tickets?

OTOH I'd say the fact that it doesn't have any demand management
nonsense is a big advantage of my scheme. It gives the transport
providers some incentive to actually improve the supply of transport
where it's needed most, instead of discouraging customers from
travelling. (E.g. if London had had something like that, instead of
zones, maybe we'd have T2K and Crossrail by now!)

Why do you think that? If there was no financial incentive for people
to travel off-peak, but there was capacity off-peak, the railways
would do no more about it than they do now. Passengers could squeeze
on, or they could wait for a seat. So what.

OTOH looking at any map will allow you to estimate the distance and so
give you a fairly good idea of what it would cost.

Not if you look at a topological, stylised map such as used by all
national rail TOCs and organisations, and the London Underground.
These maps have no relationship to ground distance.

Conversely, a map that showed all rail and tube lines with geographic
accuracy would be totally unreadable for central London.

Some people have poor spatial awareness - they would find it difficult
to estimate a distance by looking at a map, even if there was a scale
by it.

Why should we be satisfied by being able to estimate a rough idea of
the cost, at some moderate difficulty for a lot of people, when we can
currently look up the exact fare from a list of six, which far more
people can do far easier?


[1] For example. I have no idea if it is true in London - it is true
on the buses in York, so I'll use that as my model.

--
Stevie D
\\\\\ ///// Bringing dating agencies to the
\\\\\\\__X__/////// common hedgehog since 2001 - "HedgeHugs"
___\\\\\\\'/ \'///////_____________________________________________

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Stevie D wrote:

Solar Penguin wrote:

Ahhh... You think it's those elusive across-London-to-Mill-Hill-East
passengers that TfL are so eager to attract with artificially low
fares?

What TfL have done, which is a very sensible approach in a busy city
that sees millions of tourists, is to implement a simple zonal system
made up of six concentric rings, with a set price for any station in
Za to any station in Zb.

Er, no.

Morden (Z4) to Balham (Z3): 1.30
Morden (Z4) to Highgate (Z3): 2.80

But you were almost right!

You then go on at length about how elegant the current system is, and
you're quite right - it's simple and it works, and a system based on
distance, or some other random variable, is by no means a replacement.
Zones are here to stay, bless their little pastel-coloured socks.

However, that doesn't mean it couldn't be improved by some very simple
measures.

Artificially low fares to MHW or artificially high fares to zone 1?
Which are they really doing? Either way, it doesn't matter, as long
as they're stopped.

You make it sound as though there is some great conspiracy afoot whereby
all those passengers going from zone 6 through zone 1 and out the other
side are getting a free ride and that you personally are paying for
every one of them.

Er, that's exactly what's happening. The problem we have at the moment is
this:

Morden (Z4) to Waterloo (Z1): 2.80
Morden (Z4) to Highgate (Z3): 2.80

Once you get involved with zone 1, it costs the same to travel any
distance out the other side (at least, as far out as you were when you
started). If you accept that the costs associated with transporting
someone from Morden to Highgate are greater than those associated with
taking them from Morden to Waterloo, and you accept the idea that ticket
prices are there to cover costs, then Morden - Waterloo travellers are
indeed subsidising Morden - Highgate travellers. Nobody's claiming this is
a conspiracy, or even a scandal - it's just a defect in the system.

The simple correction is to count zones which are crossed twice twice.
For example, if a single in Z1 costs 2.00, and a single from Z1 to Z4 (or
Z4 to Z1) costs 2.80, then the cost of extending a journey from Z1 to Z4
must be 80p; that would make a Z4-Z1-Z4 journey cost 3.60.

I have no idea how you'd implement this for travelcards, though; you'd
want someone who lived in Morden to be able to buy a travelcard which let
them go as far as London Bridge for less than one which let them go as far
as Highgate, but you can't just say it's for Z1-4 on the Morden side -
what happens if they get on the District Line? You'd have to get the
customer to specify which half of each line they wanted when they bought
the ticket, which would be rather silly! The only solution i can see is to
split the outer zones into sectors, and make travelcards specific to some
combination of sectors, but that way madness lies. Do away with
travelcards, i say!

We live in a world that is overdeveloped, in a country that is
overdeveloped.

What the hell does that mean? What's 'overdeveloped'?

What I am trying to say here is that we cannot afford to simply go on
increasing capacity willy-nilly to cater for people to travel on a whim.
That is just as true of public transport as it is of road building. If
widening the M25 is bad because it will encourage profligate car use,
building Crossrail is equally bad because it will encourage profligate
rail use.

The problem with generating more car traffic is not that people moving
around is bad per se, but that cars are a bad way to do it. As long as
rail is the most environmentally and socially sustainable form of
transport, creating more rail traffic is not a bad thing!

We could cater for a never-ending increase in demand for peak-time
services.

We could, and in fact we better had.

The more trains run at peak times, the greater the proportion of
passengers will travel at those times.

No. The greater the number, but not necessarily the greater the
proportion. Yes, if everyone wanted to travel in the peaks (and let's
pretend they do), and if you ran more peak-time trains, and if you kept
the total number of travellers constant, you'd get a greater proportion
travelling in the peaks, which would be a bad thing. However, the total
number of travellers is not constant, it's growing, and that's why we need
more capacity.

But for the rest of the day, this additional capacity will be sitting
idle. We will have used vast quantities of resources - and huge sums of
cash - to build a system that is hardly used for 20 hours a day. What a
waste.

Well, i for one am looking forward to riding crossrail at midday and
having a carriage all to myself.

OTOH looking at any map will allow you to estimate the distance and so
give you a fairly good idea of what it would cost.

Not if you look at a topological, stylised map such as used by all
national rail TOCs and organisations, and the London Underground. These
maps have no relationship to ground distance.

Indeed. This is a mad idea.

tom

--
Destroy - kill all hippies.

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 01:01:57 +0000, Tom Anderson
wrote:

Er, that's exactly what's happening. The problem we have at the moment is
this:

Morden (Z4) to Waterloo (Z1): 2.80
Morden (Z4) to Highgate (Z3): 2.80

The "problem" here is entirely in your own head. This situation is not
causing large amounts of pain and suffering and people getting ripped
off, like some people here seem to believe.

If you accept that the costs associated with transporting
someone from Morden to Highgate are greater than those associated with
taking them from Morden to Waterloo,

I don't. If the journey is made during the morning peak, the cost of
providing the Morden-Z1 part of the journey is the same, but the
Z1-Highgate part of the journey is in the opposite direction to the
peak flow, so it uses capacity that otherwise would have been going
spare anyway. So that part of the journey is effectively free to
provide. If the journey is made during the evening peak then of course
the reverse situation applies, but with the same effect.

and you accept the idea that ticket
prices are there to cover costs,

I don't. They are there as a contribution towards the costs. Taxation
covers the rest. (A bit like NHS prescriptions.)

Nobody's claiming this is
a conspiracy, or even a scandal - it's just a defect in the system.

It's only a defect because you think it is. I consider it an excellent
feature.

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, asdf wrote:

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 01:01:57 +0000, Tom Anderson
wrote:

Er, that's exactly what's happening. The problem we have at the moment
is this:

Morden (Z4) to Waterloo (Z1): 2.80
Morden (Z4) to Highgate (Z3): 2.80

The "problem" here is entirely in your own head.

No - it's in at least one other person's as well!

This situation is not causing large amounts of pain and suffering and
people getting ripped off, like some people here seem to believe.

No, of course not. I utterly distance myself from such hysterical
language.

If you accept that the costs associated with transporting someone from
Morden to Highgate are greater than those associated with taking them
from Morden to Waterloo,

I don't.

Aha! I think we're finally getting to the root of the argument.

If the journey is made during the morning peak, the cost of providing
the Morden-Z1 part of the journey is the same, but the Z1-Highgate part
of the journey is in the opposite direction to the peak flow, so it uses
capacity that otherwise would have been going spare anyway. So that part
of the journey is effectively free to provide. If the journey is made
during the evening peak then of course the reverse situation applies,
but with the same effect.

And what if it's not in a peak? Or what if it's along a route where there
are heavy flows in both directions during the peaks?

and you accept the idea that ticket prices are there to cover costs,

I don't. They are there as a contribution towards the costs. Taxation
covers the rest. (A bit like NHS prescriptions.)

Okay, fine. Should the contribution be proportional to the cost incurred?
If so, this part of my argument stands.

Nobody's claiming this is a conspiracy, or even a scandal - it's just a
defect in the system.

It's only a defect because you think it is. I consider it an excellent
feature.

Well, next time i take a tube into zone 1, i'll think of you smugly
sitting on a train to Mill Hill East and silently curse you .

tom

--
He's taking towel fandom to a whole other bad level. -- applez, of coalescent

Tom Anderson wrote:

Er, no.

Morden (Z4) to Balham (Z3): 1.30
Morden (Z4) to Highgate (Z3): 2.80

But you were almost right!

Yes, I did write a load of tripe there, well spotted.

I instinctively count a Z4-Z1-Z3 ticket as the same as a Z4-Z1 ticket,
rather than a Z4-Z3 ticket, but I realise I didn't make this very
clear.

However, that doesn't mean it couldn't be improved by some very simple
measures.

Maybe, maybe not.

[I wrote:]
You make it sound as though there is some great conspiracy afoot whereby
all those passengers going from zone 6 through zone 1 and out the other
side are getting a free ride and that you personally are paying for
every one of them.

Er, that's exactly what's happening. The problem we have at the moment
is this:

Morden (Z4) to Waterloo (Z1): 2.80
Morden (Z4) to Highgate (Z3): 2.80

That's not the same thing. Is there a conspiracy afoot? No. Are you
personally paying for every passenger to travel that extra distance?
No. Do some passengers get a better "per mile" fare? Yes. So what?

The simple correction is to count zones which are crossed twice twice.
For example, if a single in Z1 costs 2.00, and a single from Z1 to Z4
(or Z4 to Z1) costs 2.80, then the cost of extending a journey from Z1
to Z4 must be 80p; that would make a Z4-Z1-Z4 journey cost 3.60.

It sounds easy when you say it like that, but how easy would it be for
the passengers who use the tube in practice? How much would a Z4-Z1-Z3
ticket cost?

You would very soon find that either most tickets for cross-London
travel were cheaper than Travelcards or, if TC prices rose
commensurately, that TCs become ridiculously expensive and no-one
would buy them.

I have no idea how you'd implement this for travelcards, though; you'd
want someone who lived in Morden to be able to buy a travelcard which
let them go as far as London Bridge for less than one which let them
go as far as Highgate,

Why? A TC gives you unlimited travel within the zones specified. It is
very simple - there are three zonal variants (Z1-2, Z1-4 and Z1-6
[1]). It doesn't matter if the passenger is going across London or
just round and round on one side of it. If they are only making short
trips, they might be better off buying individual tickets.

but you can't just say it's for Z1-4 on the Morden side - what happens
if they get on the District Line? You'd have to get the customer to
specify which half of each line they wanted when they bought the
ticket, which would be rather silly!

Exactly. It gets almost humorously complicated very quickly. A TC
should give unlimited travel within the given radius. Making it any
more complex than this greatly reduces the utility of the TC.

The only solution i can see is to split the outer zones into sectors,
and make travelcards specific to some combination of sectors, but that
way madness lies. Do away with travelcards, i say!

The honeycomb model. While this could work OK for individual fares, it
would be an absolute nightmare for TCs or other passes. Would you have
to specify everyone cell/zone your journey might pass through? What
about situations where you could take a cross-London route or an
orbital route? What about people who buy TCs because they don't know
where they will go at the start of the day and want the convenience
and freedom that a TC offers?

TCs are great. What they offer is a simple, easy to understand,
instant to buy way for people to travel around London making full use
of the different modes of transport available. Anything to replace
them that is tube-specific penalises those in south London, anything
that is rail-specific penalises those in north London. Anything that
is complicated penalises the occasional traveller, the foreign
tourist, the transport companies, the ticket seller, and every poor
sod in the queue behind the guy who is trying to work out what zones
he needs to travel from Croydon to Barking then round the Goblin to
Richmond, tube to London, back to Croydon, out on the tram, back on
the bus...

Well, i for one am looking forward to riding crossrail at midday and
having a carriage all to myself.

Crossrail is not redundant capacity. Crossrail is vital, and long
overdue. Likewise Thameslink 20000.

There are parts of the network that are overcrowded and running above
capacity throughout the day. We do need to provide additional capacity
on these sections. What we don't need to do is to provide enough
capacity for everybody to travel at 8am and 5.30pm, because this
results in very poor asset utilisation.

--
Stevie D
\\\\\ ///// Bringing dating agencies to the
\\\\\\\__X__/////// common hedgehog since 2001 - "HedgeHugs"
___\\\\\\\'/ \'///////_____________________________________________

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 20:30:17 +0000, Stevie D
wrote:

Crossrail is not redundant capacity. Crossrail is vital, and long
overdue. Likewise Thameslink 20000.

If that's a typo, it seems like an appropriate one!

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Stevie D wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

Morden (Z4) to Balham (Z3): 1.30
Morden (Z4) to Highgate (Z3): 2.80

I instinctively count a Z4-Z1-Z3 ticket as the same as a Z4-Z1 ticket,
rather than a Z4-Z3 ticket, but I realise I didn't make this very clear.

Fair enough.

You make it sound as though there is some great conspiracy afoot
whereby all those passengers going from zone 6 through zone 1 and out
the other side are getting a free ride and that you personally are
paying for every one of them.

Er, that's exactly what's happening. The problem we have at the moment
is this:

Morden (Z4) to Waterloo (Z1): 2.80
Morden (Z4) to Highgate (Z3): 2.80

That's not the same thing. Is there a conspiracy afoot? No.

Did i mention a conspiracy? Why do you keep telling me there isn't one?
Very suspicious if you ask me!

Are you personally paying for every passenger to travel that extra
distance? No. Do some passengers get a better "per mile" fare? Yes. So
what?

You can't say yes to one of those and no to the other! If some people are
getting more for their money, that means i'm getting less, which means i
am personally paying for them. Now, in practice, i suspect that the
subsidy is vanishingly small: there are a lot of people going into Z1,
very few people going out the other side, and the additional cost of
carrying them is modest. Nonetheless, i'm not objecting to the practical
result, i'm objecting to the principle of the thing; with the current
theoretical loophole, sooner or later, there's going to be a practical
problem - perhaps when hojillions of commuters from are travelling from
the west to Canary Wharf or Stratford City.

The simple correction is to count zones which are crossed twice twice.
For example, if a single in Z1 costs 2.00, and a single from Z1 to Z4
(or Z4 to Z1) costs 2.80, then the cost of extending a journey from Z1
to Z4 must be 80p; that would make a Z4-Z1-Z4 journey cost 3.60.

It sounds easy when you say it like that, but how easy would it be for
the passengers who use the tube in practice?

No harder than it is now: if you want a single, you hit the button on a
ticket machine and give it the money it asks for. The further you go, the
more you pay, with outer zones costing less than inner ones. There are
more combinations of zones to be priced, but i don't think that matters:
it's not as if users of the system memorise the entire fare table, they
just use the heuristics i describe above.

How much would a Z4-Z1-Z3 ticket cost?

3.60.

Yes, this is the same as Z4-Z1-Z4, but that's because a Z1-Z3 ticket costs
the same as a Z1-Z4 (now *that* is barmy ticket pricing).

You would very soon find that either most tickets for cross-London
travel were cheaper than Travelcards or,

ITYM more expensive.

if TC prices rose commensurately, that TCs become ridiculously expensive
and no-one would buy them.

True. That's why i go into the half-travelcard below.

I have no idea how you'd implement this for travelcards, though; you'd
want someone who lived in Morden to be able to buy a travelcard which
let them go as far as London Bridge for less than one which let them
go as far as Highgate,

Why? A TC gives you unlimited travel within the zones specified.

At present, yes. However, if you accept the idea that Zn-Z1-Zn is not the
same as Zn-Z1 for singles, it's natural to extend the idea to travelcards.
Intuitively, i think the travelcard i use to commute to work, a Zn-Z1
journey, should cost less than a travelcard which let me go all the way
across London when i felt like it. However, as we both observed, this is
very tough to implement.

It is very simple - there are three zonal variants (Z1-2, Z1-4 and Z1-6
[1]).

Was there supposed to be a footnote attatched to that?

but you can't just say it's for Z1-4 on the Morden side - what happens
if they get on the District Line? You'd have to get the customer to
specify which half of each line they wanted when they bought the
ticket, which would be rather silly!

Exactly. It gets almost humorously complicated very quickly. A TC should
give unlimited travel within the given radius. Making it any more
complex than this greatly reduces the utility of the TC.

Making it substantially more complex does. Making it very slightly more
complex might not. For example, honeycomb zones might work.

The only solution i can see is to split the outer zones into sectors,
and make travelcards specific to some combination of sectors, but that
way madness lies. Do away with travelcards, i say!

The honeycomb model. While this could work OK for individual fares, it
would be an absolute nightmare for TCs or other passes. Would you have
to specify everyone cell/zone your journey might pass through?

Exactly the same as now: the ticket would have to cover every zone your
journey actually does pass through.

What about situations where you could take a cross-London route or an
orbital route?

What about them?

What about people who buy TCs because they don't know where they will go
at the start of the day and want the convenience and freedom that a TC
offers?

Exactly the same as in three days' time: you don't buy a travelcard, you
use pre-pay, and the system caps you to the appropriate travelcard price.

TCs are great. What they offer is a simple, easy to understand, instant
to buy way for people to travel around London making full use of the
different modes of transport available. Anything to replace them that is
tube-specific penalises those in south London, anything that is
rail-specific penalises those in north London.

Those are both utter strawmen, and you know it.

Anything that is complicated penalises the occasional traveller, the
foreign tourist, the transport companies, the ticket seller, and every
poor sod in the queue

Meanwhile, the TC just penalises people who want to commute to and from
work, because it forces them to buy a ticket which gives them far more
than they need.

I'm actually, and very tentatively, in favour of scrapping travelcards
altogether. Prepay all round! Better yet, postpay - i travel, then i get a
bill at the end of the month, perhaps along with my council tax (if i live
in London, anyway). You'd actually have to support both, since they fit
different needs - just like pre-pay and contract arrangements for mobile
phones. I think this has all the benefits of TCs - i just get on the tube
and ride; i do have to worry a bit about every trip i take costing me, but
i don't have to worry about whether it's worth buying a TC in the first
place. You might think this would be horrendously expensive, but with a
system like this, where all passengers are buying singles rather than
mostly using TCs, singles could be cheaper. You could have an analogue of
period TCs (which benefit passengers by being cheaper, operators by being
predictable, and the public by encouraging PT use) by giving discounts for
heavy users (eg 50 quid buys you 55 or 60 quid of credit on prepay, or if
you spend over 25 quid a month on postpay, you get 20% off everything over
that, or whatever).

behind the guy who is trying to work out what zones he needs to travel
from Croydon to Barking then round the Goblin to Richmond, tube to
London, back to Croydon, out on the tram, back on the bus...

I don't see that that's intrinsically any more complicated than the
present system: you have to look at the route, see what zones it goes
through (ignoring bus legs and handling Tramlink specially), and buy a
ticket that covers those zones. Any difference in complexity would come
from the number of zones: at present, we have six, but a honeycomb system
would probably need more. I don't know exactly how many; we could split
the current outer zones into four sectors each, for 21 zones, but i think
that's overkill. We could simplify things to three rings of four sectors,
plus zone 1, for 13 zones; we could even have two rings of four plus Z1,
for 9 zones. I don't think 9 zones would be that much harder to handle
than six. Perhaps three rings of three, plus Z1, for 10?

Well, i for one am looking forward to riding crossrail at midday and
having a carriage all to myself.

Crossrail is not redundant capacity. Crossrail is vital, and long
overdue. Likewise Thameslink 20000.

There are parts of the network that are overcrowded and running above
capacity throughout the day. We do need to provide additional capacity
on these sections. What we don't need to do is to provide enough
capacity for everybody to travel at 8am and 5.30pm, because this results
in very poor asset utilisation.

Agreed. Was anyone actually suggesting that this is what we should do?

Or, and i think this is most likely to be the truth, is this what the
Conspiracy is actually planning to do, and you're trying to cover it up?
I'm on to you, Mr D!

tom

--
And the future is certain, give us time to work it out

Tom Anderson wrote:

Did i mention a conspiracy? Why do you keep telling me there isn't one?
Very suspicious if you ask me!

Solar Penguin implied s/he thought there was a conspiracy, which is
what I addressed in my previous-previous reply.

[I wrote:]
Are you personally paying for every passenger to travel that extra
distance? No. Do some passengers get a better "per mile" fare? Yes. So
what?

You can't say yes to one of those and no to the other!

Watch me :-)

If some people are getting more for their money, that means i'm
getting less, which means i am personally paying for them.

One suggestion is that the additional revenue raised from pricing
cross-London journeys as you suggest, bearing in mind the very small
proportion of journeys made falling into this category, would just
cover the cost of implementing that scheme. In other words, there
would be no net gain in income for TfL.

Therefore, even by raising the price for long journeys in this way, it
would not be possible to reduce the fare that you pay. So although one
POV says that you are subsidising those passengers, as there is no
effective and fair way to remove that subsidy, it doesn't count.

perhaps when hojillions of commuters from are travelling from the west
to Canary Wharf or Stratford City.

Will Crossrail be subject to the same pricing structure as the rest of
the Underground? If not, there is no problem. If so, maybe it will
become an issue - but maybe not. I suspect that most commuters have
season tickets, so the relative prices are not as simple as for
individual tickets, as we are discussing.

No harder than it is now: if you want a single, you hit the button on
a ticket machine and give it the money it asks for. The further you
go, the more you pay, with outer zones costing less than inner ones.
There are more combinations of zones to be priced, but i don't think
that matters: it's not as if users of the system memorise the entire
fare table, they just use the heuristics i describe above.

That assumes they use a machine that has all the stations listed. When
I was working in London (a few years ago now, so it might have
changed), there were some machines that just listed the different
fares, with one big button next to them that you pushed for that
ticket. These are very quick because there are so few choices for
passengers to make.

Yes, this is the same as Z4-Z1-Z4, but that's because a Z1-Z3 ticket costs
the same as a Z1-Z4 (now *that* is barmy ticket pricing).

Yes, totally barmy!

You would very soon find that either most tickets for cross-London
travel were cheaper than Travelcards or,

ITYM more expensive.

Indeed I do.

At present, yes. However, if you accept the idea that Zn-Z1-Zn is not the
same as Zn-Z1 for singles, it's natural to extend the idea to travelcards.
Intuitively, i think the travelcard i use to commute to work, a Zn-Z1
journey, should cost less than a travelcard which let me go all the way
across London when i felt like it. However, as we both observed, this is
very tough to implement.

Why limit it to that? Why not limit it to one route? If I buy a
Travelcard to go from Croydon to London and back, should I be allowed
to go via Wimbledon? Beckenham? Where do you draw the line? Short of a
honeycomb, it becomes very difficult. Much simpler to have solar zones
as we do now.

It is very simple - there are three zonal variants (Z1-2, Z1-4 and Z1-6
[1]).

Was there supposed to be a footnote attatched to that?

Yes, I don't know where it went. It was supposed to say
[1] Or at least, there were last time I looked, but this might have
changed.

It's a few years since I lived in London, and I am largely going by
memory rather than carefully checking that TfL haven't changed things
since.

Making it substantially more complex does. Making it very slightly more
complex might not. For example, honeycomb zones might work.

I can see them working on a much smaller region. West Yorkshire, Tyne
& Wear, Merseyside, Greater Manchester are all examples of places
where I think honeycombing could work. Probably not the West Midlands
or Glasgow, and definitely not London. You would just need too many
zones. Either that or each zone would be very large.

Exactly the same as now: the ticket would have to cover every zone
your journey actually does pass through.

Yes, I realise that.

Let's say that you want to travel from Surbiton to Barking, then to
Harrow, then back to Surbiton.

It might be that you plan to go into London and out again for each leg
of the journey. That will be the relevant cells between Central London
and each of Surbiton, Harrow and Barking.
But what if you then change your mind and travel on the Southern/
Silverlink service via Olympia? Or the Goblin? That would involve
several other cells on orbital routes, and would require you to plan
your day's travel far more carefully.

It would make it a much longer process to buy a travelcard other than
for straight into London and back, which the stations would make very
easy just because of the sheer volume of them that they would sell.
But in this case, you might have to ask for a Travelcard covering
zones 4D, 3D, 2C, 1, 2B, 3B, 4B, 2D, 3F, 4G, 5G, 3E. For example.
Unless you are buying your ticket from a machine that has a
touch-sensitive map, it is going to be complex, long-winded and prone
to mistakes.

It then makes it much harder to work out what routes you can travel
on. If I buy a TC that gets me from Bromley to London and back -
that's fine. But if I change my mind, and want to call in at Beckenham
on the way back ... is that allowed? What cell is that in - is it on
my ticket? What about Crystal Palace? Greenwich?

Travelcards are supposed to be totally flexible; that is precisely why
they are so phenomenally popular. By making them so specific, you are
badly eroding this flexibility

Exactly the same as in three days' time: you don't buy a travelcard, you
use pre-pay, and the system caps you to the appropriate travelcard price.

Is that actually going to work? Last I heard, Oyster was having great
difficulty in evaluating when it was going to be cheaper to use
Travelcard prices and when individual prices.

TCs are great. What they offer is a simple, easy to understand,
instant to buy way for people to travel around London making full use
of the different modes of transport available. Anything to replace
them that is tube-specific penalises those in south London, anything
that is rail-specific penalises those in north London.

Those are both utter strawmen, and you know it.

Do I?

Mainline/suburban rail services have a different pricing structure to
the UndergrounD. Yes, Travelcards span them both, but if this idea of
forty zones instead of 6 were to take off, I could imagine ATOC
telling TfL where to shove it, and not participating in the scheme in
the same way.

Meanwhile, the TC just penalises people who want to commute to and
from work, because it forces them to buy a ticket which gives them far
more than they need.

In which case, they should just buy individual tickets, if that works
out cheaper. If not, hard luck.

*Anyone* who buys a Travelcard gets more than they need. Well, I
assume they do. I assume there isn't someone out there who buys a
Travelcard then uses the trains, buses, tubes and trams continuously
from 0500 to close, gleefully shouting "I'm getting my money's worth!"
all the way.

If I buy a season rail ticket from Selby to York, as I have
contemplated doing, this entitles me to make as many journeys between
Selby and York as I wish to (and, in fact, on most routes as far as
Goole, Doncaster, Sheffield, Huddersfield and Leeds). In reality, I
would only be making one return journey a day, five days a week - six
very occasionally. Five hours on the train every week is a very small
proportion of the journeys that that ticket would entitle me to make.

Would I complain that I was being ripped off? Of course not - it's a
ridiculous thing to suggest.

The alternative that your suggestion would lead to is to charge users
for every single journey they make. Otherwise, someone is always going
to be getting a better deal than someone else - which you don't accept
can be fair. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But the convenience of
having unlimited travel far outweighs the possible injustice that
someone might make an extra journey to you that they are not paying
anything additional for.

I'm actually, and very tentatively, in favour of scrapping travelcards
altogether. Prepay all round! Better yet, postpay - i travel, then i get a
bill at the end of the month, perhaps along with my council tax (if i live
in London, anyway).

For what benefit? There would be *massive* additional costs to setting
up such a system and to running and maintaining it. The result would
be, as I said earlier, that virtually _nobody_ would pay any less than
they do now, but plenty of people would end up paying more, just to
cover the extra costs of the system. Quite how that would benefit
passengers is beyond me.

Prepay systems might work for residents and regular travellers - and
postpay (although I think that would have to work of direct debit or
something similar) - but what about infrequent travellers, or tourists
from abroad? Such people do form a very significant proportion of the
travelling public off-peak in London, and any complications in the
system will cause exponential delays and problems for such people.

Agreed. Was anyone actually suggesting that this is what we should do?

Solar Penguin.

--
Stevie D
\\\\\ ///// Bringing dating agencies to the
\\\\\\\__X__/////// common hedgehog since 2001 - "HedgeHugs"
___\\\\\\\'/ \'///////_____________________________________________

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005, Tom Anderson wrote:

If some people are getting more for their money, that means i'm
getting less,

sounds reasonable so far...

which means i am personally paying for them.

By no means. In practice you're *both* being subsidised by the rest
of the country - who are getting a substandard PT network in
comparison with what they're paying for you to get.

Not that I have any hankering to live under the conditions that you
chose, but it takes all kinds...

Nonetheless, i'm not objecting to the practical
result, i'm objecting to the principle of the thing;

Yup, I've seen this line of argument befo wanting everyone to pay
more in the interests of fairness.

But just be sure you really intend what it is that you're asking for.

How much would a Z4-Z1-Z3 ticket cost?

3.60.

I think you're over-simplifying. If the tariff system was changed,
the fares would need to be re-balanced.

At present, yes. However, if you accept the idea that Zn-Z1-Zn is not the
same as Zn-Z1 for singles, it's natural to extend the idea to travelcards.
Intuitively, i think the travelcard i use to commute to work, a Zn-Z1
journey, should cost less than a travelcard which let me go all the way
across London when i felt like it.

As a point of information (I'm not for a moment claiming this is
directly comparable, but just presenting it as an alternative approach
that has worked elsewhere), the Munich tariff system had a fairly
simple ring-zone tariff for /cash/ fares, although you had to count a
ring-zone twice if you passed through it on both sides of the core
(which seems to be the issue that you're arguing here); but for season
tickets they had a more finely-divided zone tariff: you had to get the
desired "season ticket zones" entered onto your photo card, and then
at each renewal you bought a voucher for the appropriate price.

(What a surprise, I see that it's been changed yet again since: well,
what I'm describing here is a system as it worked at one time, even
though it's different again now. YMMV).

The honeycomb model. While this could work OK for individual
fares, it would be an absolute nightmare for TCs or other passes.
Would you have to specify everyone cell/zone your journey might
pass through?

That's how Munich used to do it for season tickets. You made a more
finely-divided choice when the card was issued or officially amended;
but then it was good for as long as you cared to keep buying vouchers
from your local sales point (usually the local newsagent / lotto
vendor ;-)

If you wanted to change your season ticket plan, you had to go to one
of the central offices (hopefully you had chosen season ticket zones
which included one!) and stand in the queue to get your photo card
officially amended.

On the other hand: if you wanted to buy a one-off day ticket, then you
only had two or three options to choose from.

So, to summarise, they had:

* Season tickets, with a finely-divided fare structure

* Cash tariff, with a medium-complexity core-and-ring zone structure

* Day passes: choice of city zone, or outer zone, or entire network
(that would be like Z1-2, or Z3-6, or all-zones, if you applied the
analogous model to London).