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Roger


Almost 50 per cent of Tube journeys and 40 per cent of bus journeys are
made using Oyster, but the majority of those are season tickets. The Mayor
wants to build on the success of Oyster by encouraging more passengers to
use Oyster to pay as they go, rather than cash, to make journeys quicker
and
easier.

The new fares package proposes lower or frozen Oyster single fares and
daily
price caps, which is the amount you pay for a day's travel, however many
bus
and Tube trips you make.

* The Tube Zone 1 Oyster fare down from £1.70 to £1.50 and as the
equivalent
cash fare will be £3.00, this will be a saving of £1.50;
* The Tube Zones1-2 Oyster fare down from £2.10 to £2 from 7am to 7pm
Monday-Friday; and reduced by a quarter from £2.00 to £1.50 at other
times,
to encourage greater use at times where there is spare capacity;
* A single journey in Zones 2-6 will cost £1 on Oyster if you pay as you
go,
compared to £3 if you use cash;
* The bus and tram morning peak Oyster fare is frozen at £1; and at 80p at
all other times;
* All daily price caps for bus, Tube, DLR and tram travel are reduced or
frozen and are set at 50p less than 2006 adult One Day Travelcard prices;
* The maximum Oyster single fare that applies on the Tube and DLR outside
the hours of 7am to 7pm Monday-Friday is frozen at £2.
* Under 16s already travel free on buses and trams and from September
2006,
free bus and tram travel will be extended to under 18s in full time
education.
* Single cash fares will increase to support the drive to shift passengers
from cash to Oyster.
* Cash single fares rise to encourage the switch to Oyster. The minimum
Tube
cash fare rises to £3 and the cash single bus or tram fare to £1.50. The
adult single fare on DLR, except to/from Bank and Tower Gateway is £1.50.
The adult single fare is £3.00 for DLR journeys to/from Tower Gateway and
Bank;
* Travelcard fares increase on average by inflation plus one per cent.
Speaking at City Hall, the Mayor said:
"This proposed fares package focuses on halving the number of cash
journeys
made in 2006, to speed up journeys and improve the efficiency of the
network. The simple message is that you don't have to pay the new cash
fares
- switch to Oyster and pay as you go and you will save money as well as
time. I believe Londoners are astute enough to choose the best value fare
for their journey."

The cash single fare on buses and trams will increase from £1.20 to £1.50.
Oyster single fares are frozen at £1 in the morning peak and 80p at all
other times. The One Day Bus Pass will increase to £3.50 but the Oyster
price cap on buses will be frozen at £3. The weekly Bus Pass will increase
from £11.00 to £13.50.

There will be an extra 30 minutes early morning Oyster discount period
with
passengers now able to travel for 80p on Oyster until 7pm with the morning
peak on buses and trams running from 7am until 9.30am.

On the Tube, the Zone 1 single cash fare will increase from £2 to £3 but
the
Oyster fare will reduce from £1.70 to £1.50. The Zone 1-6 single cash fare
will be set at £4 compared to £3.80 today with the Oyster fare frozen at
£3.50. Outside Zone 1, the cheapest cash single fare will increase to £3
from £1.30 but the comparable Oyster fare will be reduced from £1.10 to
£1.

Travelcard prices will typically increase by around four per cent. For
example, the Zones 1-6 weekly Travelcard will increase from £39.50 to £41.
The Zone 1 Travelcard will be withdrawn, but the equivalent Oyster fare is
set at £1.50. Daily Oyster price caps for travel on buses and Tubes will
be
set 50p below the 2006 prices of the equivalent One Day Travelcards.

The maximum adult Oyster single fare on the Tube outside the hours of 7am
to
7pm Monday-Friday is frozen at £2, with discount Oyster fares applying
until
7am in 2006 rather than until 6.30am today.

The Family Travelcard will be withdrawn but a £1 Off-peak Child Travelcard
will be available for up to four under 16s accompanied by adult Travelcard
holders. The Child Off-peak Travelcard will be frozen at £2.

Child fares on the Tube will generally move to half adult fares, with new
child Oyster fares introduced. There will be a maximum child Oyster single
fare within Zones 1-6 of £1 at all times of day. The child daily price cap
for bus, Tube and DLR travel from 9.30am Monday-Fridays and all day at
weekends will also be £1.

Terry Harper wrote:

As I see it the TOCs are wary of Pre Pay for business reasons, and
given the current business structure of the railways it shouldn't
surprise anyone that they look at things from this perspective.

Trying to account for every journey and allocating revenue would be an
impossible task. Well, maybe not impossible, but nobody has found he
need to do it so far.

I'd actually say pre-pay is to the TOCs advantage - each and every journey
made with an Oystercard will get recorded allowing revenue to be divided up
far more fairly.

--
Phil Richards
London, UK
Home Page: http://www.philrichards1.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

Neil Williams wrote:

Oddly, bus travellers aren't being fleeced to the same extent, even
though the impact of their use of single tickets actually involves
delaying the bus (if ticketing is from the driver).

Certainally those using weekly bus passes are with a rise from £11 to
£13.50 are getting stung. I'm surprised that weekly bus passes haven't been
added to the Oyster range at a lower rate.

But isn't the long term plan to make all buses cash free and push
everything on to Oyster, prepaid paper tickets and curb side ticket
machines?

--
Phil Richards
London, UK
Home Page: http://www.philrichards1.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

"TKD" wrote in message
...

As I see it the TOCs are wary of Pre Pay for business reasons, and
given the current business structure of the railways it shouldn't
surprise anyone that they look at things from this perspective.

From: http://www.alwaystouchout.com/project/66

"The DfT recently specified that TfL's zonal fares must be rolled out to
all rail services within London by 2007, with a phased approach being
taken to achieve this with an individual train company at a time."


And this is taken from tfl's latest board meeting minutes last month:

TfL's proposal to further integrate Oyster pre-pay on the National Rail
Network has
been subject to continuing negotiations with Train Operating Companies (TOC's)
and
DfT. The work is not on schedule and implementation in 2007 is no longer
achievable.

Looks like we could be in for a long wait.

On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 18:01:59 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:
Now, there are ways of mitigating this, such as the installation of
Oyster sales machines, either removing the deposit or making it easier
to get it back (e.g. with an Oyster return machine), and posters
explaining an idiot's guide to Oyster alongside the tube maps. But
while the infrastructure for issuing paper tickets exists, it might as
well be used. If TfL simply want to do away with it, why don't they
say so?

I think they should have that policy. A solution for infrequent
travellers could be the sort of flexible, disposable contactless card
I've used in Lisbon. There isn't a deposit, rather a charge, of 50
cents and it can be reused for a year. These cards *may* only be
capable of storing "normal" tickets bought from a machine or human,
the publicity is of course not very technical (and in Portuguese!).

None of this is a valid excuse for ripping people off. The fact that
most posters on here have come up with ways around the gbp3 fare would
show me fairly clearly that it is unreasonable.

I would have thought that 50p on top for cash would be enough,
although it is designed as well to make a few more tens of millions
isn't it? Give it lots of simple publicity and easier ways to get a
card and get rid of it, and maybe it won't be so bad to leave those
who are still Oyster-averse to pay for the free bus travel for under
16s... (Note to Ken: Please get auto top-up working on the bus as
soon as possible! Thanks.)

Richard.

On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 20:53:20 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:

On Wed, 5 Oct 2005 20:54:11 +0100, "TKD" wrote:

Otherwise don't bother - pay the higher price - the structure has obviously been designed
to penalise those not from London or the very stupid and it will subsidise the costs for the
rest of us.

I see this as well. I don't consider it appropriate.

Soaking the tourists is the prerogative of the transport system in any
city in which tourism plays a major role - and if TfL doesn't take
advantage of it, they're falling down on the job.

--
James Farrar
. @gmail.com

On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 20:46:20 +0100, Steve M
wrote:



Nick Cooper wrote:


Why should I be expected to get an Oyster for just 7 single tube fares
so far this year?


Why not? My mother lives in Newcastle, but comes to London a few
times a year. She loves her Oyster card. It strikes me that a lot of
people seem to object to Oyster on some bizarre principle, and end up
cutting off their noses to spite their face. There was some woman
being interviewed on BBC London yesterday. "The likes of me don't have
an Oyster card," she said, "I think it's disgusting." FFS....

I have a friend who won't get an Oyster card because she doesn't want
"them" to know where she's been and what she's been doing. Not even an
unregistered pre-pay card...

People with that kind of paranoid attitude deserve to pay more!

--
James Farrar
. @gmail.com

On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 12:36:00 +0100, Paul
wrote:

asdf wrote:
On 4 Oct 2005 14:57:10 -0700, "Paul" wrote:

How about installing Oyster readers in all London train stations?
*Then* TFL can start shoving oysters down people's necks.

They already are installed at every station in London that has
barriers (except Romford). At stations without barriers, they would
serve no purpose anyway (you don't need to touch in/out if you have a
Travelcard season).

But there are many stations without barriers.

If you use a travelcard on national rail stick to a paper ticket. With
Oyster you pay *more* money. What a con.

If you buy your Travelcard on Oyster from South West Trains (not sure
about other TOCs) they give you the same discount for poor performance
that you'd get with their paper version.

How many SWT stations in London have the facility to sell Oyster cards?
It's only 2 or 3. Same for SET.

If you care about the discount, you'll go out of your way once a year
to buy your Travelcard.


--
James Farrar
. @gmail.com

On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 22:29:49 GMT, Chris Tolley
wrote:

But what is the principle? It's effectively no different from buying a
book of ten stamps when you only have an immediate need for one, is it?

You are not penalised for buying one stamp on its own instead. The
price of a book of 12 stamps is 12 times the price of one.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

On Thu, 06 Oct 2005 01:42:45 +0100,
(Richard) wrote:

I think they should have that policy. A solution for infrequent
travellers could be the sort of flexible, disposable contactless card
I've used in Lisbon. There isn't a deposit, rather a charge, of 50
cents and it can be reused for a year. These cards *may* only be
capable of storing "normal" tickets bought from a machine or human,
the publicity is of course not very technical (and in Portuguese!).

This sounds a very good idea, especially for tourists etc. There is
another precedent in the Washington DC Farecards, where you buy a card
of a specific value and credit is deducted from it for each journey.
It's a magstripe technology, but I don't see why a non-contact
smartcard version shouldn't be feasible, if at a slightly greater
cost.

I would have thought that 50p on top for cash would be enough,

Agreed.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.