"Mizter T" wrote in message You need not touch in or
out if you

However if you're going to
travel out-of-zone on the Underground - i.e. go beyond the zones that
are covered by your Travelcard - then you'll need to ensure you
touch-in at the beginning of your journey, and touch-out at the end.
This is because you are combining the Travelcard with the Oyster
Pre-Pay function (the Pre-Pay function provides the ticket extension
for your out-of-zone travels).

I wonder how this works for those situations where the "official"
routing for a journey involves zone 1, but you want to do it without
going through zone 1.

I had someone from Oyster explain to me the other day that Oyster
fares don't necessarily follow zonal conventions. She gave the example
of traveling from Saint John's Wood to South Ealing, saying that "The
System"
assumed such a journey would be made through zone 1, even if you managed
to do it without going through zone 1.

She said that if you have a Z2345 travelcard and you travel from SJW to SE
via
the Jub/Metro and Rayner's Lane lines, you need to pay for zone 1 even
though you
don't use it.

This seems to throw up a contradiction:
a) if you have a Z2345 TC, you don't have to touch in/out so if you go that
route you have a valid ticket all the way.
b) if you have a Z2345 TC and *do* touch in/out, Oyster will charge you
for a zone 1 journey which you don't have on your TC, so will take it out
of your PP balance.

This doesn't seem right to me.
Can anyone else explain how zones and Oyster PP interact ? It seems as if
it hasn't been throught through properly.

Richard [in SG19]



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Richard M Willis wrote:
"Mizter T" wrote in message You need not touch in or
out if you

However if you're going to
travel out-of-zone on the Underground - i.e. go beyond the zones that
are covered by your Travelcard - then you'll need to ensure you
touch-in at the beginning of your journey, and touch-out at the end.
This is because you are combining the Travelcard with the Oyster
Pre-Pay function (the Pre-Pay function provides the ticket extension
for your out-of-zone travels).

I wonder how this works for those situations where the "official"
routing for a journey involves zone 1, but you want to do it without
going through zone 1.

I had someone from Oyster explain to me the other day that Oyster
fares don't necessarily follow zonal conventions. She gave the example
of traveling from Saint John's Wood to South Ealing, saying that "The
System"
assumed such a journey would be made through zone 1, even if you managed
to do it without going through zone 1.

First and obvious point - most people would not choose to go that way.
I certainly wouldn't advise that as a route! But it's an interesting
academic question.

She said that if you have a Z2345 travelcard and you travel from SJW to SE
via
the Jub/Metro and Rayner's Lane lines, you need to pay for zone 1 even
though you
don't use it.

I think it's fair enough for the system designers to assume that with
this example the route taken would be via zone 1 on the Central Line. I
guess if you did want to go via Rayner's Lane then you can ensure you
don't pay for zone 1 by exiting and re-entering the station via the
gates - thus ensuring the system knows what you're doing.


This seems to throw up a contradiction:
a) if you have a Z2345 TC, you don't have to touch in/out so if you go that
route you have a valid ticket all the way.
b) if you have a Z2345 TC and *do* touch in/out, Oyster will charge you
for a zone 1 journey which you don't have on your TC, so will take it out
of your PP balance.

In reply to (a) at St John's Wood you'd be forced to touch-in most of
the time as you'd have to go through the gates. If so, then exit and
re-enter at Rayner's Lane. If the gates are open, you could *not*
touch-in and continue to travel via Rayner's Lane legitimately.

In reply to (b) - that's because of the assumption built into the
system, which in the case of the example given is, as I've said
already, fair enough!


This doesn't seem right to me.
Can anyone else explain how zones and Oyster PP interact ? It seems as if
it hasn't been throught through properly.

I think the system has been thought through in a very detailed way, and
any assumptions it makes would be regarded as reasonable by most
people.

The potential complexity comes when Oyster Pre-Pay is implemented
London-wide on National Rail (NR). The possible issues here would be
similar to the above, where an A to B journey could go via C or D where
changing at D might be a slower but cheaper route than changing at C -
(similar to the 'route -not London' tickets that are already sold by
NR). The solution I guess would be to have Oyster readers at the
station that passengers must touch whilst they change trains. The
difficulty comes in trying to communicate this simply to passengers.

On 29 Jun 2006 09:33:49 -0700, Mizter T wrote:

I think the system has been thought through in a very detailed way, and
any assumptions it makes would be regarded as reasonable by most
people.

The potential complexity comes when Oyster Pre-Pay is implemented
London-wide on National Rail (NR). The possible issues here would be
similar to the above, where an A to B journey could go via C or D where
changing at D might be a slower but cheaper route than changing at C -
(similar to the 'route -not London' tickets that are already sold by
NR).

At first I thought so too; but the more I think about this, the less
convinced I am that it would really be a problem (at least, no more so
than it currently is with the Tube).

Most of the time, the choice is between a faster route via Z1 or a
slower route avoiding it; but with NR, you almost always have to pass
through a barrier when crossing Z1 (assuming they put some in at
Waterloo; then I think FCC would be the only exception). So the system
would be able to know whether you went via Z1 or not.

Can you think of a concrete example on NR where there would really be
a problem? (I'm struggling to think of one where the "cheaper" route
isn't ridiculously slow.)

Mizter T wrote:

I think it's fair enough for the system designers to assume that with
this example the route taken would be via zone 1 on the Central Line. I
guess if you did want to go via Rayner's Lane then you can ensure you
don't pay for zone 1 by exiting and re-entering the station via the
gates - thus ensuring the system knows what you're doing.

Actually I think that might cause problems as well. I've done this
(admittedly within my season ticket zones) when I was feeling a bit
grotty on one of the trains and decided to get some fresh air. So I
existed a station for about one or two minutes and then tried to
re-enter. This caused an error message and when I went to the gateline
staff they told me it was because I had just left.

I suppose that makes sense as exiting and then re-entering immediately
is rather odd behaviour and may indicate someone passing their card to
someone else.

--
To contact me take a davidhowdon and add a @yahoo.co.uk to the end.

David Howdon wrote:
Mizter T wrote:

I think it's fair enough for the system designers to assume that with
this example the route taken would be via zone 1 on the Central Line. I
guess if you did want to go via Rayner's Lane then you can ensure you
don't pay for zone 1 by exiting and re-entering the station via the
gates - thus ensuring the system knows what you're doing.

Actually I think that might cause problems as well. I've done this
(admittedly within my season ticket zones) when I was feeling a bit
grotty on one of the trains and decided to get some fresh air. So I
existed a station for about one or two minutes and then tried to
re-enter. This caused an error message and when I went to the gateline
staff they told me it was because I had just left.

I suppose that makes sense as exiting and then re-entering immediately
is rather odd behaviour and may indicate someone passing their card to
someone else.


Now you say it that issue does sound familiar, I think I've encountered
that.

In terms of exiting and re-rentering being a pain in the arse and you
as the passenger getting funny looks then that is a problem - you just
need to be let back in through the manual gates with the staff querying
your card using a handheld reader (if they can be bothered - or they
could always use a Oyster ticket machine to check your Oyster, I've
seen Tube staff do this). However it wouldn't be a problem in terms of
messing up your journey on the Oyster system. As this previous poster
explains [1]...

"Oyster can cope with an entry followed by two exits, as it just
extends the journey. However two entries followed by one exit will lead
to an unresolved journey."

....so you can go in (once), out (once), be let back in through the
manual gates and out (a second time). Being let back in at the gates
wouldn't count on your Oyster card.


[1] Link to Google Group archive of message:
http://tinyurl.com/pnybd

On 29 Jun 2006 15:46:07 -0700, Mizter T wrote:

"Oyster can cope with an entry followed by two exits, as it just
extends the journey. However two entries followed by one exit will lead
to an unresolved journey."

...so you can go in (once), out (once), be let back in through the
manual gates and out (a second time). Being let back in at the gates
wouldn't count on your Oyster card.

Interesting. Does this apply to all exits, even ones at the barriers
on the way out of a station, where you can't just be changing to
another line? I'd have expected you to end up with a complete journey,
followed by an unresolved (unstarted) journey.

The other kind of validator is ones like the platform ones at Ealing
Broadway, where you might be ending your journey (transferring to NR)
or you might not be (either changing between District and Central, or
on your way to the station exit where there are barriers). AFAIK these
ones definitely work as you describe.

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:06:36 GMT, David Howdon
wrote:

I think it's fair enough for the system designers to assume that with
this example the route taken would be via zone 1 on the Central Line. I
guess if you did want to go via Rayner's Lane then you can ensure you
don't pay for zone 1 by exiting and re-entering the station via the
gates - thus ensuring the system knows what you're doing.

Actually I think that might cause problems as well. I've done this
(admittedly within my season ticket zones) when I was feeling a bit
grotty on one of the trains and decided to get some fresh air. So I
existed a station for about one or two minutes and then tried to
re-enter. This caused an error message and when I went to the gateline
staff they told me it was because I had just left.

I'm sure I did something similar to this a few months ago when I
arrived at a station by Tube, met a friend in the ticket hall, then we
immediately went back into the Tube. Can't remember whether I was
using pre-pay or a Travelcard, but the gates had no problem with me
exiting then entering again a very short time later.

I suppose that makes sense as exiting and then re-entering immediately
is rather odd behaviour and may indicate someone passing their card to
someone else.

Unlikely - that would generally involve an entry followed by another
entry, or an exit followed by another exit.

"David Howdon" wrote in
message

Actually I think that might cause problems as well. I've done this
(admittedly within my season ticket zones) when I was feeling a bit
grotty on one of the trains and decided to get some fresh air. So I
existed a station for about one or two minutes and then tried to
re-enter. This caused an error message and when I went to the gateline
staff they told me it was because I had just left.

This is just the passback time-out. It is, as you suggest,
to prevent people passing their card/ticket back to someone else
behind them. Hence the name. I've often exited station gate lines to
get some junk food and re-entered 90s later. The staff are well
accustomed to pass back time problems and I've never had any trouble
getting them to let me back in.

Richard [in SG19]



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On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 17:06:54 +0100, Richard M Willis wrote:

She said that if you have a Z2345 travelcard and you travel from SJW to SE
via the Jub/Metro and Rayner's Lane lines, you need to pay for zone 1 even
though you don't use it.

You can avoid paying for Z1 by leaving and re-entering the station at
Rayners Lane. (You have to walk past the gateline when changing trains
there anyway.) This effectively splits your journey into two journeys,
each of which is charged at the Z2-6/Z3-6 rate.

This seems to throw up a contradiction:
a) if you have a Z2345 TC, you don't have to touch in/out so if you go that
route you have a valid ticket all the way.
b) if you have a Z2345 TC and *do* touch in/out, Oyster will charge you
for a zone 1 journey which you don't have on your TC, so will take it out
of your PP balance.

This doesn't seem right to me.

It is right, in the sense that it's correct. (Of course, it's arguably
not right if you mean in the moral sense.)

Can anyone else explain how zones and Oyster PP interact ?

Looks to me like you already have it sussed.