Mizter T wrote:

See this from the FAQ section of the Young Person Railcard website -
the last sentence in particular...
(I've copied it in full for posterity should they ever correct it)

-----
14. Can I use my Railcard for tickets for travel on the London
Underground? All discounted rail tickets bought using your Railcard
routed 'between London termini' are valid for cross-London transfer on
the London Underground. Off-Peak Day Travelcards (All Zones only) are
also available, subject to a minimum fare. Please note, however, that
you cannot use your Railcard to obtain a discount when purchasing
tickets from a London Underground booking office.
-----

Does this also mean I can't get a YPR discount on an Amersham to Aylesbury
ticket (a journey I'm due to make several times).

(Indeed what's the cheapest way to get a good discount on an extension from
a 1-6 travelcard to Aylesbury? PAYG to Amersham, then buy a return ticket at
the office there and on the way back jump onto the platform to touch in then
back onto the train, or a straightforward extension from Marylebone/Harrow?)

Mizter T wrote:

I don't have any experience of the Student scheme but I can certainly
say it's far better than what went before it - which was no discounts
for students in London at all whatsoever. Cheaper or free travel for
youngsters and discounts for students are really significant gains IMO,
all courtesy of Mr Livingstone, even if I'm not entirely sure aout
whether 100% free bus travel is a good idea.

The student discount predates Ken - it was around at least as early as 1998.
Although at first it was very much aimed at full time undergraduates - not
available over the summer and not available to students over 25. There was a
successful campaign on this spearheaded by the President of one particular
UofL college's Students' Union - can anyone guess which?

I think part of the problem here stems from differing perceptions of
students' needs. Whilst I personally find the season ticket works out
cheaper overall (even if I leave aside "frivilous" journeys like popping
into Stratford and Ilford *far* more often than I would if I was buying
tickets on the day), for many students living within reach of the campus the
journeys they make elsewhere seem to (ULU will be doing a survey on this)
work out cheaper. And of course the YPR has raised expectations - indeed I
wonder if the availability of YPR discounted travelcards from Underground
ticket offices would be more widely known if the TfL discount didn't exist.

Mizter T wrote:

I've also noticed and pondered on why Student Oyster cards don't give
the user discounted PAYG fares. It would of course be helpful for
students who can have odd travelling patterns (not needing to go to uni
everyday etc).

More of a reverse in a sense - many students living within walking distance
(or a single bus journey) of the university *and* taking local jobs.
Comparitively few are commuting on a daily basis on a scale where the
discount becomes significant.

Am I alone in thinking the current student discount scheme on TfL is a
mess, both in the application and the discount available?

[snip]

Has anyone else noted similar problems?

Yes. Because of the delays in getting a card., you are also prevented from
buying an annual ticket (and therefore further savings). The card is encoded
to only sell tickets with a discount if they expire before 30 September.
Last year I didn't get my card until part way through October. I asked to
have the ticket backdated to start 1 October so it would allow the discount
(it worked out cheaper for me still), but was told it could not be done. To
add insult to injury the ticket office man tried to sell me a ticket that
would cover me from that day up to 30 September. This worked out more
expensive that the annual! I went to several tube stations and eventually
found someone human who was prepared to do it. Fingers crossed I will find
another one this year (that station no longer has a working ticket office).

Next year will all be done online, lets hope.

Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

See this from the FAQ section of the Young Person Railcard website -
the last sentence in particular...
(I've copied it in full for posterity should they ever correct it)

-----
14. Can I use my Railcard for tickets for travel on the London
Underground? All discounted rail tickets bought using your Railcard
routed 'between London termini' are valid for cross-London transfer on
the London Underground. Off-Peak Day Travelcards (All Zones only) are
also available, subject to a minimum fare. Please note, however, that
you cannot use your Railcard to obtain a discount when purchasing
tickets from a London Underground booking office.
-----

Does this also mean I can't get a YPR discount on an Amersham to Aylesbury
ticket (a journey I'm due to make several times).

(Indeed what's the cheapest way to get a good discount on an extension from
a 1-6 travelcard to Aylesbury? PAYG to Amersham, then buy a return ticket at
the office there and on the way back jump onto the platform to touch in then
back onto the train, or a straightforward extension from Marylebone/Harrow?)

Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

See this from the FAQ section of the Young Person Railcard website -
the last sentence in particular...
(I've copied it in full for posterity should they ever correct it)

-----
14. Can I use my Railcard for tickets for travel on the London
Underground? All discounted rail tickets bought using your Railcard
routed 'between London termini' are valid for cross-London transfer on
the London Underground. Off-Peak Day Travelcards (All Zones only) are
also available, subject to a minimum fare. Please note, however, that
you cannot use your Railcard to obtain a discount when purchasing
tickets from a London Underground booking office.
-----

Does this also mean I can't get a YPR discount on an Amersham to Aylesbury
ticket (a journey I'm due to make several times).

Usefully if and when you manage to get an LU ticket office to sell you
a YPR-discounted all-zones Day Travelcard they actually throw in zones
A-D as well for no extra cost, so that makes it better value to
actually buy said YPR-discounted Travelcard from an LU as opposed to a
National Rail (NR) ticket office! Of course most people wouldn't care
as they're not going out to the far reaches of the Metropolitan Line in
Buckinghamshire, but for those who are it's well worth knowing.

This has been mentioned several times before on this newsgroup by
several people so whilst I haven't done it myself I'm certain it is the
case. In particular see this June 2005 uk.railway thread via Google
Groups [1] (the FAQ numbering on the YPR website I refer to has
obviously been changed around since then).

Why this is the case is a different matter. I guess in part because
it's convenient administratively for LU to throw A-D in for free -
perhaps they've done it unilaterally as it has no impact on NR TOCs
(apart of course from Chiltern Railways given the interavailbility of
LU tickets on their services - though they have a specifically
intertwined relationship with LU, and they have presumable agreed to
it).

I also guess NR don't issue such YPR-discounted Travelcards as zones
A-D is LU territory, which is a shame. It's also possible to buy from
NR ticket offices a _non-discounted_ Day Travelcard that covers zones
A-D - see section L of the NR National Fares Manual (page L1 [2]) - but
seemingly you can only do this for the off-peak Fay Travelcard, not the
peak version.

(Whilst that section mentions Cheap-Day Returns to the Buckinghamshire
Met Line stations I'm sure that only applies to journeys coming from
the other way on the Chiltern Line - i.e. Aylesbury - allowing a change
from a Chiltern train onto a Met Line train if needed to complete the
journey.)


(Indeed what's the cheapest way to get a good discount on an extension from
a 1-6 travelcard to Aylesbury? PAYG to Amersham, then buy a return ticket at
the office there and on the way back jump onto the platform to touch in then
back onto the train, or a straightforward extension from Marylebone/Harrow?)

If you're using Oyster PAYG (on either the Met or Chiltern) then you'd
need to touch out at Amersham, likewise coming back from Aylesbury
you'd need to touch in again (if you don't you're subject to a Penalty
Fare, the unresolved journey doesn't contribute to your daily cap and
from November you'll be charged £4 for unresolved journeys). At
Amersham there's gates in operation, at least some of the time, which
might well make jumping off and on the same train a bit of an
impossible mission!

You can of course buy a ticket at Marylebone (or from any NR ticket
office - notionally at least!) from either the boundary of zone 6, or
Amersham, to Aylesbury. The Harrow-on-the-Hill ticket office is run by
LU who might either not be able to do this or struggle to do it, I
don't know.

Not knowing how often you'll have to make the journey, at what time
you'll be setting off and where you're starting from it's hard to say
what you're best option is.

Remember that (in theory at least) you could buy a YPR-discounted Day
Travelcard from an LU ticket office (thus getting the free zones A-D)
in advance.

-----
[1] June 2005 uk.railway thread
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....c2cc172dc479cc
or via shortURL http://tinyurl.com/oposx

[2] National Fares Manual - Section L
http://www.atoc.org/retail/_download...4_Common_L.pdf

On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 02:21:10 +0100, Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:

See this from the FAQ section of the Young Person Railcard website -
the last sentence in particular...
(I've copied it in full for posterity should they ever correct it)

-----
14. Can I use my Railcard for tickets for travel on the London
Underground? All discounted rail tickets bought using your Railcard
routed 'between London termini' are valid for cross-London transfer on
the London Underground. Off-Peak Day Travelcards (All Zones only) are
also available, subject to a minimum fare. Please note, however, that
you cannot use your Railcard to obtain a discount when purchasing
tickets from a London Underground booking office.
-----

Does this also mean I can't get a YPR discount on an Amersham to Aylesbury
ticket (a journey I'm due to make several times).

I think the answer is that you can.


As far as I can work out, the rules for using Railcards at LU ticket
offices are as follows. These have been pieced together from a
combination of anecdotes, personal experience, and educated guesswork,
so if anyone has any official sources of this information, or any
experiences that contradict the below, I'd be interested to hear them.

- At all LU ticket offices, any valid Railcard may be used to purchase
a Zones 1-D ODTC for £4.80 for the holder (and, if the type of
Railcard normally permits it, for accompanying persons).

(If using a Gold Card, one of the following rules may apply:
-you can't buy a discounted ODTC for yourself; or
-if your annual season doesn't include a Z1-6 Travelcard, and if you
want to buy discounted ODTCs for other people, you *must* also buy one
for yourself.)

- At LU ticket offices at stations served by NR (e.g. Blackhorse Road,
Greenford, West Brompton), you can also buy Railcard discounted
Standard/Cheap Day Singles/Returns, for journeys that *only* involve
NR.

(This might not apply on Thameslink/Chiltern, to those journeys where
Tube fares apply even if you use NR.)

- NO other Railcard discounted tickets are available. Not even if you
have a Gold Card issued by LU. So if you turn up at Oxford Circus and
ask for a ticket to Brighton, you can't get a Railcard discount
(although you would have been able to if you'd bought your ticket in
advance at a NR ticket office). Even if you have a Z1-6 annual
Travelcard and just want an extension to Brighton, you don't get a
discount on it.

(Indeed what's the cheapest way to get a good discount on an extension from
a 1-6 travelcard to Aylesbury? PAYG to Amersham, then buy a return ticket at
the office there and on the way back jump onto the platform to touch in then
back onto the train, or a straightforward extension from Marylebone/Harrow?)

Find out the price of a Boundary Zone 6 to Aylesbury return (not
available online). Compare this to the price of an Amersham-Aylesbury
return plus a pair of zone A-D PAYG singles.

Incidentally, the former would also allow you to travel via High
Wycombe, giving a bit of extra flexibility. And you wouldn't have to
leave the train at Amersham in search of a validator (possibly missing
it and having to wait for the next one).

Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

I don't have any experience of the Student scheme but I can certainly
say it's far better than what went before it - which was no discounts
for students in London at all whatsoever. Cheaper or free travel for
youngsters and discounts for students are really significant gains IMO,
all courtesy of Mr Livingstone, even if I'm not entirely sure aout
whether 100% free bus travel is a good idea.

The student discount predates Ken - it was around at least as early as 1998.
Although at first it was very much aimed at full time undergraduates - not
available over the summer and not available to students over 25. There was a
successful campaign on this spearheaded by the President of one particular
UofL college's Students' Union - can anyone guess which?


Imperial? And what you say is a little unclear - was the successful
campaign's aim to get the 30% student discount in the first place or to
get it extended to older students? Does anyone know the exact year when
the scheme did start? If it was to get it extended to older students,
when did this happen?

I wasn't really following public transport developments very closely
around that time

I confess I totally went out on a limb in giving credit to Mr
Livingstone for the student discount scheme - I knew it was a
relatively recent innovation, and I know he's behind the other
discounts, so I made an erroneous presumption! I wasn't really
following public transport developments very closely around that time.

It's interesting that *if* the student scheme started in '98 - given
that London Transport was controlled by the central government back
then - I wonder if it took the change from the Tories to Labour being
in power for this to get the nod from the Department for Transport (and
possibly the Treasury).


I think part of the problem here stems from differing perceptions of
students' needs. Whilst I personally find the season ticket works out
cheaper overall (even if I leave aside "frivilous" journeys like popping
into Stratford and Ilford *far* more often than I would if I was buying
tickets on the day), for many students living within reach of the campus the
journeys they make elsewhere seem to (ULU will be doing a survey on this)
work out cheaper. And of course the YPR has raised expectations - indeed I
wonder if the availability of YPR discounted travelcards from Underground
ticket offices would be more widely known if the TfL discount didn't exist.


I guess if the TfL student discount didn't exist then you might be
right - the knowledge that you can get YPR-discounted Travelcards at
Underground ticket offices might have a greater spread. The first time
I ever heard that this was possible was on this newsgroup.

Of course if more people knew about it, more people would try and buy
it so more LU ticket offices would be clued up on it.

One thing to bear in mind is that the YPR-discounted Day Travelcard has
in the past been more expensive (if only something like 10p more
expensive) than a zones 1&2 Travelcard - and even now it's only 10p
cheaper. For those students who regularly need nothing more than zones
1&2 they're likely never to have considered it. Likewise students who
live further out who buy zones 1-4 Day Travelcards might be taking a
bus to a rail/Tube station - so they just buy a Day Travelcard from a
newsagent on the day, where the YPR discount definitely isn't
available, so they never really consider it (though they could benefit
by buying it advance from an NR/LU ticket office). And students who
don't need zone 1 can just get the cheaper zones 2-6 Day Travelcard at
£4.30.

And then, of course, there's Oyster PAYG for those who don't need to
use NR. The zones 1&2 daily cap is £4.40, the zones 1-4 daily cap is
£4.90, and depending on the amount of travel the cap might never be
reached.

So perhaps for all of the reason above, combined with the YPR publicity
that denies the discount is available from LU ticket offices, has meant
that word to the wise hasn't spread amongst London's students.

tkd wrote:

Yes. Because of the delays in getting a card., you are also prevented from
buying an annual ticket (and therefore further savings). The card is
encoded to only sell tickets with a discount if they expire before 30
September. Last year I didn't get my card until part way through October.
I asked to have the ticket backdated to start 1 October so it would allow
the discount (it worked out cheaper for me still), but was told it could
not be done.

Curious - I've purchased annual tickets at Stratford, Vauxhall and Russell
Square. Each time it was some days into October and so they sold me it at an
annual ticket price but running from that day until September 30th. (And I
always had the fares leaflet with me to check.)

To
add insult to injury the ticket office man tried to sell me a ticket that
would cover me from that day up to 30 September. This worked out more
expensive that the annual! I went to several tube stations and eventually
found someone human who was prepared to do it. Fingers crossed I will find
another one this year (that station no longer has a working ticket
office).

Try Russell Square or somewhere similarly near to a university campus.

Mizter T wrote:

(Indeed what's the cheapest way to get a good discount on an extension
from
a 1-6 travelcard to Aylesbury? PAYG to Amersham, then buy a return
ticket at
the office there and on the way back jump onto the platform to touch in
then
back onto the train, or a straightforward extension from
Marylebone/Harrow?)

If you're using Oyster PAYG (on either the Met or Chiltern) then you'd
need to touch out at Amersham, likewise coming back from Aylesbury
you'd need to touch in again (if you don't you're subject to a Penalty
Fare, the unresolved journey doesn't contribute to your daily cap and
from November you'll be charged £4 for unresolved journeys). At
Amersham there's gates in operation, at least some of the time, which
might well make jumping off and on the same train a bit of an
impossible mission!

There are also readers on the London bound platform (at least - I've never
looked on the other two). I have managed to jump off touch in jump on for a
single train before but I agree it's messy.

Not knowing how often you'll have to make the journey, at what time
you'll be setting off and where you're starting from it's hard to say
what you're best option is.

Generally I travel during the day - anytime leaving Baker Street any time
from noon til three. It's a journey probably made on average every three
months.

Remember that (in theory at least) you could buy a YPR-discounted Day
Travelcard from an LU ticket office (thus getting the free zones A-D)
in advance.

Yup - but aside from all the hassle, I have a zones 1-6 season travelcard so
I'm looking at the extension option only.

Mizter T wrote:

The student discount predates Ken - it was around at least as early as
1998.
Although at first it was very much aimed at full time undergraduates -
not
available over the summer and not available to students over 25. There
was a
successful campaign on this spearheaded by the President of one
particular
UofL college's Students' Union - can anyone guess which?

Imperial?

No - Birkbeck.

And what you say is a little unclear - was the successful
campaign's aim to get the 30% student discount in the first place or to
get it extended to older students? Does anyone know the exact year when
the scheme did start? If it was to get it extended to older students,
when did this happen?

TfL did a presentation at the NUS London Region day for new SU officers
about the scheme and its history. I *think* 1998 was the first year of
operation but it may have been 1997. I can ask old hands at ULU some time.

The information (and drafts of press letters) that I've seen were focused
very much on the scheme being only open to full time 18-24 * year old
students and not available over summer. A lot of postgraduate, mature and
part-time students found this outrageous - hence the Birkbeck campaign.

* I've no idea if it went under to 16-17 years olds.