Neil Williams wrote:

Phil Richards wrote:

Again what I don't like about bus fares in London (& elsewhere in this
country) is that you need separate tickets for each ride if you need to
change. Again a £1 fare valid for say two hours on any number of buses
would be a better solution.

Agreed.

Alternatively, it could be sold as a benefit of Oyster, as it is with
the Dutch Strippenkaart[1] - say, once you touch in for any bus
journey, you may touch in for free an unlimited number of further times
on different buses[2] within an hour, two hours or whatever. If that
offers a quick return, so be it - I don't think they'd lose a lot from
people doing that.

It would also be completely immune to fraud, unlike a single ticket
which could be passed on. As it's a disadvantage to have to tack a bus
journey onto the end of a Tube or rail journey, you could also either
heavily discount the bus fare if you touch in and out for a Tube or
rail journey 1/2 hours before or after the bus journey, or make it
completely free in such a situation.

[1] Actually, as singles are just 2- or 3-strip Strippenkaarten at an
inflated price, it applies to those as well, but the principle is
there.

[2] to prevent 'pass-back' fraud, i.e. the same Oyster being passed out
of the window to another pax and used again on the same bus.


You don't need to worry about 'pass back' fraud with Oyster - any
Oyster card can only be validated _once_ on any one bus. If you try and
do it again you get an error with a double-beep noise. This is also the
case on bendy buses - once you've touched-in on one reader you can't
then touch-in on any of the others so you can't accidentally pay twice.

(I guess it might be helpful for people who're unsure if they'd
successfully touched in or not if there was some different error noise
that signified 'this card has already been validated on this bus', but
that however is a somewhat different issue).

Arthur Figgis wrote:
On 19 Oct 2006 09:12:52 -0700, "Mizter T" wrote:

Full DfT press release via the Government News Network:
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fu...leaseID=235656
or via shorturl http://tinyurl.com/y8sm6v

"There are over 330 rail stations within the Travelcard zones, and at
present each of 97,300 different station-to-station combinations has
its own set of fares."

Does this add up?

snip


So what am I failing to see? Perhaps an effect of the zonal fares
already in place, so (say) Waddon, West Croydon and Carshalton
Beeches (etc) don't have their own sets of fares?


The way the fares system currently works is that each station is either
"fully-priced", in which case it has fares to local stations and *every*
other "fully-priced" station on the network, or it's a related station,
which will only have local fares, and for anything else you'll need to
look at the appropriate "fully-priced" station.

So, for example, Birmingham and Norwich are "fully-priced" stations, but
Highbridge (Somerset) is a related station, priced to/from Bridgwater,
so if you were looking for a fare from Birmingham to Highbridge, you'd
*actually* look at Birmingham to Bridgwater.

If, on the other hand, you were looking for a fare from Highbridge to
Yatton, you'd look it up under Highbridge itself, as that's a purely
local journey.

So it's entirely possible that the figure of 97,300 combinations is
correct but it'd take a while to check

HTH,

Barry

"Mizter T" wrote
This BBC London webpage include a fares table comparing the current and
future single (SDS), standard return (SDR) and cheap day return (CDR)
fares between a number of stations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/..._feature.shtml

Any prizes for guessing where that photograph was taken? I think it's
Scotland.

"John Salmon" wrote in message
...

"Mizter T" wrote
This BBC London webpage include a fares table comparing the current and
future single (SDS), standard return (SDR) and cheap day return (CDR)
fares between a number of stations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/..._feature.shtml

Any prizes for guessing where that photograph was taken? I think it's
Scotland.

Might be Glasgow Queen Street, but I'm not sure.

Barry Salter wrote:
Arthur Figgis wrote:
"There are over 330 rail stations within the Travelcard zones, and at
present each of 97,300 different station-to-station combinations has
its own set of fares."

Does this add up?

So what am I failing to see? Perhaps an effect of the zonal fares
already in place, so (say) Waddon, West Croydon and Carshalton
Beeches (etc) don't have their own sets of fares?


The way the fares system currently works is that each station is either
"fully-priced", in which case it has fares to local stations and *every*
other "fully-priced" station on the network, or it's a related station,
which will only have local fares, and for anything else you'll need to
look at the appropriate "fully-priced" station.

(snip)

So it's entirely possible that the figure of 97,300 combinations is
correct but it'd take a while to check

I wondered if some pairs were not priced because of the stupidity of
making a journey - e.g. Walthamstow Central to Walthamstow Queens Road.


However, the Trainline comes back with two routes for this:
via Hackney Downs Seven Sisters walk South Tottenham - 85 minutes
- £4.90 CDS
or walk - 17 minutes - no price

so perhaps that's not it!

Mizter T wrote:
wrote:

this seems to mean big fare rises for some:
e.g. Surbiton to Waterloo cheap day return: now £4.20,
zone 1-6 rail only CDR: £5.70


This BBC London webpage include a fares table comparing the current and
future single (SDS), standard return (SDR) and cheap day return (CDR)
fares between a number of stations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/..._feature.shtml

Notice how in almost all cases on this list, while there may be savings
for singles and peak returns, the cheap day return is more expensive.

Furthermore, none of these illustrate the rail-tube-rail fares where
the fare rises are pretty steep for cheap day returns - e.g. Clapham
Junction to Finsbury Park (zone 2 to zone 2) goes from £4.40 cheap day
return to £7.00 cheap day return, Orpington to West Hampstead (zone 6
to zone 2) goes from £5.50 cheap day return to £9.70 cheap day
return.

The principle on cross London rail-tube-rail journeys has most recently
been that the tube part is free. Now the rail-tube-rail fare is being
set at the same level as the rail-tube fare.

As cheap day returns are those used by off-peak travellers, travellers
at the weekend, passengers travelling for discretionary reasons -
surely the revenue that the railways would want to seek, this is a very
bad move and I don't see how London TravelWatch can claim this is good
news.

Jonathan

Harry G wrote:

Barry Salter wrote:
Arthur Figgis wrote:
"There are over 330 rail stations within the Travelcard zones, and at
present each of 97,300 different station-to-station combinations has
its own set of fares."

Does this add up?

So what am I failing to see? Perhaps an effect of the zonal fares
already in place, so (say) Waddon, West Croydon and Carshalton
Beeches (etc) don't have their own sets of fares?


The way the fares system currently works is that each station is either
"fully-priced", in which case it has fares to local stations and *every*
other "fully-priced" station on the network, or it's a related station,
which will only have local fares, and for anything else you'll need to
look at the appropriate "fully-priced" station.

(snip)

So it's entirely possible that the figure of 97,300 combinations is
correct but it'd take a while to check

I wondered if some pairs were not priced because of the stupidity of
making a journey - e.g. Walthamstow Central to Walthamstow Queens Road.


However, the Trainline comes back with two routes for this:
via Hackney Downs Seven Sisters walk South Tottenham - 85 minutes
- £4.90 CDS
or walk - 17 minutes - no price


If you're able bodied then it shouldn't take you any longer than 10
minutes at the most to walk it.

In article , Arthur Figgis
] writes
"There are over 330 rail stations within the Travelcard zones, and at
present each of 97,300 different station-to-station combinations has
its own set of fares."

Does this add up?

330 stations can come in 54285 combinations, or 108570 permuations
(which may be more appropriate as the fares may not be the same in
both directions(?)) .

Perhaps it's a mix of these: 54285 combinations, plus 43015 cases where
the fare is different in each direction.

--
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Some of the CDRs could, with Railcard/Privilege discounts, be brought
down to below the price of a Travelcard, which has a £4.80 minimum (at
least for Railcards - I don't know much about Priv). So a few might
end up being issued (although this probably still doesn't apply to the
£9.60 ones)

A Priv Travelcard is only avaliable in Z1-6 and is 75p (IIRC) for Kids,
and £2 for adults.
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On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:53:09 GMT, S Wright
wrote:

Some of the CDRs could, with Railcard/Privilege discounts, be brought
down to below the price of a Travelcard, which has a £4.80 minimum (at
least for Railcards - I don't know much about Priv). So a few might
end up being issued (although this probably still doesn't apply to the
£9.60 ones)

A Priv Travelcard is only avaliable in Z1-6 and is 75p (IIRC) for Kids,
and £2 for adults.

But that is only for use on LU though. There is not a Priv Travelcard
that works on National Rail but I did once persuade a booking clerk to
issue one (many years ago) ;-)

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!