Last week I had call to make a journey from Sudbury Hill to Kings Cross.
There are two options for making this journey

1) Take Piccadilly Line East to King's Cross. Zones used 1-4
2) Take Piccadilly Line West to Rayner's Lane. Change at Rayner's Lane
for Eastbound Metropolitan line service to King's Cross. Zones used 1-5

Route 2 is the one suggested by TfL's journey planner and is typically
slightly faster.

As I have a 1-4 travel card I would typically use route 1.
However occasionally (if there are problems with the Picc in the central
area and/or if I am in a particular rush) I might decided the extra cost
of going through zone 5 is desirable.

In the years before oyster I did this by extending my 1-4 season ticket
to include zone 5.

However I now understand that the Oyster Pre-pay[1] mechanism replaces
season ticket extension (that is what a ticket office person told me
anyway - not on the occasion of the journey in question admittedly).

So I went through zone 5 on this occasion but was not charged the extra.
Whilst I am obviously happy to save the money (and am unlikely to
proactively pursue TfL to give them it) it does occur to me that this
could be seen as fare evasion.
So what should I have done differently in order to avoid evasion? Were
there some within station Oyster touch-plates at Rayner's Lane that I
missed?


[1] Rather a silly term - I'm not sure I have ever encountered a
post-pay rail ticket.



--
Each day a man watched a donkey walk past a high wood fence with one
plank removed. Each day he saw a nose, then the ears, then the neck,
forequarters, back and finally the tail. He pondered this for a time
and eventually declared. “I understand now. The nose causes the tail”

"David Howdon" wrote in
message ...

snip

If you do, it'll be unfair evasion.

--
Brian
"Fight like the Devil, die like a gentleman."

On 13 May, 18:21, David Howdon
wrote:
So I went through zone 5 on this occasion but was not charged the extra.
Whilst I am obviously happy to save the money (and am unlikely to
proactively pursue TfL to give them it) it does occur to me that this
could be seen as fare evasion.
So what should I have done differently in order to avoid evasion? Were
there some within station Oyster touch-plates at Rayner's Lane that I
missed?

This has been discussed here a few times before. Basically, Oyster
appears to have no mechanism for varying the fare by route. Instead,
every pair of stations seems to have a fixed price based on the most
obvious route, but you can actually take whatever route you like. As
long as you're touching in and out correctly, you aren't fare evading.

U

On May 13, 6:42 pm, Mr Thant
wrote:
On 13 May, 18:21, David Howdon

wrote:
So I went through zone 5 on this occasion but was not charged the extra.
Whilst I am obviously happy to save the money (and am unlikely to
proactively pursue TfL to give them it) it does occur to me that this
could be seen as fare evasion.
So what should I have done differently in order to avoid evasion? Were
there some within station Oyster touch-plates at Rayner's Lane that I
missed?

This has been discussed here a few times before. Basically, Oyster
appears to have no mechanism for varying the fare by route. Instead,
every pair of stations seems to have a fixed price based on the most
obvious route, but you can actually take whatever route you like. As
long as you're touching in and out correctly, you aren't fare evading.

At one point with paper tickets, there was a mention that you must
travel via a direct route. A Zone 2-1 single would be valid from
Ladbrooke Grove to Paddington, but wouldn't be valid on a journey from
Ladbrook grove - Waterloo, stay behind the barriers, then travel to
Paddington.

Mr Thant wrote:

So I went through zone 5 on this occasion but was not charged the extra.
Whilst I am obviously happy to save the money (and am unlikely to
proactively pursue TfL to give them it) it does occur to me that this
could be seen as fare evasion.
So what should I have done differently in order to avoid evasion? Were
there some within station Oyster touch-plates at Rayner's Lane that I
missed?

This has been discussed here a few times before. Basically, Oyster
appears to have no mechanism for varying the fare by route. Instead,
every pair of stations seems to have a fixed price based on the most
obvious route, but you can actually take whatever route you like. As
long as you're touching in and out correctly, you aren't fare evading.

Is there anything stopping the system charging extensions for people who
have a travelcard that's valid for one reasonable route but not another?
Season ticket holders often don't carry much cash on their Oyster and could
be rightly POed if they were getting charged additional for journeying
within the validity of their tickets.

Paul Weaver wrote:
On May 13, 6:42 pm, Mr Thant
wrote:

On 13 May, 18:21, David Howdon

wrote:

So I went through zone 5 on this occasion but was not charged the extra.
Whilst I am obviously happy to save the money (and am unlikely to
proactively pursue TfL to give them it) it does occur to me that this
could be seen as fare evasion.
So what should I have done differently in order to avoid evasion? Were
there some within station Oyster touch-plates at Rayner's Lane that I
missed?

This has been discussed here a few times before. Basically, Oyster
appears to have no mechanism for varying the fare by route. Instead,
every pair of stations seems to have a fixed price based on the most
obvious route, but you can actually take whatever route you like. As
long as you're touching in and out correctly, you aren't fare evading.


At one point with paper tickets, there was a mention that you must
travel via a direct route. A Zone 2-1 single would be valid from
Ladbrooke Grove to Paddington, but wouldn't be valid on a journey from
Ladbrook grove - Waterloo, stay behind the barriers, then travel to
Paddington.


I would suspect that the same rules applies for Oyster PAYG too. If you
try the same with Oyster PAYG and get checked at, say a northbound
Bakerloo train somewhere between Waterloo and Paddington, you may need
very good arguments for being on that train when the last touch-in
record on your card shows "Ladbroke Grove".

But in the OP's particular case this should be no problem. There cannot
possibly be anything suspicious about being on an east-bound
Metropolitan train between Rayner's Lane and Baker Street with an Oyster
card with a last touch-in tecord from Sudbury Hill even if the card
contains a Z 1-4 Travelcard and some PAYG value.

--
Olof Lagerkvist
ICQ: 724451
Web: http://here.is/olof

On 13 May 2007 13:29:02 -0700, Paul Weaver wrote:

At one point with paper tickets, there was a mention that you must
travel via a direct route. A Zone 2-1 single would be valid from
Ladbrooke Grove to Paddington, but wouldn't be valid on a journey from
Ladbrook grove - Waterloo, stay behind the barriers, then travel to
Paddington.

Why wouldn't it be valid? The entire trip as described is within the
zonal validity and while maybe a little odd it's not outside of the
rules. Some people take the most amazing routes between A and B via Z on
the LU network.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

On 13 May, 22:28, "Tim Roll-Pickering"
wrote:
Is there anything stopping the system charging extensions for people who
have a travelcard that's valid for one reasonable route but not another?
Season ticket holders often don't carry much cash on their Oyster and could
be rightly POed if they were getting charged additional for journeying
within the validity of their tickets.

From the fares booklet:
"Some journeys have been defined as requiring travel via Zone 1 and
will be charged and capped accordingly, irrespective of the actual
route taken."

If the blurb is accurate and this is only done for Zone 1, then it
might be more accurate to say that all journeys are defined as being
via the cheapest possible route, unless they think you'd be going via
Zone 1, in which case they charge you for that.

U

On Sun, 13 May 2007 23:25:34 +0100, Paul Corfield wrote:

At one point with paper tickets, there was a mention that you must
travel via a direct route. A Zone 2-1 single would be valid from
Ladbrooke Grove to Paddington, but wouldn't be valid on a journey from
Ladbrook grove - Waterloo, stay behind the barriers, then travel to
Paddington.

Why wouldn't it be valid? The entire trip as described is within the
zonal validity and while maybe a little odd it's not outside of the
rules. Some people take the most amazing routes between A and B via Z on
the LU network.

From the current TfL Conditions of Carriage, regarding LU paper single
and return tickets:

"Can be used to travel by any reasonably direct route to the
destination, unless a particular route is specified by the words on
the ticket, the ticket machines or price list or by one of our staff."

(Re the original post, this condition does not apply to PAYG. Nor is
there any similar one that does.)