Mr Thant wrote:

On 28 Apr, 09:52, Mizter T wrote:

On 28 Apr, 00:47, MIG wrote:

I've got some queries that might take a bit of working out and could
take a bit of time and money to test.

The PAYG fare from the southern end of the DLR to Bethnal Green (zone
2) is £1, which presumably means that it is assumed to involve going
via Stratford.

Indeed.

You can also get to Bethnal Green without going to Z3, changing at Bow
Church/Road and Mile End.


True, that's a good point and thus suggests that a straightforward
Lewisham to Bethnal Green journey may not actually be defined as being
via Stratford (zone 3), but instead via the Bows (and thus zone 2).

Perhaps the only way to tell would be to do some complicated
experimentation to see whether an Oyster with the zones 1&2 price cap
then shifted to having the zones 1-4 price cap after making a journey
from (for example) Bethnal Green to Lewisham DLR (i.e. to determine
exactly which way the system did define the route).

Of course if one changed at Bow Church/ Bow Road then one would have
to pass through some ticket gates, however from past experience simply
passing through gates (for an out-of-station interchange) which
clearly demonstrated that I didn't pass through zone 1 nonetheless
didn't ensure that I wasn't charged the via zone 1 fare, because the
presumed route between my start and end-points was defined as via zone
1 and hence the fare was charged as such. More on that later!


Question 1: If you touched at the mysterious readers at Bank DLR,
would it treat it as a continuation of a journey nevertheless always
priced at £1, or would it work out that you'd been via zone 1 and
charge £1.50/£2?

You'd be charged the via zone 1 fare.

I don't know if you would. I think we've concluded before that you're
always charged based on your end points, regardless of where you touch
during your journey (within reason).


I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one - because what would happen is
that the system would first of all regard your journeys as (for
example) Lewisham to Bank, and then on exiting at Bethnal Green that
journey would be extended so as to be Lewisham to Bethnal Green.

It would appear thus on your Journey History (if you checked it at a
Tube ticket machine)...

-----
Lewisham - Bank
Lewisham - Bethnal Green
-----

...with (if you were using PAYG) the appropriate fare being deducted
on the second line. However the via zone 1
fare would not be recalculated on exit at Bethnal Green simply because
a straightforward Lewisham to Bethnal Green journey is defined as
being via Stratford, because the foundation of the journey's fare is
the Lewisham to Bank leg if one touched-in at Bank DLR.

(Which would thus make it worthwhile ensuring that one does *not*
touch on one of the standalone Oyster readers at Bank DLR, at least
for certain journeys.)

The basic point being that if an end-to-end journey is charged as via
zone 1 for any of its length (because one touches-in/out in zone 1
even on a standalone Oyster reader), the whole journey is then charged
on the basis of being via zone 1 and one is not refunded as if one did
not travel through zone 1. (There was a recent example of this from a
poster here that I'll try and dig up.)

Anyway MIG has successfully piqued my interest enough to persuade me
to waste (yet) more of my money on conducting a few experiments, which
I will do in the not-too-distant future and then report back here.


Interesting question, I'm not entirely sure, and I'm pretty sure I've
pondered on very similar issues in the past.

I believe the charging extra for out-of-zone journeys only applies if
you don't have Z1 and the presumed route is via Z1.


OK, that kinda makes sense.

By the by, I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds it quite hard to
discuss these issues using unambiguous plain English!