On 16 Dec, 15:22, Rupert Candy wrote:

On Dec 13, 1:56 pm, Mizter T wrote:

(snip)

That's a fare that falls within the London zonal fares regime - since
January 2007 all National Rail fares in the London zones, regardless
of TOC, are priced set according to a zonal fare scale (though still
issued on a point-to-point basis).

The only tickets available for such journeys are Anytime Singles,
Anytime Day Returns and Off-Peak Returns (aka CDRs) - plus of course
Travelcards and Oyster PAYG on a limited number of routes (and indeed
LU fares on a few routes that have interavailable ticketing).

Personally I think this is the worst of both worlds-no oyster PAYG,
zonal fares as on the tube, but they can't be used zonally- so you
couldn't use a Bromley South-"Zone 4" single to either Beckenham
Junction or Hill, depending on which came first. (Not a brilliant
example, but you get the idea- London Terminals to West Dulwich
couldn't be used at Tulse Hill). I think this was a massively
premature step towards full integration of the fare system, since
they're now saying 'late 2009' for Oyster PAYG.


I'd say it's not really any worse than the situation that existed
prior to this change - that said I do absolutely acknowledge the point
that zonal pricing inevitably creates winners and losers, and the fact
that the tickets are still issued point-to-point means that the normal
concomitant increase in flexibility associated with the introduction
of zonal fares has not occurred.

However I don't think that you really give sufficient weight to the
politics involved in this - zonal pricing for paper tickets is
basically regarded as an necessary precursor to the introduction of
zonal PAYG fares (and the idea that there might be non-zonal fares on
PAYG is a nightmare both in terms of passenger comprehension and also
systems implementation). Therefore TfL persuading DfT to foist zonal
pricing on the London TOCs, doubtless against some opposition, can
only be regarded as a win in the ongoing saga of bringing Oyster PAYG
to the mainline railways.

You say this is premature - I'd counter that this change was necessary
to progressing the argument on. One of the many arguments the TOCs had
against Oyster PAYG is that they'd lose the freedom to set their own
fares - this change nullifies that argument.

As to why they didn't implement full zonal ticketing rather than
retaining point-to-point tickets, I'm sure there are a whole host of
concerns the TOCs would have about that - revenue allocation being a
crucial issue (something that can be done far more tightly with PAYG),
and the potential for misuse of such tickets being another.

Changing over to an LU-style zonal ticketing system would also have
great number of other implications - for example, LU tickets are not
valid for Break of Journey whilst National Rail tickets are. Would you
remove BoJ, or retain it - and if you retained it what about the
implications for the misuse of tickets?