On May 31, 10:12*am, "Andrew Heenan" wrote:

"D DB 90001" wrote:

Southern seem to be gaining oyster readers at many of the
stations I have visited recently, so they are going to be
accepting oyster PAYG soon presumably, the main barrier
to implementation being revenue allocation, and not lack of
Oyster readers.

Revenue allocation is not the issue now - the agreements have been made
operator by operator, not line by line; so Southerns deal was made before
they started installing readers on non-shared stations.

Bzzt... that's basically all wrong Andrew! With regards to the limited
number of existing National Rail (NR) routes that accept Oyster PAYG -
e.g. FGW, c2c - then agreement has indeed been reached individually
between the TOC and TfL. However with regards to the rest of the
network, all the London TOCs are negotiating through ATOC with TfL to
reach an agreement - this appears to have been tortuous, and as yet no
word has come out that the final agreement has actually been signed.


Much more likely that installation is being phased to spread the financial
pain, and where possible to tie in with other work. It's not the readers
that are expensive, but installing them and making them part of the system.
There's even planning issues; though they may appear random, someone has
decided where they should go. The apparent randomness may indicate shortcuts
to share cable runs with other items, etc., etc.

See my comments above. Installation of Oyster readers at NR stations
does at least show that the TOCs ha eventually agreed in principle to
the inevitable, i.e. accepting Oyster PAYG. But the nitty gritty dirty
detail of revenue allocation is almost certainly what's holding
everything up.

D DB 90001 writes:

Oyster capping however would add another complication to the mix
because the single fare which previously would have been wholly
allocated to a particular TOC would now be reduced since the oyster
reductions for further journeys are 0. To be honest it would be easier
at this stage to *give up* as it were, and simply adopt a travelcard
revenue allocation method. But maybe it could be possible to only
divide up the total revenue between the operators used and the
operators not used on this occasion get nothing? Not sure if this
would make the revenue allocation skewed on Oyster/non-Oyster routes
though.

Would it not be possible to adopt a system whereby once the cap is
reached, each operator gets the proportion of the capped fair according
to usage. So if (for simplicity of illustration) all single fares were
£1 and the cap £5 and someone makes 2 journeys on operator A and 1 on
operator B, operator A would get £2 and operator B £1. If the cap is
reached and the person makes 4 journey on operator A and 2 on operator
B, then operator A would get £5 x 4/6 = £3.33 and operator B £5 x 2/6 =
£1.67.

On 31 May, 09:03, "Richardr" wrote:
"D DB 90001" wrote



However, I still think that local suburban services that *do*
terminate inside of Z1-6 or at stations such as Sevenoaks or Dartford
just outside Z6 should be managed by TfL, just like all bus routes,
even those which run outside of London but are mainly inside Z1-6, are
managed and run by TfL. Frankly because TfL are more likely to get
better results than other local authorities or DfT.

But the capacity on the roads isn't constrained in the same way as that on
the railways.

I believe that a lot of London commuter routes run at pretty much capacity
at peak times. Allowing one part of the route to determine what happens
there fixes what happens elsewhere.

Take Thameslink, for example, which stops and potentially stops at a lot of
London stations. If the Mayor of London had sole rights to determine
stopping patterns in London, then he would, quite rightly for him and his
electors, choose patterns wanted by his constituents, which I would imagine
would mean stopping all trains at all stops in Greater London. Thus those
passengers from outside London, e.g. Brighton and Bedford, would get a
massive deterioration in service.

I can't see why letting London alone decide the Thameslink timetable in its
own interests is such the bonus you think to Brighton or Bedford people?

Isn't it the same for most south-east routes - nearly all of which are
designed mainly for non-Londoners to get to and from London, or share tracks
with such a route?

....which is why all the different service patterns should probably
largely have their own tracks. Strange as it is to hold the WCML up as
a paragon of "doing it right", but aside from the missing stop at
Willesden Junction and having the lines grouped by use not direction,
it works so extremely well that all you could do to improve it,
probably, is to add the aforementioned two things above. Perhaps
reduce headways to squeeze in a few more peak trains...but that's
about it. All because the London stopping pattern in the Urban / Inner
Suburban "New" lines doesn't affect the Inner / Outer Suburban "Slow"
lines, which in turn doesn't affect the Intercity "Fast" lines.

Pairing by direction would let you potentially run a service that
dealt with the inner suburbans properly. Currently the New lines are
too long, forcing you to change to the Slow line services at Harrow
for a reasonable journey time, which being on opposite sides of the
footbridge and with a poor service frequency, means dangerous crowds
scrambling across it to get between them. Ideally, the trains would be
the things doing the moves between lines, not the passengers, or at
the very least, it would offer a cross-platform interchange. Put in a
shared platform loop between the New and Slow lines where possible and
the New lines' services could then be multiplied and sped up with non-
stopping services (or more WJ-EUS shuttles), making stops at Harrow
for outer surburbans less important. That would give a better service
for Londoners without impacting on those living beyond Watford. The
new shuttle services being run between Watford Junction and Euston in
the peaks show this sort of solution can work, but they will forever
be constrained by the fact that the slow lines are primarily outer
suburban services who want to run fast between Watford and Euston.

Same goes for the former GCML. Jubilee covers the all-stations Urban
stops, the Met covers the Inner and Outer Suburbans, and Chiltern
covers the remnants of the Intercity option. Mixing with the fast Mets
north of Harrow is fine given the lack of route north of Aylesbury and
the option of diverting via Princes Riseborough....but if it did ever
pick up more services north of there that became popular, maybe quad-
tracking from Watford South Junction to Amersham or wherever the Met
terminates might be worthwhile. Or, for simplicity, give Chiltern
everything north of Moor Park, and let them fund quad
tracks...thinking about it, might make a better case for electrifying
it too, if they have their own dedicated tracks all the way.

"Mizter T" wrote ...
Bzzt... that's basically all wrong Andrew! With regards to the limited
number of existing National Rail (NR) routes that accept Oyster PAYG -
e.g. FGW, c2c - then agreement has indeed been reached individually
between the TOC and TfL. However with regards to the rest of the
network, all the London TOCs are negotiating through ATOC with TfL to
reach an agreement - this appears to have been tortuous, and as yet no
word has come out that the final agreement has actually been signed.

Are you sure?
I'm happy to accept that I could be wrong about the details of the players -
ATOC / TfL / Franchisee, etc., but I find it hard to believe they are
starting installation before the deal is totally done; I've certainly read
nothing in the national or railway press to suggest that; and with the
overlapping of routes and operators, that could take forever, with
passengers being unable to predict what a journey would cost in the
meantime.

My reading suggests that the arguments have been about the *formula* for
payment, not about line-by-line.

But if you know better, I withdraw my comments (you usually do!).

Andrew


Much more likely that installation is being phased to spread the financial
pain, and where possible to tie in with other work. It's not the readers
that are expensive, but installing them and making them part of the
system.
There's even planning issues; though they may appear random, someone has
decided where they should go. The apparent randomness may indicate
shortcuts
to share cable runs with other items, etc., etc.

See my comments above. Installation of Oyster readers at NR stations
does at least show that the TOCs ha eventually agreed in principle to
the inevitable, i.e. accepting Oyster PAYG. But the nitty gritty dirty
detail of revenue allocation is almost certainly what's holding
everything up.

On May 31, 10:34*am, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Sun, 31 May 2009 10:12:53 +0100, "Andrew Heenan"
wrote:

"D DB 90001" wrote:
Southern seem to be gaining oyster readers at many of the
stations I have visited recently, so they are going to be
accepting oyster PAYG soon presumably, the main barrier
to implementation being revenue allocation, and not lack of
Oyster readers.

Revenue allocation is not the issue now - the agreements have been made
operator by operator, not line by line; so Southerns deal was made before
they started installing readers on non-shared stations.

Was it? *How do you know? * All the official statements seem to indicate
that the commercial agreements over fares and money have dragged behind
agreement to install the equipment. *The latter is (relatively) non
controversial given TfL are stumping up the cash.

Indeed.


Much more likely that installation is being phased to spread the financial
pain, and where possible to tie in with other work. It's not the readers
that are expensive, but installing them and making them part of the system.
There's even planning issues; though they may appear random, someone has
decided where they should go. The apparent randomness may indicate shortcuts
to share cable runs with other items, etc., etc.

I doubt it is anything to do with "spreading pain" given TfL are funding
it and the expenditure is already late. Surely it's much more to do with
the long lead times for design, procurement, manufacture, installation
and then a thorough testing of all of the systems to make sure fares are
being properly calculated and that supporting transaction data actually
reaches the centre and aligns with what testers say they did?

Also I think installation started when the masterplan was for switch-
on to happen earlier rather than later, i.e. some time this year (IIRC
summer was being mooted at one point).

Re testing - I really can't see how much on the ground testing is
going to be possible though, realistically speaking. As soon as the
Oyster readers are turned on, people will start wanting to use them -
and even if they are adorned with notices or covered up, people would
still here the beep and see someone (i.e. the tester) using the reader
and jump to the conclusion that they could use it too. If there is to
be a testing period I'd think it'd have to be fairly short. But maybe
I've got that all wrong.


Do you work on the NR roll out of Oyster?

I believe Mr Heenan does not!

"Mizter T" wrote ...
Do you work on the NR roll out of Oyster?
I believe Mr Heenan does not!

Correct! (stop being right already!)

Andrew

"Mizter T" wrote ...
On May 31, 10:34 am, Paul Corfield wrote:
I doubt it is anything to do with "spreading pain" given TfL are funding
it and the expenditure is already late. Surely it's much more to do with
the long lead times for design, procurement, manufacture, installation
and then a thorough testing of all of the systems to make sure fares are
being properly calculated and that supporting transaction data actually
reaches the centre and aligns with what testers say they did?

It would be naive to think of TfL as a bottomless pit of cash; it's very
unlikely they'd just write a cheque for the lot. The basic equipment has
already been designed, and the software written. Years ago. Much more likely
that the cash would be released bit by bit once the TOCS/NR etc. had done
what was agreed and up to spec. TfL's income is divided into taxpayers cash,
and ticket income; while much of that comes in Dec/Jan these days, a lot
doesn't, and spreading spending through the year would be sensible (and
normal) practice.

I've never heard anything to suggest that there's problems with the kit or
obtaining it; individual installations are another matter, of course, and
what may appear simple to the observer might be a very difficult and
expensive job (and vice versa).

Divvying up fares between operators has been done without problems for 150
years; the issue that's different is the fact that TfL's customers have been
paying lower fares (with the zonal system) than National Rail customers
(except in SE London, where TfLs fares have often been higher). So the
fighting has been about resolving that without rioting TfL passengers - or
rioting NR passengers - or TOCs lowering their fares as they face
bankruptcy.

In Ken's day, the aim was to force TOCS to reduce their fare levels to match
TfL's in London; but with Boris (and, to be fair, the buggered economy), we
are likely to see TfL fares increased to NR levels. I'd guess the squabbling
is about how quickly to do this, bearing in mind that different TOCs have
different fare levels, and therefore some are more desperate than others.
One of the magazines did a 'fare per mile' comparison on London metro routes
a while back - fascinating reading!

SW Trains had much of the pain written into their franchise agreement;
niether Southern nor Southeastern did (too long ago), and with only months
left, Southern aren't going to surrender income lightly. And I don't blame
them.
--

Andrew

On 31 May, 09:03, "Richardr" wrote:
"D DB 90001" wrote



However, I still think that local suburban services that *do*
terminate inside of Z1-6 or at stations such as Sevenoaks or Dartford
just outside Z6 should be managed by TfL, just like all bus routes,
even those which run outside of London but are mainly inside Z1-6, are
managed and run by TfL. Frankly because TfL are more likely to get
better results than other local authorities or DfT.

But the capacity on the roads isn't constrained in the same way as that on
the railways.

I believe that a lot of London commuter routes run at pretty much capacity
at peak times. Allowing one part of the route to determine what happens
there fixes what happens elsewhere.

Take Thameslink, for example, which stops and potentially stops at a lot of
London stations. If the Mayor of London had sole rights to determine
stopping patterns in London, then he would, quite rightly for him and his
electors, choose patterns wanted by his constituents, which I would imagine
would mean stopping all trains at all stops in Greater London. Thus those
passengers from outside London, e.g. Brighton and Bedford, would get a
massive deterioration in service.

I can't see why letting London alone decide the Thameslink timetable in its
own interests is such the bonus you think to Brighton or Bedford people?

Isn't it the same for most south-east routes - nearly all of which are
designed mainly for non-Londoners to get to and from London, or share tracks
with such a route?

OK, yes, TfL controlling Thameslink probably wouldn't be a good idea,
but then I was suggesting that Thameslink would be included because I
would have classified thameslink as an outer London service, because
the main core services on thameslink only call at the major London
termini at STP, Farringdon, Blackfriars and London Bridge, and then
East Croydon only, not calling at the intermediate stations, and a
fair proportion of the route is outside Z1-6, so it would be
classified as a local London suburban service.

The problem is that this problem in differentiating the services
between London Suburban and outer-London services that happen to call
at some, but not a lot of London stations is not always obvious.

On 31 May, 10:33, Graham Murray wrote:
D DB 90001 writes:

Oyster capping however would add another complication to the mix
because the single fare which previously would have been wholly
allocated to a particular TOC would now be reduced since the oyster
reductions for further journeys are 0. To be honest it would be easier
at this stage to *give up* as it were, and simply adopt a travelcard
revenue allocation method. But maybe it could be possible to only
divide up the total revenue between the operators used and the
operators not used on this occasion get nothing? Not sure if this
would make the revenue allocation skewed on Oyster/non-Oyster routes
though.

Would it not be possible to adopt a system whereby once the cap is
reached, each operator gets the proportion of the capped fair according
to usage. So if (for simplicity of illustration) all single fares were
£1 and the cap £5 and someone makes 2 journeys on operator A and 1 on
operator B, operator A would get £2 and operator B £1. If the cap is
reached and the person makes 4 journey on operator A and 2 on operator
B, then operator A would get £5 x 4/6 = £3.33 and operator B £5 x 2/6 =
£1.67.

Potentially that could work, but would operator A get more than
operator B if the journey was twice as long (and would it be in terms
of distance or time?).

On 31 May, 10:39, Jamie Thompson wrote:
On 31 May, 09:03, "Richardr" wrote:



"D DB 90001" wrote

However, I still think that local suburban services that *do*
terminate inside of Z1-6 or at stations such as Sevenoaks or Dartford
just outside Z6 should be managed by TfL, just like all bus routes,
even those which run outside of London but are mainly inside Z1-6, are
managed and run by TfL. Frankly because TfL are more likely to get
better results than other local authorities or DfT.

But the capacity on the roads isn't constrained in the same way as that on
the railways.

I believe that a lot of London commuter routes run at pretty much capacity
at peak times. Allowing one part of the route to determine what happens
there fixes what happens elsewhere.

Take Thameslink, for example, which stops and potentially stops at a lot of
London stations. If the Mayor of London had sole rights to determine
stopping patterns in London, then he would, quite rightly for him and his
electors, choose patterns wanted by his constituents, which I would imagine
would mean stopping all trains at all stops in Greater London. Thus those
passengers from outside London, e.g. Brighton and Bedford, would get a
massive deterioration in service.

I can't see why letting London alone decide the Thameslink timetable in its
own interests is such the bonus you think to Brighton or Bedford people?

Isn't it the same for most south-east routes - nearly all of which are
designed mainly for non-Londoners to get to and from London, or share tracks
with such a route?

...which is why all the different service patterns should probably
largely have their own tracks. Strange as it is to hold the WCML up as
a paragon of "doing it right", but aside from the missing stop at
Willesden Junction and having the lines grouped by use not direction,
it works so extremely well that all you could do to improve it,
probably, is to add the aforementioned two things above. Perhaps
reduce headways to squeeze in a few more peak trains...but that's
about it. All because the London stopping pattern in the Urban / Inner
Suburban "New" lines doesn't affect the Inner / Outer Suburban "Slow"
lines, which in turn doesn't affect the Intercity "Fast" lines.

Pairing by direction would let you potentially run a service that
dealt with the inner suburbans properly. Currently the New lines are
too long, forcing you to change to the Slow line services at Harrow
for a reasonable journey time, which being on opposite sides of the
footbridge and with a poor service frequency, means dangerous crowds
scrambling across it to get between them. Ideally, the trains would be
the things doing the moves between lines, not the passengers, or at
the very least, it would offer a cross-platform interchange. Put in a
shared platform loop between the New and Slow lines where possible and
the New lines' services could then be multiplied and sped up with non-
stopping services (or more WJ-EUS shuttles), making stops at Harrow
for outer surburbans less important. That would give a better service
for Londoners without impacting on those living beyond Watford. The
new shuttle services being run between Watford Junction and Euston in
the peaks show this sort of solution can work, but they will forever
be constrained by the fact that the slow lines are primarily outer
suburban services who want to run fast between Watford and Euston.

The WCML differentiates relatively well between the fasts and the
slows, because Virgin trains do not run any services which call at any
other station inside Z1-6 apart from London Euston, so they would be
exempt from all of the Oyster PAYG issues. There is the minor issue of
journeys from Harrow-on-the-Hill, which raises more complications
because if you touch in there and out at London Euston the journey
could potentially be done on London Overground too, so the revenue has
to be divided between the 2 TOCs.