Oyster OSI across peak/off-peak cutoff

[telstarbox]

Last week I travelled as below by Oyster, using a combination of Zones 1-2 Travelcard and PAYG extension:

0914 Lewisham - London Bridge 0926
(touched out at SE gateline)
(touched in at Southern gateline)
0942 London Bridge - Gatwick Airport 1011

The whole journey shows up as a single trip on my Oyster online account - with a same-station OSI at London Bridge.

According to the single fare finder, the second leg on its own would have counted as off-peak as it began after 0930. However I've been charged £9.20 (ie a peak Boundary Zone 2 - Gatwick single).

Is this a system limitation that an OSI is always applied even when it would be cheaper to treat the two legs separately, or is this specific to Gatwick?

 

[button_boxer]

Is this a system limitation that an OSI is always applied even when it would be cheaper to treat the two legs separately, or is this specific to Gatwick?

I believe it's general - when any OSI is triggered the system sees the travel as one journey rather than two, that's unavoidable in the current asynchronous Oyster model (where the card itself is the final arbiter and any decisions about what to charge have to be made by the reader in the split second while the card is in contact). One hopes that when they move processing to the back office like they currently do with contactless cards then they'll be able to look at the bigger picture and split OSIs in hindsight where it would be beneficial to do so.

 

[maniacmartin]

MikeWh will know for sure, but I think this is not specific to Gatwick

 

[Be3G]

I'm not Mike but I can indeed confirm this is the way it's always been on Oyster. I'd be interested to know how a CPC (with its benefit of back-office-hindsight) treats such a journey, though.

 

[Tetchytyke]

It's the same for all Oyster fares: http://www.oyster-rail.org.uk/peak-off-peak-and-caps/

If you're in that situation again, you need to break the OSI to treat it as two journeys, either through the hokey-cokey (out-in-out)* or by touching in on a bus.

*Just seen on MikeWh's website that he was having issues doing the hokey-cokey last week http://www.oyster-rail.org.uk/2016/01/caution-hokey-cokey-issues/

 

[MikeWh]

MikeWh will know for sure, but I think this is not specific to Gatwick

I'm not Mike but I can indeed confirm this is the way it's always been on Oyster. I'd be interested to know how a CPC (with its benefit of back-office-hindsight) treats such a journey, though.

It's the same for all Oyster fares: http://www.oyster-rail.org.uk/peak-off-peak-and-caps/

If you're in that situation again, you need to break the OSI to treat it as two journeys, either through the hokey-cokey (out-in-out)* or by touching in on a bus.

*Just seen on MikeWh's website that he was having issues doing the hokey-cokey last week http://www.oyster-rail.org.uk/2016/01/caution-hokey-cokey-issues/

Not been around much today, so a thread like this was bound to occur.

Yes, the whole journey is treated as peak or off-peak depending on the time of the first touch in. This also impacts other things like extension fare scales if the extension is just LU but the overall journey becomes NR+LU, as I'm sure island will confirm.

As it happens, in this instance the hokey-cokey would work because the fare from Lewisham to either side of London Bridge NR is the same. A bus would also work as you had a travelcard.

As for whether back-office oyster would charge differently, I'm not sure. Contactless will not break an OSI just to make the single fare for one journey cheaper. It will break one if maximum journey time has been exceeded or a circular journey has been made. CPCs can't currently hold a travelcard but they can cap weekly. I haven't had experience of weekly capping myself to know how this situation would be handled.