I know that Intalink is a useful website to enable easy use of bus services from multiple operators. Having looked for a similar facility in Essex I was disappointed. I also know from ads posted in buses here that the 'rover' tickets were available for all operators within a defined area, but there doesn't seem to be a facility to buy a ticket from say St Albans to Hatfield that is valid on either an Arriva service (300/301) or a UNO 653, which would involve some fare splitting mechnaism. It's not a problem for me with ENCTS.
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How Can It Cost £3.10 return for a 3 Minute Journey?
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transmanche
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The operators concerned may not want to co-operate, preferring to compete. (Services operated by Arriva North East and Go North East between Newcastle and the Coast/Blyth used to have mutual acceptance of tickets - but GNE pulled out of the agreement.)
Such co-operation is sometimes frowned upon by the Competition Commission. And even where it does exist, such as on the 685 Newcastle-Carlisle (jointly operated by Arriva North East and Stagecoach Cumbria) where tickets are inter-available, the companies state that "due to competition laws the same ticket might be priced slightly differently".
transmanche
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Thread drift alert!
Your post made me think about how far you can get for £1.50, as that's the cost of an off-peak single journey in Zones 2-6, using any combination of London Underground/London Overground/TfL Rail/DLR/those bits of National Rail that charge TfL fares.
Geoff Marshall has the answer. 32 miles from Heathrow to Upminster avoiding Z1.
Dai Corner
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Another example of inter-availability is the 30, jointly operated by municipals Newport Transport and Cardiff Bus. This must go back many decades. Competitor NAT must have one of the cheapest per-mile commercial fares; £2 for the 15 miles or so from Ringland (east Newport) to Cardiff City Centre on their X5.
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SparkieLover
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Surbiton to Esher (4 mins):
Single: £3.10 (£3 weekends and Bank Holidays)
Return: £5.20 Anytime, £4.10 Off Peak, £3.50 Super Off Peak.
Single: £3.10 (£3 weekends and Bank Holidays)
Return: £5.20 Anytime, £4.10 Off Peak, £3.50 Super Off Peak.
Statto
Established Member
Journeys which passengers have to make train bus or ferry, as they cannot walk between those 2 stations with a certain river in the way, & pedestrians not normally allowed to walk through the tunnels, apart from special events.
Envoy
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I would like to thank you all for your very interesting responses to my thread.
It seems to me that in charging a disproportionate high fare for a short hop could well be encouraging traffic congestion. (On the photograph - I had to walk from the village at the top right). All well and good for me to walk into Tenby via the beach on a hot summers day but in winter, people are no doubt driving short distances that could be done by train due the fares being so high.
It seems to me that in charging a disproportionate high fare for a short hop could well be encouraging traffic congestion. (On the photograph - I had to walk from the village at the top right). All well and good for me to walk into Tenby via the beach on a hot summers day but in winter, people are no doubt driving short distances that could be done by train due the fares being so high.
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Essex is actually one of the counties which has got a very good multi operator bus day ticket which is valid on all buses in the county. It’s called the Essex Saver, but unfortunately has recently risen in price from £8 to £10. It is not advertised very well but details can be found by googling Essex Saver. Most of the smaller operators like Stephenson’s advertise it on their website but not a mention on the First Essex website. You just have to be careful that First Essex drivers don’t try to sell you one of their tickets instead but they do have it on their machines.
Two countywide tickets which I’m aware of in rather more rural counties are The Wiltshire Day Rover and County Connecta covering Worcestershire. These are the types of tickets which should be available in every county.
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
There's probably a premium in there for the Mersey tunnel (not exactly cheap to build). Distance is 1m14c.
Some other routes originally had premiums for the infrastructure (eg trains using the Runcorn-Widnes bridge: fares were held at the same level as via Warrington, despite the shorter distance).
I see it's £1.95 single/£2.05 return from Liverpool Lime St to Central (42 chains).
I paid the same fare today from Chester to Bache (1 mile).
Huyton-Roby is £1.80 single/£1.90 return (44 chains).
Thiught I'd mention another similar one - you can see the platforms and even people waiting at Manchester Oxford Road from the Deansgate platforms, still £2.90/£2.40/£1.90 anytime return/off-peak return/single
Spamcan81
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And only £1.20 return at weekends.
mister-sparky
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You pay a minimum of £13 air passenger departure tax on any flight, if you don't want to pay £4 plus taxes then travel by boat.
No you don’t. You can fly from Gatwick to Dublin for £9.99 and I have done many times.
causton
Established Member
Au contraire!
https://www.intalink.org.uk/uploads/publications/1051.pdf
The St Albans BusNET reaches Hatfield. And I never had a problem getting Uno bus drivers to issue it to me in Hatfield to travel to St Albans!
gazthomas
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I once had returns for 6 people from Luton to Dublin with Ryanair including tax and fees for 1p per person each way. Yes, 12p in total!
ForTheLoveOf
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The airline might have to pay £13, but Ryanair certainly do sell plenty of flights for less than this. Their Stansted-Hahn (Luxembourg/Frankfurt) route can often be found for just £6.99 each way on the quietest flights - though the flight times and departure/arrival airports are all likely to be inconvenient for many passengers. But at that price you can hardly complain - it'll probably cost more to get to and from the airport!You pay a minimum of £13 air passenger departure tax on any flight, if you don't want to pay £4 plus taxes then travel by boat.
OK more accurately the airline pays £13 per passenger: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-and-allowances-for-air-passenger-duty Not all airlines take use the Ryanair model of making the passengers last to book subside those who are first to book and I bet a lot of the passengers who book early and get the £9.99 fares finish up paying fees for either luggage or seat allocation.
It seems the SNP got an exemption for some Scotland to Scotland flights (or at least they credit themselves for getting it) so it wasn't actually relevant in this case.
Esker-pades
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Cambridge to Ely: £2.30 return (GA only) or £3.00 single.
You pay a minimum of £13 air passenger departure tax on any flight, if you don't want to pay £4 plus taxes then travel by boat.
It’s actually flights departing from the Scottish highlands and islands (in effect, Inverness and further north). Doesn’t matter where they’re going to. Inverness to Amsterdam, for example, is still exempt.
Fascinating I thought there was a maximum travel time. Does that get reset when you touch a pink reader?
There is a maximum journey time but it set with enough time to complete a journey such as this.
In summary the maximum time allowed depends on the number of fare zones you are deemed to have passed through between touching in and touching out.
And in traditional Oyster tradition, they seem to have made it vastly more complicated than it needed have been: https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/oyster/using-oyster/maximum-journey-times
Essan
Member
Surely the point is that you are not just paying for the journey, but the infrastructure than enables the journey to take place - including the salary of the man who sells you the ticket, the other one who checks you have it when on board, the one driving the train and the one who clears up the empty crisp packets and coke cans you leave behind
Although Geoff very nearly ran out of time after missing his stop for one of the changes.
In fact, in this case the maximum journey time is set by the default route through zone 1, so you get a little extra if you avoid zone 1. So Heathrow to Upminster is 65432123456 which is 11 zones, and you still get the time allowed for 11 zones if you go 654323456.
A simpler structure with far fewer numbers. No difference per time-of-day / day of the week, just make them all the same.
You get more time at weekends when the service is generally less frequent. That’s a good thing for passengers.
You could keep the times the same on weekends as in the week but then more passengers would be in danger of exceeding the time allowed.
Alternatively you could extend the time allowed in the week but this would then become open to abuse and potentially result in a loss of revenue.
You could reduce the number of fare zones but that would no doubt result in price increases for passengers.
You could keep the times the same on weekends as in the week but then more passengers would be in danger of exceeding the time allowed.
Alternatively you could extend the time allowed in the week but this would then become open to abuse and potentially result in a loss of revenue.
You could reduce the number of fare zones but that would no doubt result in price increases for passengers.
I was surprised by when he said one reason for stopping at Elm Park was that Upminster isn't a TFL managed station so he wouldn't be able to check his Oyster balance - I thought all stations within the zones with machines had machines which will check / topup Oyster for a long time now, although most ticket offices still can't.
Pretty much all stations will allow you to check the balance and topup using a ticket machine. I suspect Geoff wanted a machine which would display the journey history. They are generally only at TfL managed stations.
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