Is London Bridge to Waterloo East using Southeastern Trains a zone 1 journey?

[Norfolk25]

I have ordered tickets from Kings Lynn to Waterloo East, via London Bridge (Great Northern, Thameslink and Southeastern Trains)

I have been supplied tickets from Kings Lynn to London Underground zone 1 for this journey.

I realise the Thameslink core is included in zone one, but I am unsure if the section from London Bridge to Waterloo East is.

Would someone please confirm that a zone 1 ticket is correct for this journey.

Thank you

 

[ThisIsSurbiton]

(It should be made that way, or even better remove the distinction between the modes...) But I think this is an odd one. I'm not sure there even is a fare for a journey like this. The fare would be valid for using the Jubilee line for the last leg though, to Southwark or Waterloo. Edited to add that NRE and Trainline seem to agree that there are no fares.

 

[Royston Vasey]

Yes it is, due to interavailability, you'll have no issue using the ticket. Even though WAE is not an underground station you can use your LU Zone 1 ticket there. Your ticket is effectively Kings Lynn to London Terminals plus a zone 1 to zone 1 single.

 

[Joe Paxton]

Yes it is, due to interavailability, you'll have no issue using the ticket. Even though WAE is not an underground station you can use your LU Zone 1 ticket there. Your ticket is effectively Kings Lynn to London Terminals plus a zone 1 to zone 1 single.

What interavailability is that then between London Bridge and Waterloo East? Because I don't think there is any.

(Thameslink is interavailable within zone 1, i.e. London Underground zone 1 tickets are valid on it - but Thameslink doesn't serve Waterloo East.)

I'd suggest alighting and walking from Blackfriars, which is near Waterloo.

 

[Royston Vasey]

London Bridge to Waterloo with the out of station interchange.

 

[Joe Paxton]

London Bridge to Waterloo with the out of station interchange.

What out of station interchange?

(And out of station interchanges don't magically make certain routes interavailable.)

 

[Royston Vasey]

What out of station interchange?

WAE - WAT

 

[Joe Paxton]

WAE - WAT

That out of station interchange (between Waterloo East and Waterloo) does not somehow make a London Underground zone 1 ticket valid for the National Rail journey between London Bridge and Waterloo East.

 

[Haywain]

A Zone U1 ticket should be accepted at Waterloo East because you can access Southwark station from the WAE platforms. However, I agree that the validity from London Bridge is dubious but I would not foresee any problems arising.

 

[MrJeeves]

These tickets, as far as I am concerned, would not be valid for Southeastern into Waterloo East.

Your ticket acts like a ticket to London Terminals, which takes you as far as London St Pancras, and then acts like a London Underground ticket valid for any journey wholly within Zone 1.

You can use this on Thameslink, as it's an interavailable route with London Underground, as far as London Bridge where you alight. The ticket then does not have further validity beyond this, unless changing onto the Tube to continue the journey within Zone 1. There is no interavailability between London Bridge and Waterloo East, so the ticket is not valid for this portion of the journey.

The pragmatic approach would be to change to the Jubilee Line to Waterloo/Southwark and walk to Waterloo/Waterloo East instead.

Yes it is, due to interavailability, you'll have no issue using the ticket. Even though WAE is not an underground station you can use your LU Zone 1 ticket there. Your ticket is effectively Kings Lynn to London Terminals plus a zone 1 to zone 1 single.

This is incorrect as there is no interavailability on Southeastern for this journey.

 

[Somewhere]

WAE - WAT

Out of station interchanges are for contactless/Oyster

 

[Norfolk25]

Thank you for your replies.

I bought this ticket(x2) from the RailUK website - ref [redacted]

The given itinery is:
0842 Kings Lynn to Cambridge
0953 Cambridge to London Bridge
1125 London Bridge to Waterloo East (Southeastern)

The forum's usual advice is that as I have been given a specific itinery with the ticket, then that is the basis of the contract and I can use those trains.
Is this still valid advice, or should I buy an additional ticket to cover the London Bridge to Waterloo East section?
I should add that I do not wish to use the underground as an alternative.

 

[Royston Vasey]

I would and have done it but as always, when it comes to gateline issues, YMMV!

If you have an itinerary, though, you do have a contract from an accreditated seller. Perhaps this might be settled by one of the @Raileasy team or FastJP's @SickyNicky, especially if there is a potential validity issue here.

 

[redreni]

Since the OP has been sold this ticket against an itinerary that includes the train from London Bridge to Waterloo East, I'd have thought it should be valid based on the itinerary, although arguably only on the specific trains mentioned on the itinerary.

In practice, however, the chances of having your ticket checked on the train between London Bridge and Waterloo East is as close to zero as makes no difference, so if it's correct that the ticket would be accepted for exit at the NR gateline at Waterloo East because of the in-station interchange between Southwark and Waterloo East (which I must admit I've never tried), then you won't have a problem travelling as booked.

If you don't want to risk any issue at the Waterloo East gateline then you could get off the train at Waterloo East, follow the signs for Southwark underground station and exit through the LU barriers, which will undoubtedly accept your ticket to Zone U1, then walk to Waterloo.

Or, as @Joe Paxton suggests, alight the Thameslink train at Blackfriars, exit via the South Bank exit (front of the train is best, heading south) and walk along the south bank towards Waterloo.

 

[MrJeeves]

Thank you for your replies.

I bought this ticket(x2) from the RailUK website - ref [redacted]

The given itinery is:
0842 Kings Lynn to Cambridge
0953 Cambridge to London Bridge
1125 London Bridge to Waterloo East (Southeastern)

The forum's usual advice is that as I have been given a specific itinery with the ticket, then that is the basis of the contract and I can use those trains.
Is this still valid advice, or should I buy an additional ticket to cover the London Bridge to Waterloo East section?
I should add that I do not wish to use the underground as an alternative.

If you have concerns or want to guarantee a stress-free journey on the itinerary which you booked, then please contact customer support by email ([email protected]). You'll be taken care of.

 

[Royston Vasey]

Since the OP has been sold this ticket against an itinerary that includes the train from London Bridge to Waterloo East, I'd have thought it should be valid based on the itinerary, although arguably only on the specific trains mentioned on the itinerary.

In practice, however, the chances of having your ticket checked on the train between London Bridge and Waterloo East is as close to zero as makes no difference, so if it's correct that the ticket would be accepted for exit at the NR gateline at Waterloo East because of the in-station interchange between Southwark and Waterloo East (which I must admit I've never tried), then you won't have a problem travelling as booked.

If you don't want to risk any issue at the Waterloo East gateline then you could get off the train at Waterloo East, follow the signs for Southwark underground station and exit through the LU barriers, which will undoubtedly accept your ticket to Zone U1, then walk to Waterloo.

Or, as @Joe Paxton suggests, alight the Thameslink train at Blackfriars, exit via the South Bank exit (front of the train is best, heading south) and walk along the south bank towards Waterloo.

I suppose as well as it being checked at the WAE gateline, there is also the non-zero possibility of an RPI challenging it between St Pancras and London Bridge.

 

[bcarmicle]

I suppose as well as it being checked at the WAE gateline, there is also the non-zero possibility of an RPI challenging it between St Pancras and London Bridge.

Unless I am very mistaken, the ticket is unquestionably valid between St Pancras and London Bridge because of the LU/NR interavailability rules. An RPI could of course mistakenly challenge it, but I would expect that to be very quickly sorted out (whether immediately or afterwards in correspondance).

 

[MrJeeves]

Unless I am very mistaken

You are not!

 

[Joe Paxton]

Yes it is, due to interavailability, you'll have no issue using the ticket. Even though WAE is not an underground station you can use your LU Zone 1 ticket there. Your ticket is effectively Kings Lynn to London Terminals plus a zone 1 to zone 1 single.

What interavailability is that then between London Bridge and Waterloo East? Because I don't think there is any.
[...]

Can I just apologise to @Royston Vasey, the tone of my earlier post (above) was a bit off. The underlying point stands, but I could have worded it in a way that read differently / better.

I suppose as well as it being checked at the WAE gateline, there is also the non-zero possibility of an RPI challenging it between St Pancras and London Bridge.

Unless I am very mistaken, the ticket is unquestionably valid between St Pancras and London Bridge because of the LU/NR interavailability rules. An RPI could of course mistakenly challenge it, but I would expect that to be very quickly sorted out (whether immediately or afterwards in correspondance).

You are not!

Agreed - though annoyingly, there seems to be scant public facing information that states this long existing rule (which dates back to the beginning of Thameslink). Back in the days of TfL's annual Guide to fares and tickets booklet (and PDF) most of these interavailability rules were clearly outlined therein.

It's pretty daft really given the existence of a certain ubiquitous medium which makes publishing and accessing information so very easy, i.e. the web.

[...]
If you don't want to risk any issue at the Waterloo East gateline then you could get off the train at Waterloo East, follow the signs for Southwark underground station and exit through the LU barriers, which will undoubtedly accept your ticket to Zone U1, then walk to Waterloo.

I don't think that's great advice - in the interchange hallway between Waterloo East and Southwark there are actually two sets of gates (with a strange and unique no-mans land in between - no exit to the street available there!), so one would need the paper ticket to work the gates for exit from Waterloo East (National Rail), entry to Southwark tube and then subsequent exit from Southwark tube... not sure I'd fancy my chances on that working!

 

[redreni]

I don't think that's great advice - in the interchange hallway between Waterloo East and Southwark there are actually two sets of gates (with a strange and unique no-mans land in between - no exit to the street available there!), so one would need the paper ticket to work the gates for exit from Waterloo East (National Rail), entry to Southwark tube and then subsequent exit from Southwark tube... not sure I'd fancy my chances on that working!

Blimey!

I stand corrected.

 

[Joe Paxton]

It's not the greatest image but this photo I found on the web gives an indication of the double-gated interchange set-up:

 

[redreni]

It's not the greatest image but this photo I found on the web gives an indication of the double-gated interchange set-up:

View attachment 179340

Is there any purpose to it?

It appears to be designed to stop people with rail-only tickets exiting at Southwark and people with underground-only tickets exiting at Waterloo? But others have suggested this is allowed?

Definitely no advantage to using this exit over the Waterloo East one from the OP's point of view in light of this, anyway!

 

[alistairlees]

One set of gates is an entrance to / exit from national rail. The other is an entrance to / exit from the tube. In between is neither. There have been plans for many years for an exit to the street from here (avoiding going through Southwark tube station). But they have never come to fruition.

 

[Jan Mayen]

I look forward to going through this pair of gates with my All Line Rail Rover.
I trust members of this forum will visit me when I'm stuck in no man's land

 

[Adam Williams]

Perhaps this might be settled by one of the @Raileasy team or FastJP's @SickyNicky, especially if there is a potential validity issue here.

The customer's contract is with Raileasy, so if there are issues they should be raised with Raileasy in the first instance, and the customer support team can ensure there's an appropriate resolution put in place.

FastJP are already aware this is broken.

 

[redreni]

Yes, logically if Southeastern were happy with a situation where an Underground ticket would be accepted for exit from Waterloo East via Southwark, that double gateline wouldn't be there, would it? Or at the very least, the one between the National Rail station and the Underground station would be kept open. Not that everything on the railway is logical, of course.

But it's hard to think why else it would be there?

Unless they're purely worried about people who don't have a ticket at all, who may have boarded at one of their engaged stations, escaping their network onto the tube?

So yes, I would definitely be contacting the retailer in this situation if I wanted to exit at Waterloo East.

 

[swt_passenger]

Unless they're purely worried about people who don't have a ticket at all, who may have boarded at one of their engaged stations, escaping their network onto the tube?

I expect that was autocorrect and supposed to be ‘ungated’ stations?

The extra gateline was added quite a long time after Southwark first opened, was it about the time Oyster PAYG was extended to south London mainline TOCs? I think it must have been to prevent some sort of access to LU or NR without tickets.

I’m also fairly sure that at the original design stage the local authority were fairly insistent they didn’t want an additional signed street entrance to Waterloo East. However I can’t remember where I first read that…

 

[redreni]

I expect that was autocorrect and supposed to be ‘ungated’ stations?

Yes.

 

[Adsy125]

My assumption was always that it was about maintaining the higher fares for a TfL + NR journey. E.g. If travelling from somewhere on the Jubilee line, say Bond Street, to Greenwich for example, the system would know if you went Bond Street - Bank - Greenwich or if you used national rail by going Bond Street - Southwark / Waterloo East - Greenwich.

 

[Joe Paxton]

The extra gateline was added quite a long time after Southwark first opened, was it about the time Oyster PAYG was extended to south London mainline TOCs? I think it must have been to prevent some sort of access to LU or NR without tickets.

When Southwark station first opened, coming from Waterloo East there was only the LU gateline.

The NR gateline was then added later (when all the entrances to Waterloo East were gated - previously it'd been open), I can't remember quite when - whether it was in the run up to Oyster PAYG acceptance on NR (in January 2010) or possibly sometime earlier in the noughties. I'm certain the NR gatelines were in place for the January 2010 expansion of Oyster PAYG though.

I’m also fairly sure that at the original design stage the local authority were fairly insistent they didn’t want an additional signed street entrance to Waterloo East. However I can’t remember where I first read that…

Yes, LB Lambeth were/are against a street entrance there (Greet Street SE1) - concerns over the noise in what is a residential area. This article from 2018 outlines the second attempt:
www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/9707