Possible end to paper tickets in South East?

[hkstudent]

Right, so what should the peak fare from Gatwick Airport to Reading be? £15.05 (half the current "via Gomshall" SDR) or £38.20 (half the current "+Any Permitted" SDR), or something in between?

In reality the difference may be even more, as the via Gomshall CDR has no evening peak restrictions but the +Any Permitted does. Of course it's possible that evening peak restrictions would be introduced to the via Gomshall fares, as part of single leg pricing.

Or should via Gomshall fares now only be available as an e-ticket? Meaning that you have to know not to use the new PAYG system for journeys like this, otherwise you'll pay 2.5× more than you have to?


About a third to half of all British stations are located in the proposed area. So there are still orders of magnitude more station-to-station combinations than across the entire NS network.

That doesn't make it impossible, but it does make it a lot more complex - probably too complex for local calculations, meaning you're effectively reliant on extending credit (in some cases near three figure sums) to random members of the public.

Or shall we say the pricing and routing system in Great Britain is so complex that any simplified ticket system would be difficult to fit in?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Or shall we say the pricing and routing system in Great Britain is so complex that any simplified ticket system would be difficult to fit in?

No, just that it will have to be simplified, and there will be winners and losers of any such simplification.

Talking of this case, I guess Gomshall is the direct (I have no idea where that is) and Any Permitted would be used via London? If so that's easy to catch, the tap out and back in at London gatelines and use of the Tube will make it clear what you did.

Does it matter if the very occasional person takes a train from Reading to Platform 1 at Paddington (avoiding that gateline), walks to Victoria (using a bus would also be a flag of travel via London) and gets onto the GatEx/Southern while the gateline attendant has popped to the loo and left it open gets charged the cheaper fare? No, of course it doesn't. The railway has still saved a packet by them not requiring as many TVMs and open booking offices by implementing the scheme, and it won't happen often because it requires multiple failures, not just one.

 

[JonathanH]

Talking of this case, I guess Gomshall is the direct (I have no idea where that is) and Any Permitted would be used via London? If so that's easy to catch, the tap out and back in at London gatelines and use of the Tube will make it clear what you did.

Yes, except that Crossrail / Thameslink act as an "open door" to the underground network and Reading to Gatwick via Farringdon would not pass any barriers.

While I recognise that this isn't likely to be a substantial revenue loss here, there may be others where the ability to use a more expensive route for the same fare genuinely presents a revenue loss for the railway.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, except that Crossrail / Thameslink act as an "open door" to the underground network and Reading to Gatwick via Farringdon would not pass any barriers.

While I recognise that this isn't likely to be a substantial revenue loss here

This is fairly key - almost nobody is going to take Crossrail all the way from Reading to Paddington because it is grindingly slow, and if you're OK with it being slow you'll use the direct. Is it a loophole? Yes. Is it a loophole some enthusiasts will take pride in using so they can bash 345s on the way to their two weeks in Faliraki? Yes. Does it really matter? No - perfection is the enemy of the good, as it were, and suggesting it can't have any loopholes at all is failing to recognise that paper ticketing has all manner of loopholes.

For any other station where you could get the cheaper fare by going via Reading (e.g. Tilehurst) pink readers at Reading fix it, if you don't tap them you're charged the Any Permitted, and obviously if you then tap at any central London gateline you clearly doubled back then went that way.

there may be others where the ability to use a more expensive route for the same fare genuinely presents a revenue loss for the railway.

Quite possibly. If such cases are identified, they'll need to resolve them in some way. If the cheaper route involves a change (as they very often do) that's easy - a pink reader and you get charged the higher fare unless you touch it. If it doesn't then that's harder, but there will be fewer of these - in those cases you'll either need to install some intermediate gatelines or just get rid of the fare differential by increasing one and reducing the other so it's revenue neutral.

 

[BayPaul]

This is fairly key - almost nobody is going to take Crossrail all the way from Reading to Paddington because it is grindingly slow, and if you're OK with it being slow you'll use the direct. Is it a loophole? Yes. Is it a loophole some enthusiasts will take pride in using so they can bash 345s on the way to their two weeks in Faliraki? Yes. Does it really matter? No - perfection is the enemy of the good, as it were, and suggesting it can't have any loopholes at all is failing to recognise that paper ticketing has all manner of loopholes.

For any other station where you could get the cheaper fare by going via Reading (e.g. Tilehurst) pink readers at Reading fix it, if you don't tap them you're charged the Any Permitted, and obviously if you then tap at any central London gateline you clearly doubled back then went that way.

Quite possibly. If such cases are identified, they'll need to resolve them in some way. If the cheaper route involves a change (as they very often do) that's easy - a pink reader and you get charged the higher fare unless you touch it. If it doesn't then that's harder, but there will be fewer of these - in those cases you'll either need to install some intermediate gatelines or just get rid of the fare differential by increasing one and reducing the other so it's revenue neutral.

And really, it doesn't matter if some people are charged the via Gormshill route fare for travelling via Farringdon or Clapham - the way the fares are set now, almost no-one would take that route from Reading to Gatwick, they'd all travel direct, even if it cost them a few minutes. If, in the future, some people do make a change at Farringdon, this isn't really lost revenue, as the railway wouldn't have been getting it anyway. I suspect that many of the potential anomalies are actually like this - if no-one currently takes the more expensive route, then there is really no issue under a PAYG system pricing it the same as the cheap route. Under a paper system, there is a need to keep the two fares, to prevent issues with stopping short (e.g. if a Reading-Paddington fare is more expensive than Reading - Gatwick direct), but this issue goes away with PAYG

 

[Bletchleyite]

And really, it doesn't matter if some people are charged the via Gormshill route fare for travelling via Farringdon or Clapham - the way the fares are set now, almost no-one would take that route from Reading to Gatwick, they'd all travel direct, even if it cost them a few minutes. If, in the future, some people do make a change at Farringdon, this isn't really lost revenue, as the railway wouldn't have been getting it anyway. I suspect that many of the potential anomalies are actually like this - if no-one currently takes the more expensive route, then there is really no issue under a PAYG system pricing it the same as the cheap route. Under a paper system, there is a need to keep the two fares, to prevent issues with stopping short (e.g. if a Reading-Paddington fare is more expensive than Reading - Gatwick direct), but this issue goes away with PAYG

Certainly this is one aspect of PAYG which the railway will win on - you can only split if you tap out and back in, so most people won't, and if a longer journey is cheaper than a shorter one you actually have to do the longer journey to get the cheaper fare, because if you just go to London and tap out there you'll be charged for going to London. So anomalies, as you say, only become an annoyance to passengers, not a source of revenue loss. And yet it doesn't have the inconvenience aspect of barring break of journey on a paper ticket because you always can break your journey, you just might have to pay the going rate for it as two journeys (which sometimes might even be cheaper). Or if you decide to go further than planned, you can, just tap out at your destination and the correct fare is charged.

 

[JonathanH]

Certainly this is one aspect of PAYG which the railway will win on - you can only split if you tap out and back in, so most people won't, and if a longer journey is cheaper than a shorter one you actually have to do the longer journey to get the cheaper fare, because if you just go to London and tap out there you'll be charged for going to London. So anomalies, as you say, only become an annoyance to passengers, not a source of revenue loss.

Yes, but it doesn't fit with your idea to keep e-tickets (paper tickets) at the same price as Contactless. I totally agree that a purely touch in / touch out system means that the appropriate fare can be charged for the appropriate displacement without worrying about route, but the moment you retain any other fare medium it breaks down.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, but it doesn't fit with your idea to keep e-tickets (paper tickets) at the same price as Contactless. I totally agree that a purely touch in / touch out system means that the appropriate fare can be charged for the appropriate displacement without worrying about route, but the moment you retain any other fare medium it breaks down.

Again, perfection is the enemy of the good. There are on LU examples of where PAYG will charge you a non-Zone 1 fare even if you go via Zone 1, but if you buy a paper ticket you need to pay more for one via Zone 1.

Indeed, as the railway wants people to use PAYG (so as to be able to save money by reducing booking office staff and TVMs) "you might get a cheaper fare by PAYG" is a good marketing tool, even if it is basically inadvertent.

 

[BayPaul]

Yes, but it doesn't fit with your idea to keep e-tickets (paper tickets) at the same price as Contactless. I totally agree that a purely touch in / touch out system means that the appropriate fare can be charged for the appropriate displacement without worrying about route, but the moment you retain any other fare medium it breaks down.

I think you can keep the base paper fares the same as Contactless, but then potentially have other via/not via tickets as required to keep flexibility on paper, whilst noting that it can't exactly mirror every aspect of contactless, so there will be some journeys that are cheaper on contactless (or very occasionally on paper), but these would tend to be the niche fares, not the nice, simple point to point journeys.

Certainly this is one aspect of PAYG which the railway will win on - you can only split if you tap out and back in, so most people won't, and if a longer journey is cheaper than a shorter one you actually have to do the longer journey to get the cheaper fare, because if you just go to London and tap out there you'll be charged for going to London. So anomalies, as you say, only become an annoyance to passengers, not a source of revenue loss. And yet it doesn't have the inconvenience aspect of barring break of journey on a paper ticket because you always can break your journey, you just might have to pay the going rate for it as two journeys (which sometimes might even be cheaper). Or if you decide to go further than planned, you can, just tap out at your destination and the correct fare is charged.

For me, break of journey is a way of dealing with the fundamental issue of return journeys being so much cheaper than 2x single. Once you move to single fare pricing, break of journey is much less of an issue, as chances are fares single fares A>C + C>B + B>A (where A-B-C are stations on one line in a row) would add up to a similar cost as a return from A>C.

 

[Bletchleyite]

For me, break of journey is a way of dealing with the fundamental issue of return journeys being so much cheaper than 2x single. Once you move to single fare pricing, break of journey is much less of an issue, as chances are fares single fares A>C + C>B + B>A (where A-B-C are stations on one line in a row) would add up to a similar cost as a return from A>C.

As I've said before it's amazing just how many issues single-fare pricing solves that it's astonishing the bullet hasn't been bitten on it yet. It basically removes all the complexity involving excesses, too.

 

[BayPaul]

As I've said before it's amazing just how many issues single-fare pricing solves that it's astonishing the bullet hasn't been bitten on it yet. It basically removes all the complexity involving excesses, too.

Yes. As far as I can see, the only real value in a return pricing structure is the ability to price differentiate between day and period returns. I really don't know how much of a problem that is on the railway - I would imagine that most tickets bought are day returns on shortish routes (long routes already having moved most of their traffic to single leg pricing via advance ticketing), so perhaps the loss in revenue in bringing the period return equvalent fare down to the day return fare equivalent wouldn't be all that much. For any flows where it is an issue, there is no reason why a day return fare can't be provided under a PAYG system anyway.

 

[Ken H]

Most CC transactions you first get an authorisation, and you get an authorisation number. Later you make a claim and that transfers the money. You cant claim more than the authorisation.
You can also just request a payment without an authorisation.
The bank can decline an authorisation or a request for payment. They dont give a reason. The card holder may be up against their credit limit because its the day before pay day, or the card may be stolen, they may have not done a chip and pin transaction recently and need to do one now to verify the card holder, or other reasons.

So...
When does the system contact the bank? When you tap in to get authorisation? for how much? What happens if the suthorisation is declined. The cardholder has got onto a busy train, and you have no idea who they are.
At the end of the day? But then you just request a payment, not do authorisation and claim, so the payment could fail. What then?
You could do what pay at pump does and authorise £100. But if someone is using the railway for short journeys every day, they could end up with £500 authorised and £50 actual spend. There is no mechanism for removing authorisations. You just have to wait till they expire. 7 - 10 days typically. That caused bad press for pay at pump recently.

And what happens if the cardholder requests a chargeback? How does the railway prove to the bank the service provided was per the contract. What if the bank determines the card was stolen at the time of the transaction? They will chargeback, and the railway don't get their £££.

Lastly, you cant hold a card number and expiry date on a clear database. It has to be held on a separate 'vault' database that is secure. Normally you send the card number to the vault and receive back a 'token'. The card number should only be in working storage, not disk of the main server. So to join the tap in/out events you will need multiple calls to the vault, which takes time.

All this is part of the requirements of being a credit card merchant, and is laid out in the The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, known as PCI DSS.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Most CC transactions you first get an authorisation, and you get an authorisation number. Later you make a claim and that transfers the money. You cant claim more than the authorisation.
You can also just request a payment without an authorisation.
The bank can decline an authorisation or a request for payment. They dont give a reason. The card holder may be up against their credit limit because its the day before pay day, or the card may be stolen, they may have not done a chip and pin transaction recently and need to do one now to verify the card holder, or other reasons.

So...
When does the system contact the bank? When you tap in to get authorisation? for how much? What happens if the suthorisation is declined. The cardholder has got onto a busy train, and you have no idea who they are.
At the end of the day? But then you just request a payment, not do authorisation and claim, so the payment could fail. What then?
You could do what pay at pump does and authorise £100. But if someone is using the railway for short journeys every day, they could end up with £500 authorised and £50 actual spend. There is no mechanism for removing authorisations. You just have to wait till they expire. 7 - 10 days typically. That caused bad press for pay at pump recently.

What you do is authorise a token £1* (it is possible to authorise £0, which comes up on Monzo as "active card check"). Then you apply for the payment for the full calculated amount at the end of the day, effectively without authorisation. If it bounces, then you bar the card from further use, either permanently, or you allow it to be unbarred a certain number of times if you pay the balance plus an administrative fee.

Most people don't have a stack of physical cards they can keep using in this manner so this is adequate control. It's different from petrol stations, as at those you could keep going around different ones and stealing fuel by using a card with inadequate balance. There is only one railway in this context, and to most people being effectively barred from using it would be a serious issue.

Transit mode (which is what this is) does not revert to Chip & PIN, by the way, so that is not applicable.

I'm going to keep posting it until people get it - perfection is the enemy of the good. It does not have to be perfect. it just has to result in the railway overall either making more money or at worst not less money than the present paper ticket system, taking into account savings on ticket office staffing and TVM provision and maintenance.

* It could be something other than £1, e.g. the minimum single fare from the station you tapped in at which these days is very unlikely to be as low as that.

And what happens if the cardholder requests a chargeback? How does the railway prove to the bank the service provided was per the contract. What if the bank determines the card was stolen at the time of the transaction? They will chargeback, and the railway don't get their £££.

Lastly, you cant hold a card number and expiry date on a clear database. It has to be held on a separate 'vault' database that is secure. Normally you send the card number to the vault and receive back a 'token'. The card number should only be in working storage, not disk of the main server. So to join the tap in/out events you will need multiple calls to the vault, which takes time.

All this is part of the requirements of being a credit card merchant, and is laid out in the The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, known as PCI DSS.

Literally all of these have already been solved by TfL for their current, well established and highly successful PAYG system, so why not put a FoI request in to them and post what they say on here?

 

[paul1609]

It means that you can only ever have a contactless-based system, not a smartcard-based system. Meaning that you are extending credit to passengers, and cannot reliably verify whether someone has touched in.

Im not sure I understand this. My Keygo card debits my bank account the day after travel for GTRs best fare less the railcard discount. When I set it up it authorised a debit of £1 to check the card was good. When the obs or conductor does a ticket check they verify that I've touched in with a smartphone.

 

[johncrossley]

Im not sure I understand this. My Keygo card debits my bank account the day after travel for GTRs best fare less the railcard discount. When I set it up it authorised a debit of £1 to check the card was good. When the obs or conductor does a ticket check they verify that I've touched in with a smartphone.

With KeyGo they can check if you touched in, but with contactless, they can't.

 

[Bletchleyite]

With KeyGo they can check if you touched in, but with contactless, they can't.

They can, though it would require being online to the central server this is hardly an impingement on most of the network. The situation is basically exactly the same as verifying e-tickets, another aspect of my proposal for e-tickets that people roundly rubbished then found it being implemented near enough exactly as proposed.

 

[johncrossley]

Yes. As far as I can see, the only real value in a return pricing structure is the ability to price differentiate between day and period returns. I really don't know how much of a problem that is on the railway - I would imagine that most tickets bought are day returns on shortish routes (long routes already having moved most of their traffic to single leg pricing via advance ticketing), so perhaps the loss in revenue in bringing the period return equvalent fare down to the day return fare equivalent wouldn't be all that much. For any flows where it is an issue, there is no reason why a day return fare can't be provided under a PAYG system anyway.

Returns were useful as a deterrent against people dodging their return fare, especially when the return is almost the same as the single, as well as booking office saving time. Now there are widespread ticket gates, this is no longer relevant.

They can, though it would require being online to the central server this is hardly an impingement on most of the network. The situation is basically exactly the same as verifying e-tickets, another aspect of my proposal for e-tickets that people roundly rubbished then found it being implemented near enough exactly as proposed.

If I understand correctly, e-tickets are checked to see whether the ticket has been used before or has been cancelled. If there is some kind of problem with the connection, that is not a problem as long as it works most of the time. With contactless, if you plan to give someone an on the spot Penalty Fare (or worse) for not touching in, then you need to be absolutely sure the connection is perfect.

 

[BayPaul]

If I understand correctly, e-tickets are checked to see whether the ticket has been used before or has been cancelled. If there is some kind of problem with the connection, that is not a problem as long as it works most of the time. With contactless, if you plan to give someone an on the spot Penalty Fare (or worse) for not touching in, then you need to be absolutely sure the connection is perfect.

I think this can be managed in the same way, though. If the ticket inspector has a connection to the system, then they can check if the card has tapped in, or has been blacklisted, and can issue a penalty fare if they haven't tapped in (usefully, this could potentially be done without a conversation being necessary - the inspector's tap of a non-tapped in card could automatically charge a penalty fare, with perhaps a first offence being reduced to an e-mail warning to a registered card holder). If the ticket inspector is offline, then their device could store the taps that they have taken until the device is back online, with customers given the benefit of the doubt where relevant.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If I understand correctly, e-tickets are checked to see whether the ticket has been used before or has been cancelled. If there is some kind of problem with the connection, that is not a problem as long as it works most of the time. With contactless, if you plan to give someone an on the spot Penalty Fare (or worse) for not touching in, then you need to be absolutely sure the connection is perfect.

You need to know "yes, "no" and "don't know" as different options. Obviously only "no" can result in any sort of penalty.

Others have also suggested that you can actually move away from a classic PF and just treat it as a tap in, adding a penalty of say £20 to the transaction. Thus it doesn't need to be in real time.

 

[Starmill]

It will be a fudge whereby TVMs will issue e-tickets or some such.

And of course this is already possible and has been for a while. EMR have self service machines that just issue etickets. Avanti ticket offices have been issuing etickets for years now.

If the ticket technology becomes cheaper and easier to maintain it's already got a significant head-start over the do-minimum.

Does it matter if the very occasional person takes a train from Reading to Platform 1 at Paddington (avoiding that gateline), walks to Victoria (using a bus would also be a flag of travel via London) and gets onto the GatEx/Southern while the gateline attendant has popped to the loo and left it open gets charged the cheaper fare? No, of course it doesn't.

Exactly. Start with the principle that if there's a cheap fare, charge that unless one of the relevant flags has been triggered. Of course that's not exactly how the zonal system in London has always done it, often charging higher fares for some non zone one journeys because they've not correctly coded the routes with the pink validator.

For info, Gomshall lies between Dorking Deepdene and Guildford. As you guessed, trains from Gatwick Airport or Redhill to Reading via Dorking Deepdene and Guildford do indeed pass through Gomshall, though hardly any call there.

 

[Wallsendmag]

And of course this is already possible and has been for a while. EMR have self service machines that just issue etickets. Avanti ticket offices have been issuing etickets for years now.

If the ticket technology becomes cheaper and easier to maintain it's already got a significant head-start over the do-minimum.


Exactly. Start with the principle that if there's a cheap fare, charge that unless one of the relevant flags has been triggered. Of course that's not exactly how the zonal system in London has always done it, often charging higher fares for some non zone one journeys because they've not correctly coded the routes with the pink validator.

For info, Gomshall lies between Dorking Deepdene and Guildford. As you guessed, trains from Gatwick Airport or Redhill to Reading via Dorking Deepdene and Guildford do indeed pass through Gomshall, though hardly any call there.

Don’t forget LNER’s trial eTVM

 

[Bletchleyite]

Don’t forget LNER’s trial eTVM

If the London issue can be solved, this is certainly the way to go. I do fear there won't be any attempt to solve it, tbough, so cross London through tickets and the protection and looser restrictions they offer will quietly go away, as that is in the railway's interest.

 

[PeterC]

You need to know "yes, "no" and "don't know" as different options. Obviously only "no" can result in any sort of penalty.

Others have also suggested that you can actually move away from a classic PF and just treat it as a tap in, adding a penalty of say £20 to the transaction. Thus it doesn't need to be in real time.

Or just do things the way TfL do.

 

[Wallsendmag]

If the London issue can be solved, this is certainly the way to go. I do fear there won't be any attempt to solve it, tbough, so cross London through tickets and the protection and looser restrictions they offer will quietly go away, as that is in the railway's interest.

If the industry is serious about getting rid of CCST it'll need to be done sooner rather than later

 

[Bletchleyite]

If the industry is serious about getting rid of CCST it'll need to be done sooner rather than later

Would not surprise me if they "fixed" it by stopping cross London through bookings, as that would be in the railway's interest.

 

[JonathanH]

Would not surprise me if they "fixed" it by stopping cross London through bookings, as that would be in the railway's interest.

With Crossrail and Thameslink it might be possible to do that when the former opens.

Only Marylebone, Victoria and Fenchurch Street would probably then be on a limb. Euston is within walking distance of St Pancras, Waterloo can connect to London Bridge or people can pay for the underground and even then Fenchurch Street passengers can travel from Liverpool Street and Victoria passengers can use Thameslink further down the line.

 

[Haywain]

Would not surprise me if they "fixed" it by stopping cross London through bookings, as that would be in the railway's interest.

I haven’t heard anything to suggest that may be under consideration.

 

[Hadders]

Would not surprise me if they "fixed" it by stopping cross London through bookings, as that would be in the railway's interest.

That really wouldn't be satisfactory. It would represent a huge fare increase for journeys like Bletchley to Canterbury or Stevenage to Woking etc.

With Crossrail and Thameslink it might be possible to do that when the former opens.

Only Marylebone, Victoria and Fenchurch Street would probably then be on a limb. Euston is within walking distance of St Pancras, Waterloo can connect to London Bridge or people can pay for the underground and even then Fenchurch Street passengers can travel from Liverpool Street and Victoria passengers can use Thameslink further down the line.

Not very satisfactory passenger friendly if you have to walk from Euston to St Pancras to make a cross London journey.

 

[JonathanH]

Not very satisfactory passenger friendly if you have to walk from Euston to St Pancras to make a cross London journey.

I agree but effectively it already happens with the Oyster / Contactless fare structure in London - no mixed mode premium to cross on Thameslink, extra fare payable on the underground.

No one is suggesting you have to walk from Euston to St Pancras, just that the underground might not be included any more, whereas Thameslink could be.

(I appreciate that there might not be an OSI between Euston and St Pancras International - haven't checked - but there could be.)

 

[Bletchleyite]

That really wouldn't be satisfactory. It would represent a huge fare increase for journeys like Bletchley to Canterbury or Stevenage to Woking etc.

I agree, but the railway has a habit of doing unsatisfactory things to its advantage.

I wouldn't have an issue with taking two quid off through fares and removing Tube validity as an easyish but less contentious option. Otherwise just put barcode readers on some gates at busy interchanges and use mobile phone based verification by staff at any other.