TfL Rail to Reading - no Oyster so no Railcards?

[MikeWh]

paper tickets and railcard discounts will fall by the wayside, as of course they have done in London for the most part.

Rubbish. Railcard discounts are available on Oyster and are accepted on routes where they are not with paper tickets.

I may be completely wrong here, but is one of the issues with back office Oyster the ability for the current balance to be shown at the time of touching in/out?

 

[JonathanH]

Rubbish. Railcard discounts are available on Oyster and are accepted on routes where they are not with paper tickets.

I may be completely wrong here, but is one of the issues with back office Oyster the ability for the current balance to be shown at the time of touching in/out?

Yes, of course railcard discounts remain available on Oyster. However, there are journeys in the evening peak for which a railcard discounted paper ticket is cheaper than using Oyster and Network Railcard has very little use within London other than to reduce a paper travelcard at the weekend.

 

[Stephen111]

So how will it work if one already has an Oyster travelcard (Z1-2) and one wants to travel from Canary Wharf to Iver?
At Jan 20 you will have to come up from LUL to the NR station at Paddington to make the journey - so the touch in at Paddington will have to be contactless - so surely you lose the benefit of Zones 1-2 already paid for??
After Xrail up and running the journey will be direct. Are they really suggesting that one should touch in at Canary Wharf using contactless and ignore the Oyster travelcard already paid for? that would be absurd?!

 

[Joe Paxton]

So how will it work if one already has an Oyster travelcard (Z1-2) and one wants to travel from Canary Wharf to Iver?
At Jan 20 you will have to come up from LUL to the NR station at Paddington to make the journey - so the touch in at Paddington will have to be contactless - so surely you lose the benefit of Zones 1-2 already paid for??
After Xrail up and running the journey will be direct. Are they really suggesting that one should touch in at Canary Wharf using contactless and ignore the Oyster travelcard already paid for? that would be absurd?!

You buy a ticket from Boundary Zone 2 (i.e. the outer edge of zone 2) to Iver.

You do this at Paddington from January 2020, or at Canary Wharf station when the Crossrail/ Elizabeth line opens through central London.

Boundary Zone tickets have been around for a very long time!

 

[Stephen111]

thanks!
though suspect that this will end up being a lot more expensive than GWR with the Gold Card discount (only £2.97 each way). also defeats the purpose of trying to reduce use of paper tickets.

 

[Hadders]

I'm guessing that one issue with Oyster is what do about the charge for incomplete journeys? At the moment an incomplete journey is about £8 (I think) but this significantly undercuts the fare to Reading meaning that it'd be cheaper to not touch out! You could set the charge for an incomplete journey higher but then that could be disproportionate to someone just making a journey between two adjacent stations in the suburbs.

Then there's the question of minimum balances. How much credit would be needed on an Oyster card when you start a journey to Reading? At the moment you only require sufficient credit to get as far as the next station but this would be insufficient in you touch in with a couple of quid on your card and then travel to Reading.

The real issue here isn't the lack of Oyster to Reading but the lack of railcards with contactless.

 

[matt_world2004]

So how will it work if one already has an Oyster travelcard (Z1-2) and one wants to travel from Canary Wharf to Iver?
At Jan 20 you will have to come up from LUL to the NR station at Paddington to make the journey - so the touch in at Paddington will have to be contactless - so surely you lose the benefit of Zones 1-2 already paid for??
After Xrail up and running the journey will be direct. Are they really suggesting that one should touch in at Canary Wharf using contactless and ignore the Oyster travelcard already paid for? that would be absurd?!

Touching your oyster card on a london underground ticket machine with a zone 1-2 season ticket on it will allow you to purchase an paper extension ticket that covers the rest of your journey. A crossrail ticket machine also allows you to purchase tickets from other stations. So you just select the last station in your zones and get a paper ticket for that journey. Crossrail west stations also have ticket offices and given the complexity of gwml ticketing these are likely to stay for the forseeable future who will also sell an appropriate extension ticket.

 

[hkstudent]

Touching your oyster card on a london underground ticket machine with a zone 1-2 season ticket on it will allow you to purchase an paper extension ticket that covers the rest of your journey. A crossrail ticket machine also allows you to purchase tickets from other stations. So you just select the last station in your zones and get a paper ticket for that journey. Crossrail west stations also have ticket offices and given the complexity of gwml ticketing these are likely to stay for the forseeable future who will also sell an appropriate extension ticket.

Yeah. But sadly TfL always promotes people (even with travelcard) to touch in and touch out always with the oyster card, despite it is not essential for season tickets valid in the respective zones.
I am kind of concerned that there may be loads of people touching in/out at West Drayton platform for switching tickets from 2nd January.

 

[matt_world2004]

Yeah. But sadly TfL always promotes people (even with travelcard) to touch in and touch out always with the oyster card, despite it is not essential for season tickets valid in the respective zones.
I am kind of concerned that there may be loads of people touching in/out at West Drayton platform for switching tickets from 2nd January.

currently oyster is valid to west drayton on GwR , the oyster readers are downstairs in the underpass. If there was a high proportion of people touching out at West Drayton to reboard a train with paper ticket it would be worse now than in January.

I am guessing it's highly likely that GwR smart will be valid on Crossrail. and this might be a route to get railcard discounted smart ticketing on the line.

 

[hkstudent]

currently oyster is valid to west drayton on GwR , the oyster readers are downstairs in the underpass. If there was a high proportion of people touching out at West Drayton to reboard a train with paper ticket it would be worse now than in January.

I am guessing it's highly likely that GwR smart will be valid on Crossrail. and this might be a route to get railcard discounted smart ticketing on the line.

Well, it's down to rather GWR can adopt Pay-As-You-Go fares with the smartcard just like GTR's Key Go does. I am highly doubtful about that. IF it is available, I doubt the GWR fare can be integrated with TfL fare.

 

[mattdickinson]

currently oyster is valid to west drayton on GwR , the oyster readers are downstairs in the underpass. If there was a high proportion of people touching out at West Drayton to reboard a train with paper ticket it would be worse now than in January.

I am guessing it's highly likely that GwR smart will be valid on Crossrail. and this might be a route to get railcard discounted smart ticketing on the line.

GWR Smart for singles, returns and seasons (including railcard discounts) is already available to GWR managed stations from Paddington using TfL Rail as far as Hayes & Harlington, and this will extend to TfL Rail journeys to Slough, Maidenhead, Twyford and Reading. There isn't a GWR Smart PAYG product.

 

[hozza94]

You buy a ticket from Boundary Zone 2 (i.e. the outer edge of zone 2) to Iver.

You do this at Paddington from January 2020, or at Canary Wharf station when the Crossrail/ Elizabeth line opens through central London.

Boundary Zone tickets have been around for a very long time!

I have got a question here: if I intend to do the same journey with a Z2-5 travelcard alongside a railcard, then what ticket should I purchase and where will I get it from?

 

[hkstudent]

I have got a question here: if I intend to do the same journey with a Z2-5 travelcard alongside a railcard, then what ticket should I purchase and where will I get it from?

Get a Boundary Zone 5 ticket from a ticket office. Or if you don't want to queue, get a ticket from Hayes & Harlington

 

[hozza94]

Get a Boundary Zone 5 ticket from a ticket office. Or if you don't want to queue, get a ticket from Hayes & Harlington

But where should I tap my card to ensure my Z1 single is correctly charged?
For the example of Canary Wharf to Iver, the parts that are covered by my travelcard would be Canary Wharf to Whitechapel and Acton Mainline to Hayes and Harlington.
if I get a BZ5 to Iver ticket, that would cover me from H&H to Iver, however, that would leave the section from Whitechapel to Acton Mainline not correctly charged.

It's already a problem at the moment where I get a train from Waterloo to outside London, where I would need to pay the whole fare and double pay Z2-5 as there is no way of avoiding maximum fare after I touch in at Z1 as trains often are non-stop between Clapham Junction and somewhere far!

 

[hkstudent]

But where should I tap my card to ensure my Z1 single is correctly charged?
For the example of Canary Wharf to Iver, the parts that are covered by my travelcard would be Canary Wharf to Whitechapel and Acton Mainline to Hayes and Harlington.
if I get a BZ5 to Iver ticket, that would cover me from H&H to Iver, however, that would leave the section from Whitechapel to Acton Mainline not correctly charged.

It's already a problem at the moment where I get a train from Waterloo to outside London, where I would need to pay the whole fare and double pay Z2-5 as there is no way of avoiding maximum fare after I touch in at Z1 as trains often are non-stop between Clapham Junction and somewhere far!

For your case of Waterloo, get a Waterloo - Vauxhall ticket on top of the boundary ticket so that you don't need to touch in at Waterloo.
For H&H case, I am afraid that you may need to alight and touch in / out at any station within zone 2-5.

 

[matt_world2004]

I have got a question here: if I intend to do the same journey with a Z2-5 travelcard alongside a railcard, then what ticket should I purchase and where will I get it from?

Go to a tfl rail ticket machine select your origin destination as hayes and then get a paper ticket if travelling from Paddington you would need to do the same between paddington and Acton mainline to cover the zone 1 component.

 

[Acton1991]

This seems so strange to me - in places like Slough you'll be able to use your Oyster on the bus (number 81), but then not on TfL Rail from the adjacent station. I think this is going to be very confusing to the average traveller.

 

[hkstudent]

This seems so strange to me - in places like Slough you'll be able to use your Oyster on the bus (number 81), but then not on TfL Rail from the adjacent station. I think this is going to be very confusing to the average traveller.

Well, if they look at the rail map, they would get the message right away.
I think rail and bus are different in fare scale in many people's mind.

 

[infobleep]

This seems so strange to me - in places like Slough you'll be able to use your Oyster on the bus (number 81), but then not on TfL Rail from the adjacent station. I think this is going to be very confusing to the average traveller.

Well it is no different to how it is now.

Dorking has a TfL bus for example. The 465. Surbtion has buses arriving that aren't even part of TfL.

Someone got on one of those buses the other day and then got off. Probably thought their Oyster Card was valid on it.

 

[JonathanH]

This seems so strange to me - in places like Slough you'll be able to use your Oyster on the bus (number 81), but then not on TfL Rail from the adjacent station. I think this is going to be very confusing to the average traveller.

They will put signs up at Slough station saying that Oyster isn't valid and make announcements on the train before West Drayton. The on-train maps will show "Special Fares apply". How is it complicated to understand?

People can't just assume that a given fare structure is valid for any journey they want to undertake, just like if I go to Glasgow, I can't use Strathclyde tickets beyond Croy for example and if I have a paper 1-6 travelcard, I can't go to Shenfield. Perhaps the Tube Map should only show Crossrail as far as West Drayton.

Why does the 81 run to Slough anyway? Much as I have appreciated saving money using it from time to time, Cornbrook and Poyle are in Berkshire and only one stop in Greater London, Moor Bridge, is not served by the 423 / 350. First could run a route from Slough to Heathrow Airport commercially via Poyle and Cornbrook if the 81 didn't go further than the Stanwell Moor Road / Bath Road roundabout.

 

[PeterC]

Well it is no different to how it is now.

Dorking has a TfL bus for example. The 465. Surbtion has buses arriving that aren't even part of TfL.

Someone got on one of those buses the other day and then got off. Probably thought their Oyster Card was valid on it.

I have known drivers in Chesham complain about people expecting their Oyster cards to be valid. I must confess that I sometimes get the wallets mixed up and use the wrong one to touch in on buses outside of London.

As long as there are boundaries there will a potential for confusion.

 

[PeterC]

They will put signs up at Slough station saying that Oyster isn't valid and make announcements on the train before West Drayton. The on-train maps will show "Special Fares apply". How is it complicated to understand?
SNIP
.

There will always be somebody who will misunderstand. In my years in customer facing industries I found that there was a certain type of person who would, possibly deliberately, put the wrong interpretation on the conditions of any transaction. (I am sure that people have claimed that the upgrade fee for a Weekend First was the full first class fare)

 

[Belperpete]

They will put signs up at Slough station saying that Oyster isn't valid and make announcements on the train before West Drayton. The on-train maps will show "Special Fares apply". How is it complicated to understand?

I think the main problem will be with people going TO Slough and Reading, who will tap-in at Paddington and then have problems tapping-out (if they haven't already got caught by RP). How are they going to show on the zonal fare maps that these stations are in Zone whatever for contactless, but not for Oyster?

 

[MikeWh]

I think the main problem will be with people going TO Slough and Reading, who will tap-in at Paddington and then have problems tapping-out (if they haven't already got caught by RP). How are they going to show on the zonal fare maps that these stations are in Zone whatever for contactless, but not for Oyster?

They already do show this for Brookmans Park on the London Rail Map. Given that Iver to Reading will be a much larger issue I would imagine that there may be more prominence given to the symbol.

Also, there was (possibly still is) a notice at Brookmans Park explaining that if you've arrived on Oyster you need to buy a ticket for your whole journey and send a copy of that ticket to TfL for a refund of the entry charge. I'm sure that there will be a grace period where passengers will not be penalty fared in the first period of next year.

 

[RJ]

Why does the 81 run to Slough anyway? Much as I have appreciated saving money using it from time to time, Cornbrook and Poyle are in Berkshire and only one stop in Greater London, Moor Bridge, is not served by the 423 / 350. First could run a route from Slough to Heathrow Airport commercially via Poyle and Cornbrook if the 81 didn't go further than the Stanwell Moor Road / Bath Road roundabout.

TfL has a duty under the Greater London Authority Act to meet the travel needs of people living or working in, or visiting, Greater London. The route was inherited from TfL's predecessors who did run a few routes well into the home counties. It comes under TfL's duty as quite a lot of people along that corridor to Slough work at the airport which is of course within the GLA boundary.

 

[Gerald Fiennes]

Sounds like another big mess in the making: one only needs to reflect on the different TfL and NR policies on child fares, Over 60 cards, peak hours, day return fares, BOJ and refund conditions to see how this may well make things harder, not easier, for many passengers who really just want a simple, simple system that is the same everywhere. I sometimes try and describe the three different types of Oyster fare from London to Heathrow (that's before discounts, child fares and time restrictions) to incredulous visitors from eg the US and Canada, but they just look at me as though I have gone totally mad! I suppose only having two fares, albeit both cardboard, to Reading is some sort of improvement on this... although the presumably incompatible GWR ITSO system that is currently being added as an overlay may yet even things up!

Put more bluntly, we have to ask how it is that UK plc can spend £17.6bn on building a great new railway for its capital city yet also devise such a complicated customer proposition (which fundamentally stems from the inability of TfL and NR to harmonise their commercial and customer service policies) to it. Since we never really explain all the rules and typically leave them fumbling at ticket machines and gates trying to work it all out (particularly since TfL chopped the ticket offices and presumably will do so at manned ex GWR stations they take over,) it is hardly surprising that people that feel that the London region fares system is bit like a fruit machine set to offer its prizes only to insiders...

In my experience also, many non-UK visitors if they use contactless have no idea what their home bank will charge for currency conversion -- $2-3 per transaction in the US is sometimes mentioned -- so much prefer Oyster.

Surely 1st generation Oyster cards could be phased out over eg. a 12 month period with TfL offering eg. an enhanced deposit refund of say £5 to get people to empty their drawers of them. And also offer railcard discounts to pre-registered contactless cards. However, the contactless system is still not 100% reliable, with random IT banking failures that occasionally seem to block their use, so 2nd generation Oyster is really the best option.

 

[matt_world2004]

TfL has a duty under the Greater London Authority Act to meet the travel needs of people living or working in, or visiting, Greater London. The route was inherited from TfL's predecessors who did run a few routes well into the home counties. It comes under TfL's duty as quite a lot of people along that corridor to Slough work at the airport which is of course within the GLA boundary.

TfL legal duty I believe extends to the first major town outside greater London. For circumstances like the 465 they recieve funding from Surrey County Council to continue to run the service Other services like their Watford junction bus routes are because they act as a feeder for their more profitable rail services

 

[RJ]

TfL legal duty I believe extends to the first major town outside greater London. For circumstances like the 465 they recieve funding from Surrey County Council to continue to run the service Other services like their Watford junction bus routes are because they act as a feeder for their more profitable rail services

It doesn't necessarily extend to the first major town outside Greater London. Sometimes the GLA boundary is on a rural road and bus services go across the border and turn around or head back into the GLA area at the first practical opportunity.

 

[LeeLivery]

A year ago I saw people trying to get through the barriers at Crawley with an Oyster. If it can happen there, it'll definitely happen in the Thames Valley.

 

[JonathanH]

Sounds like another big mess in the making: one only needs to reflect on the different TfL and NR policies on child fares, Over 60 cards, peak hours, day return fares, BOJ and refund conditions to see how this may well make things harder, not easier, for many passengers who really just want a simple, simple system that is the same everywhere.

So you want to impose the relatively inflexible fare structure devised for short point to point trips into Central London on the entire country? No thanks. Yes, it would be simple (or would it?) but actually there are fundamental flaws with TfL's model once you extend it outwards - fare capping is all designed around travel into Central London, no break of journey, peak fares in the afternoon unless you are travelling into Zone 1. These things are all OK when the fare range is £2-£5. They aren't OK as the peak / off-peak differentials increase in nominal terms and you are talking about fares in the £15-£20 range.