TFW introduces Pay As You Go in South East Wales

[AdamWW]

I did travel on some buses too so had to do some maths to work out which method would end up cheaper overall, bit sad that you can't have the best of both worlds!

Indeed.

One day, maybe....

 

[Sterre]

I managed a rather fun journey yesterday after accidentally forgetting to take my laptop to work.
Pleasantly surprised I was charged for one journey rather than 2, but not sure I really should have been.

 

[Christian Schm]

TfW has long committed to reduce the fares from Abergavenny (& Chepstow) to Cardiff, which were so much higher than from other stations that are a similar distance. But that would have exacerbated the split ticket issue on the Marches line. So they went for PAYG as a solution, as you can’t us it for split ticketing.

The feedback I’ve heard is that it is quite popular, and has led to more opportunistic trips.

But what is weird are the new zones. The old Valley Line zones, still used for cash fares, were Cardiff-heavy - 3 zones south of the Caerphilly tunnel, just 2 north of it. PAYG uses different zones - and just one south of the tunnel but 5 north of it!

 

[Dai Corner]

TfW has long committed to reduce the fares from Abergavenny (& Chepstow) to Cardiff, which were so much higher than from other stations that are a similar distance. But that would have exacerbated the split ticket issue on the Marches line. So they went for PAYG as a solution, as you can’t us it for split ticketing.

The feedback I’ve heard is that it is quite popular, and has led to more opportunistic trips.

But what is weird are the new zones. The old Valley Line zones, still used for cash fares, were Cardiff-heavy - 3 zones south of the Caerphilly tunnel, just 2 north of it. PAYG uses different zones - and just one south of the tunnel but 5 north of it!

I was at Abergavenny the other day and I'm pretty sure it would be possible to get off a train, tap in/out and get back on while it was stopped if you knew which door to use and had no mobility difficulties.

 

[John R]

I was at Abergavenny the other day and I'm pretty sure it would be possible to get off a train, tap in/out and get back on while it was stopped if you knew which door to use and had no mobility difficulties.

And no luggage to worry about in the event that you did fail to reboard.

More importantly, I suspect the main benefit is that it precludes ticketing websites using the tap fare to split a longer distance journey.

 

[edgar13]

An update that a refund was received from TfW, from £25.5 down to £8.6 (but still not the correct amount of the £9 cap!)

They have combined some of my latter taps into one "return" journey from Bridgend to Newport via Merthyr Tydfil, which would violate so many PAYG rules on its own such as doubling back and journey time limits. No explaination provided for this so still unsure if I'll run into similar problems again on my next visit!

 

[positron]

I managed a rather fun journey yesterday after accidentally forgetting to take my laptop to work.
Pleasantly surprised I was charged for one journey rather than 2, but not sure I really should have been.

Heh that's a fun one, I would have expected qs to Cathays via the Bay to not be valid break of journey but their system seems to think it is. I wonder if internally there's still some "all stations" concept that includes central, qs and the Bay? Either way it's nice that you got it slightly cheaper.

An update that a refund was received from TfW, from £25.5 down to £8.6 (but still not the correct amount of the £9 cap!)

They have combined some of my latter taps into one "return" journey from Bridgend to Newport via Merthyr Tydfil, which would violate so many PAYG rules on its own such as doubling back and journey time limits. No explaination provided for this so still unsure if I'll run into similar problems again on my next visit!

So their system is meant to do best possible turn up and go pricing so if a standard ticket works out cheaper (which can be the case with middle stops where break of journey applies) it should use that.

Both this and the previous one seems to be fairly liberal application of break of journey rules. Potentially TfW does just have very lax rules on break of journey. Though I suspect it's just some manual finangling that their support team did when you reported it(assuming you did?).

 

[Envoy]

But what is weird are the new zones. The old Valley Line zones, still used for cash fares, were Cardiff-heavy - 3 zones south of the Caerphilly tunnel, just 2 north of it. PAYG uses different zones - and just one south of the tunnel but 5 north of it!

The new PAYG zones are more sensible. It is only about 1 mile between Llanishen & Lisvane stations yet under the old system, you had a fare hike and this induced people to drive to Llanishen station rather than Lisvane. The new system is far more sensible with a zone boundary where you go through the tunnel between Lisvane and Caerphilly.

It’s the same at Dinas Powis which had a fare hike between that station and Eastbrook - despite being very close and part of the same settlement. Now the fare zone boundary is between Dinas Powis & Cadoxton so far more sensible.

 

[AdamWW]

Just did a TfW survey on PAYG.

One question was whether I'd still bother using it if they increased the fares to be the same as regular ones.
(Didn't mention if that included charging more than half the cost of a return for a single)

Oddly their list of reasons to pick from for not using it now didn't include them being more expensive than a monthly season.

Fascinating.

Do a Delay Repay claim before you hit the weekly cap, and it's based on the price of the affected journey.

Do it after hitting the cap, and it's based on 10th the value of the cap.

So try to get delayed early in the week!

 

[Dai Corner]

Yesterday I tapped in at Ebbw Vale Town and out at Pye Corner. I was correctly charged the Anytime Day Single fare of £3.70 as the PAYG fare would have been higher. However, had I known I would have used my Senior Railcard, bought a paper or e-ticket and paid only £2.45.

As a knowledgeable rail user I could have looked up the PAYG fare on brfares.com but I don't think they're published by TfW so how is the normal passenger supposed to do this?

 

[AdamWW]

Yesterday I tapped in at Ebbw Vale Town and out at Pye Corner. I was correctly charged the Anytime Day Single fare of £3.70 as the PAYG fare would have been higher. However, had I known I would have used my Senior Railcard, bought a paper or e-ticket and paid only £2.45.

As a knowledgeable rail user I could have looked up the PAYG fare on brfares.com but I don't think they're published by TfW so how is the normal passenger supposed to do this?

Just one of a very very long list of questions that could reasonably be asked of TfW.

I complained about this (among other trings) in their recent survey, at https://haveyoursay.tfw.wales/pay-as-you-go

 

[Dai Corner]

Just one of a very very long list of questions that could reasonably be asked of TfW.

I complained about this (among other trings) in their recent survey, at https://haveyoursay.tfw.wales/pay-as-you-go

Thanks for the link. I've done the same.

Is there an email address that will reach someone who will understand and care about this and any other issues I raise, I wonder?

 

[positron]

Yesterday I tapped in at Ebbw Vale Town and out at Pye Corner. I was correctly charged the Anytime Day Single fare of £3.70 as the PAYG fare would have been higher. However, had I known I would have used my Senior Railcard, bought a paper or e-ticket and paid only £2.45.

As a knowledgeable rail user I could have looked up the PAYG fare on brfares.com but I don't think they're published by TfW so how is the normal passenger supposed to do this?

They have some examples fares on their site for crossing between various zones but I don't think anything exhaustive exists yet. They really need to get on with allowing Railcard usage with pay as you go, even if initially only for the calculation of when they fallback to a standard fare.

 

[AdamWW]

Thanks for the link. I've done the same.

Is there an email address that will reach someone who will understand and care about this and any other issues I raise, I wonder?

I've not had a lot of luck with their customer services.

I did have a go at complaining (about something else) recently (had to use Whatsapp because their complaints form wouldn't actually submit) and they said it would be treated as a Freedom of Information request, which wasn't my intention and I don't think is likely to get the answers I wanted.

I've asked if that means they have no intention of answering any questions that the Freedom of Information Act doesn't compel them to and I'm waiting for a response.

 

[Dai Corner]

I've not had a lot of luck with their customer services.

I did have a go at complaining (about something else) recently (had to use Whatsapp because their complaints form wouldn't actually submit) and they said it would be treated as a Freedom of Information request, which wasn't my intention and I don't think is likely to get the answers I wanted.

I've asked if that means they have no intention of answering any questions that the Freedom of Information Act doesn't compel them to and I'm waiting for a response.

Fair play, I submitted the form and they replied within a couple of hours with a link to a page where you can look up the PAYG fares and they're going to refund to me difference between the Railcard discounted fare and what I was charged.

Pay as you go travel | Transport for Wales

Transport for Wales | Buy Cheap Train Tickets and Check Train Times

tfw.wales

 

[positron]

Nice! That's new, wasn't there before Christmas when I last checked.

Due to flooding caused by storm Bert, pay as you go is not currently available at Fernhill station.

Wonder if this is actually still true and they just haven't fixed the reader yet? Amusing either way.

 

[AdamWW]

Fair play, I submitted the form and they replied within a couple of hours with a link to a page where you can look up the PAYG fares and they're going to refund to me difference between the Railcard discounted fare and what I was charged.

That's useful. I just found out about it myself and was going to post it here.

Will be even more useful once they've added daily and weekly caps.

Anyone know what this is about?
"Fares for journeys that require travellers to change platforms by tapping out and tapping back in, in order to complete their journeys may be charged at a different rate to that shown here. Charging for these types of journeys is currently under review"

I don't know where this would apply. Platform 0 at Central isn't behind the barrier line but doesn't have separate barriers - are you supposed to tap out at a standalone reader and back in at the barriers (or vice versa)? And if so why would you be charged a different price depending on whether you had to do that or not?

 

[Dai Corner]

Anyone know what this is about?
"Fares for journeys that require travellers to change platforms by tapping out and tapping back in, in order to complete their journeys may be charged at a different rate to that shown here. Charging for these types of journeys is currently under review"

I don't know where this would apply. Platform 0 at Central isn't behind the barrier line but doesn't have separate barriers - are you supposed to tap out at a standalone reader and back in at the barriers (or vice versa)? And if so why would you be charged a different price depending on whether you had to do that or not?

I suspect they've found a bug in the system and are trying to decide what to do about it.

Tapping in at your origin station, out at the barriers at Central, in at the standalone reader on platform 0 and finally out at your destination would probably result in you being charged for two separate journeys whereas changing platforms within the barriers would be regarded as one. Not tapping in at platform 0 then tapping at your destination would make the system think you'd started a new journey there. If your card was scanned on board you'd be recorded as not tapped in. Once you involve daily and weekly caps it could get even more complicated.

Doesn't Oyster allow you a certain time for an out of station interchange, which is effectively what this situation is?

 

[AdamWW]

I suspect they've found a bug in the system and are trying to decide what to do about it.

Tapping in at your origin station, out at the barriers at Central, in at the standalone reader on platform 0 and finally out at your destination would probably result in you being charged for two separate journeys whereas changing platforms within the barriers would be regarded as one. Not tapping in at platform 0 then tapping at your destination would make the system think you'd started a new journey there. If your card was scanned on board you'd be recorded as not tapped in. Once you involve daily and weekly caps it could get even more complicated.

Doesn't Oyster allow you a certain time for an out of station interchange, which is effectively what this situation is?

If there are specific requirements then there need to be huge signs on platform 0 telling people what to do.

But I don't see how it has to work as you suggest. I don't think the system maintains a real time record of whether someone is tapped in or not - it just looks at all the taps at the end of the day and works out what's happened.

It would be easy enough to recognize what's going on if someone tapped in at station A, then the barriers at Central, then at station B.

It seems to have some intelligence.

I was turfed off a train recently that was stopped short due to late running. I tapped out as I didn't intend to wait for the next train, but then ended up doing so so tapped in again and out at the far end.

For some reason the tap in didn't register - but the system was bright enough to automatically add the missing tap in the right place. It assumed it was a missing tap out from the first journey (fair enough) and correctly worked out from the tap that did register where my journey must have finished.

If it can do that, it should be able to cope with platform 0.

If in fact it's overcharging, I don't think the correct approach is to claim that it's the fare finder that's wrong!

 

[positron]

I suspected 'overcharging' would be what happens in that case. Hopefully they just need to add logic to the system that platform 0 + a barrier scan gets merged into a single PAYG ticket. I'm assuming it actually gets charged as 2 PAYG or at best a conventional single from origin to destination for when that's cheaper than 2 PAYG.

As far as I know platform 0 at Cardiff is the only such example of this.

 

[Hadders]

I suspect they've found a bug in the system and are trying to decide what to do about it.

Tapping in at your origin station, out at the barriers at Central, in at the standalone reader on platform 0 and finally out at your destination would probably result in you being charged for two separate journeys whereas changing platforms within the barriers would be regarded as one. Not tapping in at platform 0 then tapping at your destination would make the system think you'd started a new journey there. If your card was scanned on board you'd be recorded as not tapped in. Once you involve daily and weekly caps it could get even more complicated.

Doesn't Oyster allow you a certain time for an out of station interchange, which is effectively what this situation is?

Oyster and contactless in London has what's called Out of Station interchanges where touch-outs followed by touch-ins at certain specific locations within a certain period of time are joined together and charged as one journey. Other PAYG systems like GTR's KeyGo and SWR's Tap 2 Go deal with break of journey.

Both of these systems seem better than what's ended up in south east Wales.

 

[AdamWW]

As far as I know platform 0 at Cardiff is the only such example of this.

I can't think of anywhere else either.

Oyster and contactless in London has what's called Out of Station interchanges where touch-outs followed by touch-ins at certain specific locations within a certain period of time are joined together and charged as one journey. Other PAYG systems like GTR's KeyGo and SWR's Tap 2 Go deal with break of journey.

Both of these systems seem better than what's ended up in south east Wales.

Better in what way? (Given that we're just speculating about what happens at platform 0).

The TfW scheme has two systems overlaid on each other.

One works to PAYG rules with prices for single journeys, daily and weekly caps for some journeys (not quite sure how this handles break of journey) and zonal daily and weekly caps.
The other system looks at what you've done and calculates what it would have cost with conventional tickets - singles, returns and weekly seasons.
Then it works out which one is cheaper and uses that.

It may not be perfect but I've seen it successfully in action myself - I did a journey into Cardiff in the morning then in the afternoon another one back out to a different station.
It joined them into a single conventional ticket with a break of journey and charged appropriately.
But then later in the week I hit the weekly zone cap and it changed that journey to PAYG fares so that it could be included in the cap.

Do other PAYG systems do something even more beneficial to the passenger?

I think they should have made more information available from the start rather than it appearing in dribs and drabs, and there needs to be more yet (the fare planner needs to show weekly caps, and they need to explain how delay repay works) and we've seen above that it has had some problems with taps failing to register. But overall I think it's a very good scheme, and while it would be nice if it could maintain information on whether you're tapped in or not and present that as in the Netherlands, the fact that you can at least (normally) see taps on the app is extremely useful.

And it gives anyone with a contactless card access to free platform tickets!

 

[Hadders]

Better in what way? (Given that we're just speculating about what happens at platform 0).

London joins up the journeys so the platform 0 issue (ie touching-out then touching back in at another part of the station when interchanging) is joined up into one journey.

Do other PAYG systems do something even more beneficial to the passenger?

KeyGo charges the appropriate Single or Return fare or London Zonal fare if it is cheaper. It also has weekly caps.

KeyGo can only be used on GTR services (plus a couple of exceptions) and you need a KeyGo card not contactless.

It sounds as though what you’ve got in Wales is a version of KeyGo that works with contactless.

 

[Haywain]

KeyGo charges the appropriate Single or Return fare or London Zonal fare if it is cheaper. It also has weekly caps.

Or contactless fare, rather than London Zonal fare.

It sounds as though what you’ve got in Wales is a version of KeyGo that works with contactless.

The key (no pun intended) difference being that using a dedicated smartcard means railcard discounts can be included.

 

[Dai Corner]

The key (no pun intended) difference being that using a dedicated smartcard means railcard discounts can be included.

I don't see why a Railcard (or their own concessionary bus pass, which offers a 33% discount on the Cardiff Valley and Vale lines) couldn't be associated with a TfW PAYG account? CEO James Price has said they are working towards honouring Railcards.

 

[WelshBluebird]

I mean TfL are also working to have Railcards included in the contactless side of things, so it's clearly possible.

 

[AdamWW]

London joins up the journeys so the platform 0 issue (ie touching-out then touching back in at another part of the station when interchanging) is joined up into one journey.

At the moment we're just guessing that the TfW scheme isn't handling this correctly.

KeyGo charges the appropriate Single or Return fare or London Zonal fare if it is cheaper. It also has weekly caps.

KeyGo can only be used on GTR services (plus a couple of exceptions) and you need a KeyGo card not contactless.

It sounds as though what you’ve got in Wales is a version of KeyGo that works with contactless.

Maybe I don't understand how KeyGo works but it doesn't sound like it to me.

So far as I can see KeyGo implements existing fares - which includes London zonal fares - with the weekly caps just being the cost of a regular weekly season.

The TfW system has an entirely new fare structure created just for PAYG, which in some cases is very different to the one for conventional tickets.

It has zone caps as well as caps for particular routes, both of which come in daily and weekly versions and for the weekly version are less than a regular season ticket.

But if a regular ticket would be cheaper than PAYG prices either for a given day or over a week, it charges for that instead.

And it's multi-operator, albeit only with TfW and Cross-country and not (at present, at least) GWR.

So it seems to me that the TfW PAYG system doesn't work like KeyGo, but will do so if that would be cheaper than applying PAYG fares.

Added...

Disappointingly, according to their staff on Twitter there are no plans to extend PAYG to GWR. So for journeys between Cardiff and Newport you can have a significant reduction in fares, so long as you avoid GWR. I suppose no different to the situation in many other countries.

 

[Envoy]

Wales on Line (Media Wales) now of an item about TFW contactless:> https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/travel/spent-day-travelling-around-cardiff-31249813

Spending a day travelling Cardiff by train may seem like a waste of time and money, but after testing out a new way to pay, it was cheaper than I expected it to be.

This was because I travelled using the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) system offered by Transport for Wales (TfW), letting me pay for travel by tapping my card or phone in and out at ticket barriers.

 

[AdamWW]

Wales on Line (Media Wales) now of an item about TFW contactless:> https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/travel/spent-day-travelling-around-cardiff-31249813

And the conclusion was that the day of travel cost £5.90 rather than £13.80 had they used regular tickets.

Though if travelling off peak (and not going to Newport) there is the poorly publicised "Explore the Capital" ticket at £5.50, which unlike PAYG also offers child and railcard discounts.

 

[chrisjo]

And the conclusion was that the day of travel cost £5.90 rather than £13.80 had they used regular tickets.

My conclusion was mainly that reading the article just re-affirmed my conviction that anyone who tries to read anything at all on Wales Online must be a confirmed masochist. The whole experience is a pain in the butt from start to finish. But I digress....