Why is there no mention that Elizabeth Line to Heathrow commands a premium?

[redreni]

Had TfL had their way earlier this year, with travelcards removed as a fare option, this issue would have been removed. Maybe TfL will have another go at some point.

A lot of the ways in which Oyster / Contactless may be the more expensive option is where another fare structure still exists.

There's also a "Not Heathrow Exp" day single fare from Heathrow to any destination within zones 1-6 (including London Underground zones) costing £10.40 with a railcard, albeit somebody has blocked the TVMs at Heathrow from selling it. (I discovered this because I booked a flight to Heathrow for a date after the expiry of the notice period for TfL's proposed partial withdrawal from the travelcard agreement, and I was wondering if I would need to pay more as a result of the day travelcard no longer being available).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Jun 2024 ==

£30 for a railcard though, someone who has a railcard and travels to Heathrow will likely use an Oyster card enough that cost is fairly inconsequential.

If they live in London yes, I agree.

They may not, though. Maybe they're visiting London before or after flying long haul from Heathrow, or maybe they're flying domestically.

 

[Benjwri]

There's also a "Not Heathrow Exp" day single fare from Heathrow to any destination within zones 1-6 (including London Underground zones) costing £10.40 with a railcard, albeit somebody has blocked the TVMs at Heathrow from selling it.

An Oyster Card with a railcard loaded to it will be able to make use of a £10.30 fare after 9:30am or all day weekends.

If they live in London yes, I agree.

They may not, though. Maybe they're visiting London before or after flying long haul from Heathrow, or maybe they're flying domestically

Fair point although given my experience travelling there today I would suggest the number of people travelling there who care about the money is low, given a good 2/3rds got in the Heathrow Express, and the number otherwise who don’t book a through ticket anyways is even lower.

 

[matt_world2004]

Personally I think zone 6 to Heathrow should be advertised as zone 6a or something similar to indicate zone 6 travelcards are valid on some services to the airport. While at the same time indicating that there may be a premium. Berlin manages much better at communicating fare differences . With the zones being zone A,BC and airport zone

The Heathrow fare anomaly is still not as bad as some of the Elizabeth line fare anomalies though such as LU paper tickets which have the legend "also valid on the Elizabeth line " not being valid west of Paddington or east of Stratford even if their destination is of a zone that is beyond these stations eg zone 4 .

I know of at least one person who had their details taken on the tfl rail for using an Heathrow express ticket too. What a disgusting way to treat visitors to our country

 

[MikeWM]

in my opinion this is a different issue. In central London the zonal system does hold and fares are predictable.

I'd agree we (well, mainly me!) are putting two issues together here.

The original complaint relates to finding out what the fares actually are. I see no reason why TfL couldn't put up prominent posters at every station clearly stating the fares from that station to the other zones, plus cap information. But in many years of travelling the network, I don't recall ever seeing such a thing.

Being forced to use a PAYG system in the first place, as TfL effectively does, is a separate issue. Though it causes the other - as even if fares aren't advertised clearly, you'd at least be confronted with what they actually are before starting your journey, ie. when you buy the ticket.

I was talking to a friend today, who is uninterested in rail, who said precisely the opposite and that they know it could cost more but it just isn’t worth it to them and they still tap.

Which is fine - I still use paper travelcards even though on occasion they cost me more than using PAYG, simply because I don't want to use PAYG. But I can afford to do so, not everyone has the money to sacrifice.

--

I don’t understand the continued references to a blank cheque; it isn’t difficult to discover what the fares are before travelling, or to check what you’ve been charged after the fact.

Even if you know the correct fare, you're still offering an entire pot of money to the company and expecting them to take the right amount. That's different from how every other transaction is done - you either hand over the correct amount of cash, or you approve a *specific* amount when paying by card.

TfL are worse still, because they effectively say 'the cost is £2 if you trust us to fill in your blank cheque, but if you want to fill it in yourself with the correct amount before handing it over, the cost is £5.' Nobody in their right mind 30 years ago would have accepted that, and I fail to see why we should accept it now.

If your card is registered you can view your entire journey history on the TfL website!

If you can be bothered to go through the whole process (which as I understand it also now requires a telephone for 2-factor authentication). I'd rather not have the hassle.

If you forget to tap in or out, or notice any other discrepancy (exceedingly rare), you can contact TfL directly who deal with issues very swiftly in my experience.

Which is fine if you're happy doing that. I want to offer the correct amount of money at the point of sale and avoid having to check/chase/quibble later.

What’s stopping you checking the fares online beforehand,

Why should I have to look online? Why can't the fares be prominently displayed at the stations?

and then loading a specific amount of money onto an Oyster to cover your intended travel,

...for now, but it's hardly a secret that TfL would like to get rid of Oyster. It will be rather harder to keep a specific amount of money in your current account to just cover the journey you're making (and rather dangerous, if you get charged for going overdrawn and TfL charge the wrong amount for whatever reasons).

or simply buying a travel card?

I do Fortunately this is still an option, at least for now.

These methods are much less flexible and convenient than using PAYG via contactless, of course, which is why most people now use the latter.

Which is fine for those who choose to do so. I'm rather old-fashioned and prefer to be certain how much I'm paying up front, and I don't see why TfL shouldn't continue to allow me to do so.

 

[redreni]

These methods are much less flexible and convenient than using PAYG via contactless, of course, which is why most people now use the latter.

A Travelcard is more flexible and convenient in many respects: you don't have to remember to touch in or out at ungated stations, for one thing. Travelcards do not further discriminate against disabled passengers who have to wait for assistance or take slower, accessible routes through stations or take long-winded routes to avoid interchanges at stations that are inaccessible, and then (if using PAYG) routinely have to request a refund for exceeding the maximum journey time.

Much has been made of the ability to change your mind about where you're going after you've started travelling. If, however, you decide to extend your journey beyond the contactless area you can buy a ticket to extend the validity of your travelcard (including by buying an e-ticket or buying and loading a smartcard ticket, either of which you could do while on the train) and then travel straight through to your destination without getting off.

If, however, you are making a contactless PAYG journey and you decide you want to go outside the contactless PAYG area, you still have to buy another ticket but you also have to get off the train somewhere just to tap out, otherwise you'll have an incomplete journey.

The only inflexibility with a Travelcard is if your plans change and you end up travelling less than anticipated, you may wish you'd only paid the single PAYG fares for the journeys you'd made. So it depends what kind of flexibility you want, and I would prefer it if we didn't have the penalty pricing on Anytime Day Travelcards and if the full range of Day Travelcards with different zonal coverage could be reinstated, if flexibility and choice is indeed the goal.

 

[MikeWh]

Finally, there is nothing in the name of an Elizabeth line station to make it clear it is an Elizabeth line station, so if you can't see the icon you genuinely cannot tell what these autocomplete entries are. With the exception of some minor tab ordering issues, the fare finder on https://oysterfares.com/fare-finder/ does a stellar job at this, and it's built by a forum member.

Thank you very much for this.

However, if you just type "hea", then only the tube stations are shown.

I don't know how their autocomplete works, but it seems to have a strong preference for tube stations over rail stations.

Start typing "Heath" on the single fare finder and you are given a list of "Underground" stations. The fare that you get when selecting one of those is not the fare that you will pay on the Elizabeth Line.

Their auto complete is very biased to TfL stations which is one of the big advantages of my fare finder. I also include other useful information such as the zonal coverage of a fare and the time allowed to make the journey.

Maybe TfL will have another go at some point.

The Mayor, and therefore TfL, did not want to withdraw from the travelcard agreement. The issue was forced by the squeezing of central government as part of the funding agreements. Unless something very dramatic happens I don't forsee this being a problem for the next 4-5 years.

 

[Starmill]

I think it's very frustrating that the higher price applies but it's a much wider policy failure that it does, and it's not really something TfL could control. I don't agree with it, but we don't have much choice but to accept it.

I can also understand why you would feel entitled to travel to the airport at the previously agreed price when you joined the bus, but this wasn't honoured. However I note TfL reversed the extra charge for you - had you asked for this and been refused, I'd have said they were wrong. However as you weren't refused luckily that's not relevant here.

The tool on the TfL website could be better in many ways and these have been discussed at some length above so there's not a need for me to repeat it I think. I would like to see slightly more effort put into the tool in the future to improve the usability in the ways explained above.

 

[plugwash]

Travelling with PAYG absolutely is a blank cheque - almost literally so if using contactless, or Oyster with auto top-up activated - unless you have checked what the fares are beforehand. Most people blindly assume that the fare will be reasonable, and in fairness, in most cases it is.

To a large extent for "normal" travellers at least (I understand there are some issues for railfans) the "blank cheque" issue is mitigated by the daily caps.

 

[43066]

But there are plenty of situations where you will be charged more than you expect - either because you accidentally select the wrong station, as is easy to do in the case of Heathrow with its many stations and TfL's poor website design, or because your journey takes longer, is disrupted etc. and you don't touch out within the maximum journey time. You might also forget to touch in/out if the barriers are open, which I've seen happen even when staff are present (e.g. due to barrier faults or staff being busy in another part of the station).

It’s true that most people do blindly assume for the exact reason you suggest - and based on years of experience of using the system.

I’ve used in almost daily since before Oysters first came in and I’ve literally never been so disrupted they I exceeded the max journey time. It’s true that if you make a mistake, either by misusing the website or forgetting to touch in or out etc. you might be charged a little more, but you can mitigate against this by simply being careful. You can claim refunds for the latter case which are paid within 24 hours. We can agree to disagree about whether this constitutes a “blank cheque”, but you aren’t ever going to find you’ve been overcharged by hundreds of pounds, for example. It’ll be a few quid, so for most it’s an absolute non issue and not something that would put them off using the system.

Most people who actually use the system regularly really do learn to trust it because you can see your journey history online and experience shows the system can be relied on to calculate the fares correctly. It works brilliantly for busy Londoners who have better things to do than adding up fares to the penny, and just want to get from A to B.

It’s by far the best and most integrated system we have in the UK, equal to or better then many cities in Europe, and I can’t believe the earlier suggestion that we move away from contactless and PAYG when it’s so wildly successful and incredibly convenient. I was in Northern Spain last week and had an incredibly tedious wait in a bus queue where you could only pay in cash. What a quaint throwback - not!

Which is fine for those who choose to do so. I'm rather old-fashioned and prefer to be certain how much I'm paying up front, and I don't see why TfL shouldn't continue to allow me to do so.

Fair enough, you acknowledge that your approach is the outlier. I’m sure you will be able to continue to do so for the foreseeable future, however there may come a time where that becomes difficult, in the same way as paying by cheque is dying out. Eventually preserving antiquated methods of payment (cash is one) starts to cost more than can be justified.

Travelcards do not further discriminate against disabled passengers who have to wait for assistance or take slower, accessible routes through stations or take long-winded routes to avoid interchanges at stations that are inaccessible, and then (if using PAYG) routinely have to request a refund for exceeding the maximum journey time.

Max journey times are generous so I’d be surprised if many disabled travellers have to do this routinely, and of course this isn’t a consideration for the majority of travellers.

A Travelcard is more flexible and convenient in many respects

It isn’t for me, and neither is it for the millions who are prepared to embrace technology and rely on capping. What I really object to is your suggestion that contactless and PAYG somehow isn’t suitable for the large majority of us who do use it.

To a large extent for "normal" travellers at least (I understand there are some issues for railfans) the "blank cheque" issue is mitigated by the daily caps.

Indeed. I can understand that if enthusiasts want to spend all day travelling on the system, spend hours taking photographs etc. Then a paper travel card will work better, but that’s a tiny minority.

 

[redreni]

It’s by far the best and most integrated system we have in the UK, equal to or better then many cities in Europe, and I can’t believe the earlier suggestion that we move away from contactless and PAYG.

Again, though, you picked up on something you found objectionable without reading the rest of the post. I don't want to get rid of PAYG, I want the fares to be transparent and predictable as they were until 2011. Reluctantly, I do not think any line within the zones that doesn't charge the standard TfL fares should be part of the PAYG scheme, but the solution to that which I advocate is to standardise the fares.

It isn’t for me, and neither is it for the millions who are prepared to embrace technology and rely on capping. What I really object to is your suggestion that contactless and PAYG somehow isn’t suitable for the large majority of us who do use it.

I have been using PAYG regularly since 2006, I just don't use it when there is a better alternative.

I also don't like mixing PAYG with tickets when making a through journey as it can create practical difficulties in the event of disruption, inasmuch it is easier to demonstrate that you're entitled to be conveyed on the next train after missing a connection when holding an advance single, when holding a through ticket or joined-up split tickets on a valid itinerary for the entire journey. It can also increase the value of any delay repay that may be due.

I know a chap who was out of pocket by about £70 after missing his train at St Pancras when he had followed the advice of the ticket office clerk at Maidenhead to use contactless PAYG to reach St Pancras. If he had been sold a paper ticket to LU Zone 1 alongside his advance single to Chesterfield, not only would his senior Railcard discount have applied saving him a chunk of change, but he would have been conveyed on the next train from St Pancras to Chesterfield without having to buy a new ticket. So when people speak of being happy to pay a little more for the added convenience of PAYG, these are the sorts of sums people can and do end up paying when they are encouraged to use PAYG for a purpose for which it is unsuitable.

For travelling into the office, though, PAYG is my usual option and has been for years.

 

[Watershed]

Where are you finding these cheap Heathrow tickets? The tickets are 10p more expensive than the PAYG fare.

Imagine a typical air traveller going away for a weekend. They fly out from Heathrow on a Friday evening after working in central London. If they have a Railcard such as the 16-25, 26-30 or an Annual Gold Card, their PAYG fare will be £12.20 even if they have gone to the effort of getting their Railcard applied to their Oyster card. By contrast, they could buy a Railcard discounted Anytime Day Single for £8.10.

Given the £12/13 minimum fare applying to the 16-25/26-30 and Network Railcard respectively, there will be scenarios where being able to buy an Anytime Return for £16.20 will save as much as £8.20 over the PAYG fare. Let alone Two Together Railcard holders or groups eligible for the GroupSave discount, none of whom can get any discount on the PAYG fare.

Again, there will be those who remark that air travellers "can afford it", which (on the whole) isn't wrong. But the incentives should be to make it as cheap and easy to use public transport as possible, rather than encouraging less environmentally friendly methods.

 

[Benjwri]

If they have a Railcard such as the 16-25, 26-30 or an Annual Gold Card, their PAYG fare will be £12.20 even if they have gone to the effort of getting their Railcard applied to their Oyster card

I am almost certain this isn’t true. I tried it a few months ago and was charged a railcard discounted fare.

 

[43066]

Reluctantly, I do not think any line within the zones that doesn't charge the standard TfL fares should be part of the PAYG scheme, but the solution to that which I advocate is to standardise the fares.

I have read all of your posts thoroughly and you’ve repeated the comment above that I disagree with. The fares aren’t going to be standardised anytime soon so, on that basis, you appear to be saying you don’t think the NR routes should be on PAYG. Millions who use it would disagree!

I’m not sure there’s much point discussing it further - PAYG is here to stay thankfully, including on the NR routes south of the river.

I know a chap who was out of pocket by about £70 after missing his train at St Pancras when he had followed the advice of the ticket office clerk at Maidenhead to use contactless PAYG to reach St Pancras. If he had been sold a paper ticket to LU Zone 1 alongside his advance single to Chesterfield, not only would his senior Railcard discount have applied saving him a chunk of change, but he would have been conveyed on the next train from St Pancras to Chesterfield without having to buy a new ticket.

And did he tell the ticket clerk he had a senior railcard? That is an extreme case and sounds like bad advice from the ticket clerk, or perhaps advice given on the basis of insufficient information, rather than any inherent problem with the system.

 

[MikeWh]

I am almost certain this isn’t true. I tried it a few months ago and was charged a railcard discounted fare.

Yes, you'll be charged a railcard discounted peak fare (£8.05) at off-peak times.

 

[Starmill]

I am almost certain this isn’t true. I tried it a few months ago and was charged a railcard discounted fare.

You touched in at peak time for Oyster?

 

[redreni]

And did he tell the ticket clerk he had a senior railcard? That is an extreme case and sounds like bad advice from the ticket clerk, or perhaps advice given on the basis of insufficient information, rather than any inherent problem with the system.

I wasn't there, but as the story was told to me he showed his Railcard and asked for a single to Kings Cross St Pancras, but you're again focusing on the least important point. It is not just that the ticket office clerk didn't do his job properly, it's that my friend was quite unaware that by using PAYG to reach St Pancras instead of buying a ticket, he was exposing himself to a much greater risk of being charged again if he missed his connection. He'd allowed more than the MCTs but he got stuck for a long time outside Paddington, missed his train and had to pay again. If he'd had a ticket from Maidenhead to Zone 1 he would have been fine - they'd have seen how badly his train from Maidenhead to Paddington had been delayed and let him travel on the next EMR train towards Chesterfield.

The vast majority of people who arrive at Kings Cross St Pancras by tube and leave by train use contactless to get there and an e-ticket to go from there to wherever they're going, which is a substantial behavioural change from just a few years ago when most people would buy a through ticket for a journey like Maidenhead to Chesterfield. It no doubt feels very convenient and works well if everything goes to plan, but it is an inappropriate use of PAYG which passengers ought to be steered away from, rather than encouraged to do.

 

[Deerfold]

The vast majority of people who arrive at Kings Cross St Pancras by tube and leave by train use contactless to get there and an e-ticket to go from there to wherever they're going, which is a substantial behavioural change from just a few years ago when most people would buy a through ticket for a journey like Maidenhead to Chesterfield. It no doubt feels very convenient and works well if everything goes to plan, but it is an inappropriate use of PAYG which passengers ought to be steered away from, rather than encouraged to do.

Do they? For those starting by tube, quite possible.

When I'm travelling to Kings Cross from the North (and returning the other way), I'll use an e-ticket. If I'm travelling beyond Zone 6, I'll usually have a CCST (Credit Card Sized Ticket) for the through journey as that's what most online journey planners and ticket machines will sell.

 

[Watershed]

I am almost certain this isn’t true. I tried it a few months ago and was charged a railcard discounted fare.

With the exception of the Disabled Railcard, Railcard discounts on Oyster do not apply to PAYG single fares at peak times. This includes the evening peak, where paper tickets are fully discounted by most Railcards.

Evening peak PAYG journeys do count towards the daily off-peak daily cap, but it is still cheaper to use a paper ticket in a number of scenarios.

 

[MikeWM]

Fair enough, you acknowledge that your approach is the outlier. I’m sure you will be able to continue to do so for the foreseeable future, however there may come a time where that becomes difficult, in the same way as paying by cheque is dying out. Eventually preserving antiquated methods of payment (cash is one) starts to cost more than can be justified.

Cash - admittedly something I strongly advocate! - is a separate issue here however, as the same penalties apply to paying in advance by card.

Yes, there is a small amount of cost involved in the issuing of a paper ticket, and maintaining tickets gates to accept it, etc. - but we shouldn't pretend that PAYG has no costs either, when it involves bank charges, maintaining scanning infrastructure, backoffice servers to store all the data and the cost of electricity to run them, software engineers to write and maintain websites and apps and the backoffice servers, and employing people to staff the phonelines for when things go wrong.

 

[jon81uk]

Personally I think zone 6 to Heathrow should be advertised as zone 6a or something similar to indicate zone 6 travelcards are valid on some services to the airport. While at the same time indicating that there may be a premium. Berlin manages much better at communicating fare differences . With the zones being zone A,BC and airport zone

The zones are about Travelcard fares and a zone six travelcard is valid to Heathrow, so there is no need for a 6a.

 

[DiscoSteve]

exactly the same as the Madrid Metro and their terminal stop on their Pink Line 8 - caught a load of us out coming back from a CL game there in April - threw the cards away and then found out we had to pay the airport surchage for us all and for another card to load them on too!

 

[Deerfold]

The zones are about Travelcard fares and a zone six travelcard is valid to Heathrow, so there is no need for a 6a.

When the zones were first introduced there was just one fare between each zone (other than bus fares).

 

[jon81uk]

When the zones were first introduced there was just one fare between each zone (other than bus fares).

Don't think thats been the case for 35 years though as National Rail fares are different to tube fares but the travelcard price and zone validity remains the same no matter which mode is used.

 

[redreni]

When the zones were first introduced there was just one fare between each zone (other than bus fares).

Quite, the system of zonal PAYG was scrapped in 2011. Boris Johnson broke it.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jun 2024 ==

Don't think thats been the case for 35 years though as National Rail fares are different to tube fares but the travelcard price and zone validity remains the same no matter which mode is used.

No, no. The system was comprehensible and predictable as recently as 2011. DLR fares were a bit cheaper, but other than that it was a fixed price per zone, subject to a two zones minimum and a premium for zone 1. The only exception to the two zones minimum was the zone 1 only single which had its own special fare.

Participating NR lines charged the same as the tube (though admittedly most didn't participate and charged their own fares, as they always had done).

There were different fares beyond zone 6 (e.g. up at the top of the Metropolitan Line) but those zones had letters rather than numbers and were marked "special fares apply" on all the maps.

The idea of charging potentially unexpected fares via PAYG without warning came in in 2011 as it was the way the Mayor got the remaining NR operators to participate in Oyster.

 

[JonathanH]

The idea of charging potentially unexpected fares without warning came in in 2011 as it was the way the Mayor fot the remaining NR operators to participate in Oyster.

They are not 'unexpected'. There is just more than one scale. Within those scales the fares are consistent.

 

[redreni]

They are not 'unexpected'. There is just more than one scale. Within those scales the fares are consistent.

We don't know if they're expected or not, hence 'potentially'.

If the person has done the journey before or (much less likely outside of the users of this forum) has looked up the fare, then it might not be unexpected. Otherwise it might welll be.

Many people have only the vaguest of expectations regarding the fare and, hence, the fare will tend to fall within the range of what they expect irrespective of what it happens to be.

 

[Haywain]

Many people have only the vaguest of expectations regarding the fare and, hence, the fare will tend to fall within the range of what they expect irrespective of what it happens to be.

If it falls "within the range of what they expect" it won't be unexpected!

 

[jon81uk]

Quite, the system of zonal PAYG was scrapped in 2011. Boris Johnson broke it.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jun 2024 ==


No, no. The system was comprehensible and predictable as recently as 2011. DLR fares were a bit cheaper, but other than that it was a fixed price per zone, subject to a two zones minimum and a premium for zone 1. The only exception to the two zones minimum was the zone 1 only single which had its own special fare.

Participating NR lines charged the same as the tube (though admittedly most didn't participate and charged their own fares, as they always had done).

There were different fares beyond zone 6 (e.g. up at the top of the Metropolitan Line) but those zones had letters rather than numbers and were marked "special fares apply" on all the maps.

The idea of charging potentially unexpected fares via PAYG without warning came in in 2011 as it was the way the Mayor got the remaining NR operators to participate in Oyster.

I will admit my memory of using National Rail in London pre-2010 when Oyster was enabled is bad because I didn't use it much, but was it really the case that a ticket to Lewisham from zone 1 was the same on both DLR and National Rail? Or out to Brixton was the same on the Victoria line as it was on National Rail? But if you had a travel card even before 2010 you could get onto a National Rail train using it at no extra cost.

I can recall that enabling National Rail onto Oyster took the existing return fares on NR and basically halved them to make two singles and that was still more than the equivilant tube journey. My memory of travel around 2010 was that if I had a travelcard loaded to Oyster I would take the train to Vauxhall but without one I'd use the tube as its cheaper and communication at the time was it used the existing NR fares to make the new Oyster ones.

But I don't think there was ever a system as simple as just stating "a single from zone 1 to zone 3 is £3 no matter which operator or mode you use"!

 

[redreni]

I will admit my memory of using National Rail in London pre-2010 when Oyster was enabled is bad because I didn't use it much, but was it really the case that a ticket to Lewisham from zone 1 was the same on both DLR and National Rail? Or out to Brixton was the same on the Victoria line as it was on National Rail? But if you had a travel card even before 2010 you could get onto a National Rail train using it at no extra cost.

I can recall that enabling National Rail onto Oyster took the existing return fares on NR and basically halved them to make two singles and that was still more than the equivilant tube journey. My memory of travel around 2010 was that if I had a travelcard loaded to Oyster I would take the train to Vauxhall but without one I'd use the tube as its cheaper and communication at the time was it used the existing NR fares to make the new Oyster ones.

But I don't think there was ever a system as simple as just stating "a single from zone 1 to zone 3 is £3 no matter which operator or mode you use"!

No, Southeastern didn't accept Oyster until they were allowed, by Boris Johnson, to charge half the day return rail fare for a single. My point is anyone wishing to make that journey would have known the fare before they travelled, as they'd have needed a ticket.

Not sure about Brixton but I assume that was the same.

 

[jon81uk]

No, Southeastern didn't accept Oyster until they were allowed, by Boris Johnson, to charge half the day return rail fare for a single. My point is anyone wishing to make that journey would have known the fare before they travelled, as they'd have needed a ticket.

Not sure about Brixton but I assume that was the same.

But the original point was that was no set system just stating "a single from zone 1 to zone 3 is £3 no matter which operator or mode you use". The first post I replied to stated that the zones originally only had one fare. But thats never been the case because National Rail charged different fares than London Underground. So although you could use a travelcard on all services within the zones for the last 35 years, there was no set single fare system linked to the zones.