Oyster and National Rail

Hackney/Dalston to Northern Line

Mike — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:05:02 +0000

A visitor to this site has highlighted some missing fares between stations on the North London Line and the northern branches of the Northern line. I have sent the following email to the Oyster helpdesk to try and get the issue resolved.

Dear Helpdesk,

A visitor to my website has stumbled across a gap in the fares table for some journeys in North London. If you travel from any of Canonbury, Dalston Junction, Haggerston, Hoxton, Dalston Kingsland, Hackney Central, Homerton or Hackney Wick to Northern Line stations north of Mornington Crescent via either Camden Road/Town or Kentish Town/West then you will be erroneously charged as if you had gone via zone 1 (Highbury & Islington and Euston). If you travel from either Stratford or Highbury & Islington you are correctly offered an avoiding zone 1 fare if you use either of the above OSIs.

I’d be grateful if you could confirm when this anomaly can be corrected by and whether there is anything that any passengers affected by the issue can do to redress the overcharge.

Kind Regards,

Mike,
www.oyster-rail.org.uk

Wimbledon Improvements

Mike — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:35:17 +0000

I visited Wimbledon again briefly yesterday. While sitting on the tram waiting for it to leave I noticed that they’ve stuck additional signage on the sides of the validators facing the steps. One says only to be used for National Rail journeys while the other says only to be used for tram journeys. Credit where it’s due, this is a big improvement, so well done to the station team at Wimbledon!

Afternoon Peak and Zone 6

Mike — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:26:32 +0000

I’ve recently discovered a potential saving when making return journeys on National Rail in the afternoon peak where the journey starts or finishes in zone 6. Full details are on the When not to use Oyster page. It turns out that I’ve been overpaying for my regular trip from Crayford to Sidcup for the kids’ band practices.

1,000 Comments

Mike — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:02:30 +0000

Last night the number of comments on the site passed the 1000 mark. Many of them are my replies, but it’s still a significant milestone. I’d like to thank all my visitors for their support and comments and I hope everyone has a good Christmas. Don’t forget that the fares go up on January 2nd, so if you are considering investing in an annual season you can get 2011 prices as long as the ticket starts on or before January 1st.

New fares live – and wrong?

Mike — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:49:01 +0000

TfL have added the new fares to their website, but they’ve made a couple of errors. The first one is a useability issue; rather than have the new fares on special pages linked to from the current live pages, they have instead copied the current fares onto special pages and made the new fares live. I guess it’s not too bad given that you’ll think you’ve got a bargain when you’re charged less, but they really ought to keep the current fares in the default place.

The other error is far more serious. It looks like someone has made some rounding errors or forgotten to reduce the prices of some of the off-peak oyster caps when a railcard is attached to the Oyster. The effect is to make the oyster cap more expensive when zone 1 isn’t used, and more expensive than the paper travelcard beyond zone 4. Ooops! Some of the caps are different on the National Rail page compared to the TfL Rail page with more errors on the latter as shown below.

Zones	Paper Travelcard	Oyster Cap
1-2	£5.60	£4.60
2	£5.60	£4.70
1-4	£5.60	£5.10
3, 4, 2-3, 2-4, 3-4	£5.60	£5.15
1-6	£5.60	£5.60
Any 2-6	£5.60	£5.70
1-7	£7.60	£7.60
1-8, 1-9	£7.60	£7.65
Any 2-9	£7.60	£7.80

I hope that this gets corrected before next year or it makes a complete mockery of the “oyster is cheapest” message.

Helpdesk/Online Closure

Mike — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:47:15 +0000

The Oyster website will be unavailable between 2100 on Friday 2nd December and 1300 on Sunday 4th December for essential maintenance work. During this time the helpdesk will not have access to customer data either.

Tottenham Court Road Reopen

Mike — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:47:15 +0000

Now that Tottenham Court Road has re-opened on the Northern line, and interchange is once more possible with the Central line, the temporary OSIs between Goodge Street, Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road have been removed.

Ken to restore Z2-6 travelcards?

Mike — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 02:25:16 +0000

I tend to avoid getting too involved in the politics and the fare changes on this site, but earlier this week Ken Livingstone dangled a frankly huge carrot in front of potential voters in the suburbs, promising to resurrect the much missed “avoiding zone 1″ travelcard if he is elected Mayor next year. The story can be read on the BBC website, but I want to focus on the response from the current Mayor’s office:

It is far cheaper for Londoners to use Oyster pay-as-you-go. With outside zone 1 fares ranging from £1.30 to £2.50 using Oyster, a passenger needed to make seven peak-time outside zone 1 journeys to justify purchasing one of the zone 2-6 travel cards. Anyone advocating restoring the old cards totally misses the point as to why it was removed.

Far cheaper to use Oyster pay-as-you-go. At first glance this doesn’t make sense. Oyster PAYG has daily caps which match the price of a paper travelcard. However, on closer inspection, what they seem to be saying is that because you could make more single journeys before hitting the zone 2-6 cap you may well be wasting your money buying a paper travelcard. This now makes a bit of sense, except that you can say the same about any paper travelcard. Also, how many of the few people who used to buy the zone 2-6 travelcard now buy the all zones instead and get overcharged even further?
Ranging from £1.30 to £2.50. Where to start? £1.30 is the cheapest adult single outside zone 1, but it’s only off-peak. £2.50 is the price of a peak zone 2-6 journey using TfL rail, but, the same journey on NR is £3.40. Ooops, suddenly the argument is looking a little shaky.
Seven peak time outside zone 1 journeys. It can just about be true. The peak 2-6 price of £8.60 compares with six short £1.40 TfL rail journeys at £8.40. I bet they hoped you’d use the £1.30 price, yes? However, how many £3.40 NR journeys did you have to make? Yes, only 3. Suddenly the argument has fallen rather flat. Of course many of the beneficiaries of the zone 2-6 travelcard/cap were actually off-peak users and guess what? Four short £1.30 journeys made the £5.10 off-peak travelcard worthwhile. Just four!

So, the real reason that the zone 2-6 travelcard was withdrawn was to encourage greater use of Oyster? I can just about accept that, although it is a slightly flawed argument. But how about this for a compromise, Boris? Bring back the zone 2-6 caps on the Oyster card, and trumpet this as a way of encouraging more Oyster use because it’s cheaper than any of the paper travelcards that include zone 1. Leave the paper travelcards as they are. And rush it through in January and it’ll knock the wind out of Ken’s sail as well.

Fare errors from Crayford, Bexley

Mike — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:39:30 +0000

I’m beginning to get a little annoyed about this now. Someone seems to have forgotten to tell the fares manager that you can take direct trains from Crayford and Bexley to Woolwich Arsenal via Slade Green, and thus take the DLR under the river to Canning Town, West Ham and Stratford. This means that there is no earthly reason for passengers to touch zone 2 when travelling to the East London suburbs. But the Oyster system doesn’t agree.

What makes it worse is that often the TfL journey planner sensibly directs you over just that route, and helpfully confirms that you don’t leave zones 6-3. Just today I needed to go to Romford. It offered two routes, one via Woolwich and the DLR and the other via London Bridge and the Jubilee. The DLR route was the quicker one, despite an error that suggests there are two separate stations at Woolwich requiring a 4 minute walk between them, so that is what I did. The difference between a 4-zone and a 5-zone off-peak fare may only be 20p, but that’s not the point. There’s a lengthy email about to head over to the Oyster helpdesk on this one.

Early off-peak changes

Mike — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 23:09:47 +0000

Thanks to Malcolm who spotted that TfL have added some more stations to the list of early starts to the off-peak daily price cap. They are stations north of Hatch End, but NOT Watford Junction. Remember that although the off-peak cap applies early at all these stations, peak fares are still charged when touch in is before 09:30. Full details are on the Peak or Off-peak page.