Oyster and National Rail

There’s been a bit of excitement since the publication under FOI of an internal staff magazine by TfL. One of the topics covered was upcoming extensions on Thameslink and Great Northern. Sadly the original publication date was quite a while ago (early May) and there was also a shocking geographical error mixing up the positions of Brookmans Park and Potters Bar stations. The article and other sources suggested that extensions to Radlett and Potters Bar would be live imminently. A more cautious approach was being suggested on the Thameslink and Great Northern websites, so I sought clarification from both TfL and Govia Thameslink Railway.
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I’m delighted to be able to report that the issues at St Pancras over the two bank holiday weekends in May are being resolved.  A GTR spokeswoman said:

We apologise to the passengers impacted by this charging error. As soon as we were alerted to the isolated issue our revenue team worked with the technical team at TfL to ensure that everyone who was overcharged would be refunded automatically. These refunds should all be issued early next week. A permanent fix will be applied as soon as possible. In the meantime, we have agreed a process to avoid any impact to customers.

Potentially hundreds of Thameslink passengers may have been overcharged over the two bank holiday weekends in May.  On both weekends the line between West Hampstead Thameslink and St Pancras (low level) was closed for engineering work.  Trains from Bedford/Luton terminated in platforms 1-4 at St Pancras (high level) and passengers wanting to continue south had to walk down to the low level platforms (A-B).  The problem is that there was no internal out-of-station interchange (OSI) set up between the Oyster validators for platforms 1-4 and the gateline for platforms A-B.  Thus a journey from Elstree to Blackfriars was charged as two journeys; Elstree to St Pancras and St Pancras to Blackfriars.

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Thanks to a keen visitor I can confirm that in certain circumstances a pair of full adult peak singles is more expensive than the paper anytime return.  The journey must be in a single zone (2, 3, 4, 5 or 6), be priced on the NR1 fare scale (see guide to fare scales) and both directions must be made at peak times (0630-0930 or 1600-1900).  There are some quite reasonable length journeys, especially in zones 2 and 6, like Caterham to Purley or Lewisham to Clapham Junction via Denmark Hill.  The peak Oyster single is £2.30 making £4.60 for a return while the paper return ticket is £4.40. Read the rest of this entry »

Monday 3rd June saw the opening of London’s newest station, Meridian Water.  It replaces the old Angel Road which has already seen quite a lot of demolition work since the last trains called there on Friday 31st May.  For the time being the service will be the same as that at Angel Road, but later this year a new shuttle service between Stratford and Meridian Water will start, providing an all day service, rather than the current peak hours only.

TfL’s single fare finder now includes Meridian Water which means that my fare finder can also show the fares.  As my station list is a simplified one (cutting out duplicates where two modes serve the same station) I have now removed the entry for Angel Road.

While travelling around London last weekend I came across this poster detailing the results of some targetted enforcement earlier in the year.  It’s a timely reminder that both TfL and the TOCs take revenue loss (fare evasion) very seriously. Read the rest of this entry »

TfL have very kindly provided updated data showing how many journeys made use of each OSI in the system. The data was recorded over a four week period in April/May 2019. The top 3 remain the NR to LU interchanges at South London termini, though London Bridge has overtaken Victoria.  The accessible route OSI at Woodford has now started being regularly used while no-one now walks between Hackney Downs and Central other than by the  footbridge linking the two stations. The slightly lower figures for many entries is probably down to the fact that there were 3 bank holidays in the period.

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As far as I know there are no major changes at this intermediate fare change date.  However, the error with zip 11-15 fares from Epsom has been corrected, as has the fares between Epsom and Stoneleigh which is back in zone 5 where it should be.  Fares for Meridian Water (replacing Angel Road) are ready, but not visible yet because the opening (and closing) has been delayed a bit.

OK, I’ll come clean, I had forgotten about this.  In part 1 I explained how difficult it must have been to get agreement between the various companies involved.  I’m now going to express my frustration in trying to get information. For both the Epsom and Hertford North extensions TfL pass pretty much every query over to GTR.  This includes infrastructure questions like will gates at a station operate with a particular travelcard loaded on an Oyster card. Now to me the answer is either yes or no, and I’m sure someone at TfL can confirm that.  It’s not breaking any confidentiality because it’s confirming what will actually happen in a technical scenario.  With Epsom it’s even worse because while GTR lead the project, the fares are set by SWR.  So, rant over, on with the story. Read the rest of this entry »

My Easter present to you all is the addition of daily caps to the results returned on my fare finder.  To access that just click on the yellow button at the top of every page of the site.  Or, particularly if you are on a mobile phone, you can see a standalone version at https://oysterfares.com/off.

I have included the caps on every result, even though they are usually the same.  I still live in hope that the 2-6 and 2-9 daily caps may one day return.  If you’re curious, try Finsbury Park to Hackney Central as an example where they are different now.