Trainbike46
Established Member
Oyster/contactless usually works. And sometimes it seems to correct itself as people capped out anyway
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Project Oval: TfL win DfT contract to expand contactless system to 233 rail stations by May 2024, Railcards coming to contactless payment cards
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It's not as if it happens very often, especially for passengers on regular journeys, and the time spent retrospectively checking pales into insignificance compared with the time needed in traditional ticketing systems. If time is that precious, do it while on a train journey!
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jon81uk
Member
Its really not that difficult, I travel with TfL twice a week and most of the time I just keep an eye on my credit card statement, as normally I just see the £7.20 debited for the two journeys. Looking at a credit card statement regularly is good practice anyway. If I see an unexpectly high charge on the statement, or if I have done an unusual journey then I go to the TfL site, log in and check. Don't need to act as an accountant, you should know where you have been too and from. If there is an uncomplete journey the websitr shows a nice big banner message prompting action.
For example I normally change from Victoria Line to Greater Anglia at Tottenham Hale, due to an incident they trains were re-routed via Seven Sisters, where the Overground platforms are within the TfL barrier and the validators out of use, so I couldn't tap out. Knowing I couldn't tap out, next day I logged in, told the TfL system i left at Seven Sisters and it amended the fare to the correct amount, took about three minutes to log in, click on the incomplete journey and find Seven Sisters in the list. Hardly an evening wasted.
Capvermell
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But if you buy a paper ticket you are certain you will be charged the expected fare. However with contactless you are at the mercy of numerous random technological factors such as a currently failed card reading system and if you live out in the sticks with a poor hourly train service the complications that arise if you miss your last train and have to divert somewhere else like Horley or Three Bridges from where you can at least get an Uber home.
Of course when we lose off peak return fares that cost little more than the outbound single fare then perhaps these problems will disappear as everything will be a single journey but I bet those single journeys won't be half the current cheapest off peak or super off peak return fare with a railcard.........
For existing reader installations the issue is back end systems or rather working with multiple systems
This is pretty much what ITSO was supposed to be, but the funding was never there.
At the very least, there's a string of touching zonal fare systems across the North that could/should be unified into one network.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
And I bet they will! The DfT might not always be the most sensible organisation, but they are not stupid enough to use a contactless expansion as a way to almost double the fares! If a single contactless journey was set at a price similar to a day return - or even much more than half of that price, then if paper tickets were still available, it would mean that almost no-one would use contactless - defeating the whole point of the contactless expansion, and if on the other hand paper tickets are scrapped, there'd be an absolute outcry from commuters that would quickly feed back to the (mainly Tory) MPs that represent seats just outside London.
If it's any guide, within London, as far as I'm aware, it's still possible to buy a standard return ticket to/from national rail destinations, but it's almost always cheaper to use contactless (or Oyster).
That won't be the headline fares but here's wehat actually happened when contactless was extended to Hatfoeld and Brookmans Park. I suspect Project Oval will offer a similar fares structure
Potters Bar and Brookmans Park Fare Observations
Sorry if this should probably go in an existing thread, but I didn't want to hijack any discussions. I looked into how this affects the market for someone who travels from this area to London during weekday off-peak, returns on a different day and is happy to avoid zone 1 if the journey is...
www.railforums.co.uk
I don't think for one second anyone is going to allow singles to stay at the same price and effectively double the price. I am pretty sure the singles will be effectively halved in price (but rounding may go in their favour?) but once the headline prices are now lower, it may not seem so bad to apply bigger price increases in the future.
While obviously people will look at the total cost of buying two singles to travel in most cases, all the price guides will be showing only singles. So a 20p increase on the single is 40p for most people, whereas before that 20p might have been on the return.
We shall see I guess.
While obviously people will look at the total cost of buying two singles to travel in most cases, all the price guides will be showing only singles. So a 20p increase on the single is 40p for most people, whereas before that 20p might have been on the return.
We shall see I guess.
Capvermell
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Yes we will have to see what happens and if in the long run paper returns also disappear in favour of only single paper tickets to further incentivise the idea that there is no benefit to not using contactless pay as you go.
But if we are to believe the first Project Oval stations map then Ockley station that serves me two stops south of Dorking will be one station south of the end of the Project Oval rollout at Holmwood. This despite the fact that Ockley does have two card readers for use with Southern's Key cards.......
You work in an office in London and no one uses TfL services and claims expenses?
jon81uk
Member
What currently failed system? It works fine in London.
I’m not at the mercy of random fares as can see exactly how much it’s going to cost here https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/tube-and-rail-fares/single-fare-finder
The only times I’ve been charged something I wasn’t expecting it’s been lower as the cap calculation was more complicated in my favour, as it applied a cap for some zones and then an extension.
As I said before I have expected incomplete journeys due to the issue of changing Victoria line to Greater Anglia at Seven Sisters as that station isn’t set up for travel outside of the zones really but as it’s an unusual late evening engineering works type issue it’s very rare. When it does happen I can open the TfL site next day and it takes a minute to tell them where I actually got off.
I’m not at the mercy of random fares as can see exactly how much it’s going to cost here https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/tube-and-rail-fares/single-fare-finder
The only times I’ve been charged something I wasn’t expecting it’s been lower as the cap calculation was more complicated in my favour, as it applied a cap for some zones and then an extension.
As I said before I have expected incomplete journeys due to the issue of changing Victoria line to Greater Anglia at Seven Sisters as that station isn’t set up for travel outside of the zones really but as it’s an unusual late evening engineering works type issue it’s very rare. When it does happen I can open the TfL site next day and it takes a minute to tell them where I actually got off.
I agree it does. And going back to its inception, Mayor Ken Livingstone said to the Oyster team put together around year 2000 that they should develop something quickly useful. Don't strive for utopia, as it will take for ever, if at all, but for a good practical working solution. Things can be sorted out. Which was done. However, this was progressively lost sight of at things expanded. It initially was designed for Underground stations which were gated to swipe in and out. Then the buses, where this was seen as impractical so they were made flat fare, swipe in only. Underground stations still had ticket offices to sort out any issues. All made sense. But move on through the various expansions, and meanwhile an attitude to inconsistencies that has changed to believing every issue is the passenger trying to screw them, but they will be smarter and penalty them first, and you end up with today. Did I read that the OSI implementation required over 200 software patches after going live, with some stations still regarded as "a problem"?
Capvermell
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If you forget to do so do you receive any form of proactive message from TfL telling you that you have an incomplete journey to resolve or do they just charge you a penalty fare? Southern do send you an email message if you have incomplete and unresolved journeys where you have missing taps on their Key card but its still far too easy to fall foul of the rules at unbarriered Ockley or when the barriers are open after 11pm or so at Victoria. With a paper travelcard ticket I just don't have these worries to resolve.
Although it may of course be that you are the kind of person who perhaps never forgets to check up on your journey history and make amendments a day or so later if necessary.
jon81uk
Member
In my experiance they didn't and just referred people to the phone same as now. The staff in the ticket offices couldn't do much more than the staff on the ground can now.
Oyster has always operated that way, if you don't tap out, take too long or tap using the wrong card it charged a maximum fare. Contactless didn't change that.
This is a conspiracy theory.
Indeed. In years of using the system I’ve only seen errors a few times, and all have been resolved completely automatically (a couple of times I’ve only been alerted to the error by spotting an unexpected credit into my bank account from TfL!). Most maximum fares I’ve incurred I’ve known about in advance upon realising I’ve forgotten to tap in/out. As noted above, the website clearly flags up incomplete journeys, and TfL have always been happy to refund the excess completely on trust, based on no more than me telling them where I forgot to touch in/out.
Indeed. It’s hard to believe there are that many people regularly using Oyster/contactless who aren’t registered with TfL.
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There are still a great many people using paper tickets and Travelcards for journeys even though they're more expensive, because "I know where I stand" and "I can avoid unpredicted overcharges".
When 1-6 off peak day Travelcards went up from £8.90 to £12 a few years ago a forum member who works in a booking office reported considerable passenger anger about it.
When 1-6 off peak day Travelcards went up from £8.90 to £12 a few years ago a forum member who works in a booking office reported considerable passenger anger about it.
Fazaar1889
Member
Regardless of the conspiracies and the complaints people have, I'd like to say that I'm quite pleased this is coming. When I want to travel to the next town over, I'll no longer have to faff with e-tickets. Very convenient and I won't need to check for specific time tabling as the trains I do take come every 15/30 mins depending on what speed I want.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Yes, while I do think it's the wrong system I'll certainly use it when it goes live.
jon81uk
Member
I agree, being able to tap in and just commute without having to get an e-ticket first will be great.
Hopefully it might be a cheaper fare too as it may go straight into the TfL network instead of me paying Greater Anglia and TfL seperately.
Out of curiosity what would be the right system then?
Expanding an existing system certainly feels easiest to me.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
A nationally expandable system based on charging "normal" fares (converted to singles, but I believe KeyGo can handle stuff like returns and break of journey properly), a bit more like how KeyGo works. As someone who prefers to travel on walk-up fares I'd love to be able to tap in for a trip to the Lake District (say) - why not?
It seems what we'll get is a load of separate zones, which is very much sub-optimal.
Easiest, but not best. A system based on London's concentric zones is only going to handle journeys to/from London properly. Though I suppose it'll be nice if a Marston Vale or East West Rail trip ends up being single-zone and so costing next to nothing!
londonbridge
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Mostly those who believe that paying by Oyster/contactless is part of a wider government scheme to track people’s movements. There was an article in the Mail recently about the supposed Chinese spy balloons, the reporter logged her daily activity pointing out where she was being observed by CCTV or other surveillance, at one point she wrote that tapping in on the tube with my contactless card “means the bank knows where I am”…..er, don’t think so somehow, if the card is registered TFL might know what journey you’ve made but the bank won’t!
That's really down to a lot of anarchist or conspiracy theorists' paranoid of Big Brother is Watching You
jon81uk
Member
A nationally expandable system based on charging "normal" fares (converted to singles, but I believe KeyGo can handle stuff like returns and break of journey properly), a bit more like how KeyGo works. As someone who prefers to travel on walk-up fares I'd love to be able to tap in for a trip to the Lake District (say) - why not?
It seems what we'll get is a load of separate zones, which is very much sub-optimal.
Easiest, but not best. A system based on London's concentric zones is only going to handle journeys to/from London properly. Though I suppose it'll be nice if a Marston Vale or East West Rail trip ends up being single-zone and so costing next to nothing!
I'm not expecting more zones, I think it will be like the current locations that have contactless fares but are outside the zones, there will be a defined fare to each town/station. So for my Greater Anglia route, zones to Cheshunt (zone 6) then set fares to Broxbourne, Harlow, Bishop Stortford, Stansted Airport etc. Likely those set fares will be approx 50% of the current return from the London terminal with a bit extra if you travel on TfL from zone 1 first.
Maybe we will eventually get a national tap-in system at some point but given the predominance of advance fares is probably an issue. Whereas for most of the London commuter routes people are already buying either day tickets or season tickets so those using day tickets the switch to contactless will be easier.
The rise of big brother is a genuine concern, particularly as its creeping in without public debate, like a frog getting boiled.
The questions should always be raised - the presence of some real tinfoilhattery shouldn't negate that.
But as long as you can use unregistered cards that isnt really a problem, and as stated there is some protection if the travel data and the card owners details are held by separate organisations.
For most of the PAYG system for railways in the world, they often follow the commuting sphere of metropolis, so leaving gaps between PAYG area. Intercity are not really up for PAYG, except Netherlands and Belgium, which their size are just a agglomeration of couple of metropolis which can be handled easily.
Even for Japan, which is well used in their PAYG system, the express Intercity (Shinkansen) and ordinary Intercity don't take PAYG if that's beyond the boundary of the metropolis.
Intercity trains seems best suited with Advance tickets or flexible tickets with reservation in order to control the capacity and usage.
Intercity trains do now accept PAYG (though you may need a paper supplement ticket for the "limited express seat fee"). JR East Shinkansen services accept PAYG throughout its network though a one-time setup process is necessary at a ticket machine, you can only use unreserved seats, and you can't go to Kikonai or Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto as they're JR Hokkaidō stations. There is also a somewhat cumbersome process to register a Suica or other IC card online and use it on the Tōkaidō/San'yō/Kyushu Shinkansen. Because the fare (¥29,360 if you go all the way from Tokyo to Kagoshima-Chūō) can exceed the ¥20,000 maximum capacity of a Suica card, it is charged to a registered credit card rather than the PAYG balance.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Intercity trains* are not, of course, the only way to travel long distances. There are plenty of very long distance regional expresses in the UK, such as the longer distance LNR and TfW services, plus quite a number of Northern routes, and debatably TPE as well which isn't really the kind of intercity train you refer to, it's a slightly jumped up regional express.
* In UK terms I think most people would see that as all Caledonian Sleeper, all LNER services, all Avanti services, the GA FLIRTs only, EMR services run using 222s and 180s, GWR services operated using 80x except those via Oxford and all XC services operated using Voyagers. More or less everything else is a regional train or regional express of some sort, even if it might have "intercity style" rolling stock.
That's not actually true, there's a typical feel that people just expect it to work. We have several in stock which we give out to our more self-sufficient visiting families from overseas to London; I believe this is quite common. None are registered, we just ensure they have sufficient on them at the start, and check them on the station ticket machines if necessary, such as wondering where the money has gone (generally an incomplete journey fine on the DLR where they maybe can't find the exit Oyster pad, eg Crossharbour only at ground level, Tower Gateway only up at platform level).
The division between these services is rather poor though. XC services particularly cover a lot of local journeys they're not well suited for. Then there's LNER north of Edinburgh and GWR west of Exeter, where the train might be a long-distance service but it's an important part of regional journey availability. Avanti journeys within the West Mids fare zones, too. The National Rail network doesn't segregate these services well, compared to a lot of systems abroad.