Project Oval: TfL win DfT contract to expand contactless system to 233 rail stations by May 2024, Railcards coming to contactless payment cards

[JonathanH]

And if you tap out at Finchley Road, how does the system know which way you travelled?

Does it need to? There is no particular need for fares via Staines to be cheaper when travelling beyond the Central London Terminals. It will know if a passenger interchanges at Paddington or Waterloo off a GWR or SWR train. Clearly there are other routes which avoid intermediate gatelines, including the Elizabeth Line.

I don't think it would be unreasonable to have a separate gateline for platforms 4 to 6 at Reading in any case if it really is a problem. It is a somewhat isolated part of the station since the rebuild.

 

[778]

If you use contactless for a Cross London trip, will you be allowed one free tube journey to get accross London like you can with paper tickets?

 

[MrJeeves]

If you use contactless for a Cross London trip, will you be allowed one free tube journey to get accross London like you can with paper tickets?

The paper fares are equal to the through CPAY prices throughout the expanded Oval areas, so yes.

Purchase flexible walk-up fares for any British train journey

Purchase flexible single/return tickets & Travelcards – in 3 clicks. Full details of all British rail fares shown, with built-in Season Ticket Calculator.

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== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Sep 2024 ==

Project Oval actually creates some rather fun anomalies, such as it being cheaper to get an off-peak ticket, such as this one from High Wycombe to Gatwick routed via London than pay the extortionate Gatwick Express pricing from Victoria directly depending on departure time.

 

[Haywain]

Project Oval actually creates some rather fun anomalies, such as it being cheaper to get an off-peak ticket, such as this one from High Wycombe to Gatwick routed via London than pay the extortionate Gatwick Express pricing from Victoria directly depending on departure time.

That is the fare for contactless payment. You can't buy it and start short at Victoria.

 

[MrJeeves]

That is the fare for contactless payment. You can't buy it and start short at Victoria.

Oval means the exact same fare exists as a paper ticket too...?

 

[ThameslinkUser]

Fares shown do not include travel on Gatwick Express, Heathrow Express or Southeastern high speed services unless stated.

Might be worth reading the not-so-fine print.

 

[Haywain]

Oval means the exact same fare exists as a paper ticket too...?

True, perhaps it would have been better to show the 'paper' fare then.

 

[BayPaul]

Could there be a future addition to the system to allow the journey time from tap in to tap out to be considered when setting a fare, if there was a desire to price people off express routes. If you manage to get to Milton Keynes faster than the fastest WMR train does it, tgen charge the Avanti fare. If your Avanti train is delayed then you'll get a lower fare.

 

[CyrusWuff]

Might be worth reading the not-so-fine print.

As a general rule, only tickets with an origin South of the Thames or on the Thameslink route within the London Zones have a "Not Gatwick Express" option.

Elsewhere they're routed "Any Permitted" and perfectly valid on all of the GTR brands to the Airport.

Similar applies for Southeastern High Speed, with only certain flows having "Not valid on HS1" and "Plus High Speed" routings.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Could there be a future addition to the system to allow the journey time from tap in to tap out to be considered when setting a fare, if there was a desire to price people off express routes. If you manage to get to Milton Keynes faster than the fastest WMR train does it, tgen charge the Avanti fare. If your Avanti train is delayed then you'll get a lower fare.

There's no point. There's 50p between the dedicated fares. Just bin them off and reduce the Any Permitted on a revenue neutral basis, and make dedicated fares Advance only.

The thing I don't get about the Oval single fares is how many split anomalies there are. You'd think someone could have run a batch job against the list to avoid those being there from day one, aside from those we can't avoid because of how time restrictions work under Oval.

 

[JonathanH]

Project Oval actually creates some rather fun anomalies, such as it being cheaper to get an off-peak ticket, such as this one from High Wycombe to Gatwick routed via London than pay the extortionate Gatwick Express pricing from Victoria directly depending on departure time.

As far as I am aware, there is no out of station interchange on platforms 13 and 14 at Victoria, so you will actually be charged separately for High Wycombe to Victoria and Victoria to Gatwick Airport if you use Gatwick Express on Contactless for a High Wycombe to Gatwick Airport journey.

This doesn't happen with the paper fare.

 

[SWT_USER]

And if you tap out at Finchley Road, how does the system know which way you travelled?

How would you (realistically) go from Reading via Staines to Finchley Road without passing through a gate line or a pink reader? I would expect the gate lines at Vauxhall and Waterloo would take care of the majority of these 'which route' problem, and the existing pink reader at Richmond would solve the rest of them.

Is there a revised timescale for Railcard discounts being included it, and will this definitely include the network Railcard?

 

[Haywain]

How would you (realistically) go from Reading via Staines to Finchley Road without passing through a gate line

Finchley Road was just a random ststion picked for an example. There are many, many stations that can be reached by travelling via Staines and not passing through a gateline.

the existing pink reader at Richmond would solve the rest of them.

Pink readers can easily be ignored.

 

[SWT_USER]

Finchley Road was just a random ststion picked for an example. There are many, many stations that can be reached by travelling via Staines and not passing through a gateline.

Pink readers can easily be ignored.

Then a higher fare would be charged, exactly as now. That's a really poor reason for not extending to Reading.

 

[BayPaul]

There's no point. There's 50p between the dedicated fares. Just bin them off and reduce the Any Permitted on a revenue neutral basis, and make dedicated fares Advance only.

The thing I don't get about the Oval single fares is how many split anomalies there are. You'd think someone could have run a batch job against the list to avoid those being there from day one, aside from those we can't avoid because of how time restrictions work under Oval.

I was thinking more in a hypothetical future GBR situation, where there was a desire to differentiate pricing on fast trains to encourage people off them and onto the stopper. Probably more for a speculative thread tbh!

 

[778]

The paper fares are equal to the through CPAY prices throughout the expanded Oval areas, so yes.

Would the ticket gates know that you started your journey outside of zone 6 and not charge you for your tube journey to get accross London?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I was thinking more in a hypothetical future GBR situation, where there was a desire to differentiate pricing on fast trains to encourage people off them and onto the stopper. Probably more for a speculative thread tbh!

I've created a thread for that over in Speculative.

 

[stuu]

Would the ticket gates know that you started your journey outside of zone 6 and not charge you for your tube journey to get accross London?

The fare calculation happens after the end of the day, so the system knows exactly what journeys you made

 

[Bletchleyite]

Would the ticket gates know that you started your journey outside of zone 6 and not charge you for your tube journey to get accross London?

The gates don't do anything bar record a tap in/out/via (pink) with a given card number. It's all worked out in the back office later, where those taps are all put together to work out what you did and charge appropriately.

 

[JonathanH]

Is there a revised timescale for Railcard discounts being included it, and will this definitely include the network Railcard?

No timescale published.
No word on Network Railcard.

 

[Hadders]

Which presumably isn't helped by KeyGo being valid from Stevenage to King's Cross / St. Pancras but not onwards by tube.

The at Stevenage issue isn't with KeyGo, the problem is people at large thinking contactless is already valid to Stevenage - not unlike the Stansted Airport situation.

But then you get intercity services overcrowded with commuters and short distance passengers

Funnily enough the inter-city fares between Stevenage and London are cheaper!

Could there be a future addition to the system to allow the journey time from tap in to tap out to be considered when setting a fare, if there was a desire to price people off express routes. If you manage to get to Milton Keynes faster than the fastest WMR train does it, tgen charge the Avanti fare. If your Avanti train is delayed then you'll get a lower fare.

I believe this is what KeyGo does but what happens if you arrive early, tap in at Euston and sit on the train for 20 minutes before it leaves? How will the system know which train you caught. Not everyone turns up and boards with seconds to spare!

 

[BayPaul]

I believe this is what KeyGo does but what happens if you arrive early, tap in at Euston and sit on the train for 20 minutes before it leaves? How will the system know which train you caught. Not everyone turns up and boards with seconds to spare!

Does it matter if someone occasionally pays less for a fast journey that they've artificially made slow?

 

[Hadders]

Does it matter if someone occasionally pays less for a fast journey that they've artificially made slow?

It doesn’t but knowing the railway we’d end up with countless examples of it working the other way round.

 

[A S Leib]

Funnily enough the inter-city fares between Stevenage and London are cheaper!

Given it's a difference of ~8 minutes and there's 2 LNER tph against 6 Thameslink / Great Northern tph, excluding the Hertford ones, I doubt it's quicker waiting for a LNER service most of the time anyway.

 

[ThameslinkUser]

As a general rule, only tickets with an origin South of the Thames or on the Thameslink route within the London Zones have a "Not Gatwick Express" option.

Elsewhere they're routed "Any Permitted" and perfectly valid on all of the GTR brands to the Airport.

Similar applies for Southeastern High Speed, with only certain flows having "Not valid on HS1" and "Plus High Speed" routings.

That philosophy doesn't apply to CPAY, but thanks for the reply.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

You could tap in at the elizabeth line gateline in Paddington and go to Reading on south Western railway via richmond and Wimbledon. It wouldn't exactly be an efficent way to go to Reading but it would be impossible to distinguish what operator you took in those circumstances

Surely, just via Richmond? Once you've got to Richmond, you can get a direct Reading train from there. No need to go further out of your way to Wimbledon.

 

[MikeWh]

Is there a revised timescale for Railcard discounts being included it, and will this definitely include the network Railcard?

It's all gone quiet on railcard discounts. Given the back office nature of the calculations, it's possible that the Network railcard may be able to be included. Expect either a blanket ignoring of the discount on weekdays, or if they're prepared to pay for more work, implimentation of the minimum fare rule such that only the longer distance journeys get discounted. It would require the Network railcard to be recognised separately from others, and given the issues where staff don't properly log the disabled railcard at the moment, might be seen as a non-starter.

 

[matt_world2004]

Surely, just via Richmond? Once you've got to Richmond, you can get a direct Reading train from there. No need to go further out of your way to Wimbledon.

Yes it should read via richmond or Wimbledon. Richmond is easier via Ealing Broadway and Wimbledon is easier via Paddington

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 Sep 2024 ==

It's all gone quiet on railcard discounts. Given the back office nature of the calculations, it's possible that the Network railcard may be able to be included. Expect either a blanket ignoring of the discount on weekdays, or if they're prepared to pay for more work, implimentation of the minimum fare rule such that only the longer distance journeys get discounted. It would require the Network railcard to be recognised separately from others, and given the issues where staff don't properly log the disabled railcard at the moment, might be seen as a non-starter.

I think the only way they could implement the railcard discounts is either by using oyster or a successor to oyster using the same technology. Railcard discounts are too problematic on contactless. Even if there was a way of tokenising each debit card , as people can loan their debit cards to someone one else.

 

[crablab]

Even if there was a way of tokenising each debit card , as people can loan their debit cards to someone one else.

There already is.

People can do that with Oyster. Peruse the Disputes section for threads of Freedom Pass misuse.

 

[matt_world2004]

There already is.

People can do that with Oyster. Peruse the Disputes section for threads of Freedom Pass misuse.

Oyster remains the property of tfl The terms and conditions forbid loaning it to other people if it has a railcard discount on it. The debit/Credit card cannot be withdrawn and cannot have conditions attached that prevent it being used by other people because TfL or another transport authority do not own it. Indeed if a revenue inspector tried to withdraw a debit card they could be prosecuted for theft