Stations out to Reading are effectively "Phase 0" of Project Oval, in that pricing and time restrictions for traditional tickets haven't been harmonised with the pay as you go fares and restrictions for journeys wholly on the line of route.
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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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Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Does contactless travel follow the standard pattern i.e. with evening restrictions?
It has evening restrictions on journeys heading westbound, but not eastbound within pre-oval areas regardless of where you end up. So Slough to Welling is off-peak in the evening, even though you may well be using peak Southeasterm services. Slough to Sevenoaks does have an evening restriction.
Here's the situation at Stevenage which is going live with Oval:
Note many railcards have morning peak restrictions and/or minimum discounted fares on weekdays
The fares under Project Oval are:
Note - Off Peak fares are charged for travelling into London in the evening peak but peak fares are charged when travelling from London between 16:00 and 19:00
In summary:
For completeness, there is an advantage if a passenger touches in prior to 06:30 on a weekday:
If you use contactless you can catch the 15.39 departure from Watton at Stone and travel on any train out of PAD and pay an off-peak fare. (as long as you touch in at Watton at Stone before 16.00 you could even catch the 16.09).
Use a paper ticket (perhaps because you want to use a railcard) the last departure you can catch is the 13.39 from WAS because it is not valid on trains timed to depart between 16:00 and 19:00 and the 13:39 from WAS connects to the last valid train at Paddington leaving at 15.23. The 14.09 from WAS connects into the 16.00 departure from PAD which is too late because it falls foul of the no departures between 16.00-19.00 restriction.
This is a significant difference on something that's supposed to be the same.
We then have the of different fares structissue ures at nearby stations. Welwyn Garden City was in an earlier iteration of contactless and retains the 'old' fares structure for traditional tickets, including the lack of evening peak restrictions and weekend super off peak fares. Stations north of Hitchin and Baldock are also not part of Project Oval and retain their existing fares structure as well. To illustrate the impact of this consider the cost of ticket to London Terminals at the weekend:
Welwyn Garden City £12.80
Welwyn North £15.40
Knebworth £16.70
Stevenage £20.00
Hitchin £22.60
Arlesey £19.10
So anyone from Hitchin or Stevenage travelling to London at the weekend will find it cheaper to buy a ticket from Arlesey and start short.
There is publicity at Stevenage station about contactless coming soon, LNER going pick-up/set down only and a rather strange window graphic encouraging people to use the GTR app but nothing about the impact on fares. I suspect there will be some disgrunted passengers on Sunday 14th when they suddenly realise the cost of their travel has increased.
| Current fares from Stevenage to London Terminals: | Adult | Railcard |
| Anytime Day Return | £28.90 | £19.20 |
| Off Peak Day Return (no evening restrictions) | £22.80 | £15.15 |
| Weekend Super Off Peak Day Return | £16.80 | £11.15 |
The fares under Project Oval are:
| Single fares from Stevenage to Kings Cross/St Pancras | Adult | Railcard |
| Peak (touch in between 06:30-09:30 and 16:00-19:00) | £14.40 | N/A |
| Off Peak | £10.00 | N/A |
In summary:
- A passenger travelling out in the morning peak and back in the evening peak pays £28.80 - 10p cheaper than the current Anytime Dar Return.
- A passenger travelling out off-peak and back off peak will pay £20.00 compared – a saving of £2.80 or 12%
- A passenger travelling out off-peak but back in the evening peak will pay £24.40 compared to £22.80 at present. An increase of 7%
- A weekend traveller will pay £20.00 compared to £16.80 at present. An increase of 19%
For completeness, there is an advantage if a passenger touches in prior to 06:30 on a weekday:
- A passenger travelling out before 06:30 and returning at an off-peak time pays £20.00 compared to £28.90 at present. A saving of 31%
- And a passenger travelling out before 06:30 returning in the evening peak pays £24.40 compared to £28.90 at present. A saving of 16%
If you use contactless you can catch the 15.39 departure from Watton at Stone and travel on any train out of PAD and pay an off-peak fare. (as long as you touch in at Watton at Stone before 16.00 you could even catch the 16.09).
Use a paper ticket (perhaps because you want to use a railcard) the last departure you can catch is the 13.39 from WAS because it is not valid on trains timed to depart between 16:00 and 19:00 and the 13:39 from WAS connects to the last valid train at Paddington leaving at 15.23. The 14.09 from WAS connects into the 16.00 departure from PAD which is too late because it falls foul of the no departures between 16.00-19.00 restriction.
This is a significant difference on something that's supposed to be the same.
We then have the of different fares structissue ures at nearby stations. Welwyn Garden City was in an earlier iteration of contactless and retains the 'old' fares structure for traditional tickets, including the lack of evening peak restrictions and weekend super off peak fares. Stations north of Hitchin and Baldock are also not part of Project Oval and retain their existing fares structure as well. To illustrate the impact of this consider the cost of ticket to London Terminals at the weekend:
Welwyn Garden City £12.80
Welwyn North £15.40
Knebworth £16.70
Stevenage £20.00
Hitchin £22.60
Arlesey £19.10
So anyone from Hitchin or Stevenage travelling to London at the weekend will find it cheaper to buy a ticket from Arlesey and start short.
There is publicity at Stevenage station about contactless coming soon, LNER going pick-up/set down only and a rather strange window graphic encouraging people to use the GTR app but nothing about the impact on fares. I suspect there will be some disgrunted passengers on Sunday 14th when they suddenly realise the cost of their travel has increased.
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It appears GA have jumped the gun there, as Martins Heron isn't one of the stations due to go live later this month.
MasterPhillips
Member
- Joined
- 26 Jun 2019
- Messages
- 212
So there is no reason why phase 1,2 etc stations could not have been done the same way. It was a choice to put evening restrictions on off peak singles/returns. The question I want to know is who made this decision.
Or they have just decided to put single leg pricing in now, rather than wait for a later application. There is nothing to stop the Contactless style fare structure being put in place before Contactless is actually available, as we saw with Phase 1. I note that Bagshot hasn't been switched, but Woking and Guildford have.
It isn't really "a choice". It is how the whole model of Project Oval has been devised, and follows both the approach used in London since Oyster has been valid on National Rail services [1], and how RDG recommended fares should be charged under their plans for fare reforms - see https://www.raildeliverygroup.com/files/Publications/2019-02_easier_fares_for_all.pdf.
We are seeing the unwelcome side of the manifestation of exactly the proposals in that RDG paper.
What is essentially missing is the "off-peak cap" provided by the Travelcard for Zone 1 centric travel being made available in a wider set of circumstances, which is only getting worse as Oval spreads.
[1] I think Oyster was peak 7am until 7pm on weekdays in its very first year when it was something just used on the Underground, but that changed fairly early.
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Slough to Welling has restriction codes PF/PG for the contactless fares on BRFares, so a PM peak restriction should apply (as per Gerrards Cross - Welling, which is a Phase 1 flow) but one isn't shown in the TfL Single Fare Finder.
Whether that's a GWR error or a TfL one I couldn't say, however.
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One of the early announcements regarding Oval was that PAYG and cash fares and restrictions would be aligned so those who can't/won't use contactless wouldn't be disadvantaged.
This has since turned out to be incorrect, given the way time restrictions work for traditional tickets (i.e. by looking at the timetabled arrival and/or departure time of every leg of a journey) is fundamentally different to PAYG (where it's when you first touch in on a journey that affects whether you're charged a peak or off-peak fare.)
The blanket 06:30 - 09:30 (04:30 - 09:30 for traditional tickets) AM peak is an issue as well. Under the current restrictions, the first off-peak train from Aylesbury Vale Parkway to London Marylebone is at 09:13, due into Marylebone at 10:26. From Sunday it becomes 10:10, due into Marylebone at 11:23.
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I think there will be some disgruntled passengers from Sunday 7th, as that is when the 'paper' fares change, with Contactless not in force for what will be an odd week.
There is a limited work around of splitting in London, but how is this going to be communicated to passengers? Watton-at-Stone to London will be off-peak (single) all day from 0930, but as you note cross London travel becomes heavily restricted. A passenger can split their tickets in London to reduce the through journey if starting towards the end of the 1900 restriction.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The Oval fare set is certainly simpler than what went before. What it isn't, though, is cheaper for many.
And much though people complain about the complexity of rail fares, I suspect what they really want is cheaper fares. Note how there was almost universal public support for freezing rail fares - it was the second-most popular decision in the Budget in a YouGov poll.
Complexity wouldn't matter nearly as much if an Anytime "Any Permitted" fare (to 'cover all bases') were affordably priced.
For simple journeys that don't cross London, yes. Even the evening peak stuff can be understood for simple journeys, although as you go further out it is a bit of a nonsense - why does someone going from Denham to High Wycombe for an evening out need to pay a peak outward fare? That sort of thing could lose the railway discretionary custom.
Once crossing London is taken into account, it does start to make off-peak day trips seem out of the question if there is a huge peak window, and it will need to be seen what the railway does about this.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Given that for contactless it just bases it on the time the journey first taps in, and given that most tickets are sold by Trainline so if the issue hits you it'll just sell a split if that's cheaper, I'd imagine it won't do very much. But I do agree this is an issue - it's the one thing I really don't like about Oval, and it's happened largely because the railway is being a bit lazy and wants to keep the number of restriction codes to a minimum - to implement the same as contactless does would require more restriction codes than just one.
There are six restriction codes for off-peak tickets as part of Oval:
- PS: Return with a PM peak restriction in both directions (e.g. Denham - Gatwick Airport)
- PT: Return with no PM peak restriction in either direction (e.g. Watford Junction - St Albans Abbey)
- PW: Single with no PM peak restriction (e.g. Staines - London Terminals)
- PX: Return with a PM peak restriction on the Return leg (e.g. Sevenoaks - London Terminals)
- PY: Single with a PM peak restriction (e.g. London Terminals - Bletchley)
- PZ: Return with a PM peak restriction on the Outward leg (e.g. Wembley Stadium - Beaconsfield)
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Thanks.
What it needs (as per the WMT fares which have had the same problem for 20 years or so now) is a means of implementing "a connection may be used to continue a journey begun at a valid time". Then you could implement the same for paper tickets as exists for contactless, i.e. the only thing that matters (aside from the origin/destination pair) being the touch in time at the origin station.
The reason WMT never implemented that is that to do it with the present restriction code setup would require you to have a very large set of codes - to get it perfect you'd need one per station. The difference between WMT's original scheme and Oval, however, is that the textual restriction still allows the use of trains that planners won't sell (so you can just pick a different train where the ticket is offered, the staff know what the restrictions really are), whereas the Oval restrictions don't.
It would just lead to loads of people starting short at the London Termini, on off-peak tickets from the other side of London.
As it is, even the blanket 1600-1900 on Contactless is a nonsense towards the end of that peak window. If you leave Southend at 1900, you can't get to Bletchley until about 2130, leaving Euston well after the peak has ended.
Yes, you're right.
For starters there needs to be something explaining contactless covering the following:
- Peak and Off Peak times and that they are based on the touch-in time
- Always touch in and touch out with the same device to pay the correct fare. Be aware of card clash etc.
- State the fares to London along with the intermediate stations in a table form
- Daily and weekly caps. How much they are and when they apply
- Contactless can be used for longer journeys in the South East PAYG area although afternoon peak restrictions apply to the whole journey if a longer journey involves travel away from London in the evening peak
- Railcards cannot be applied to contactless but traditional tickets are available at the same price
- Charging is handled by TfL on behalf of the train operator. Give details of how to obtain journey history and contact details for refunds etc.
One other thing that won't be obvious about this is the extension fares, and whether they are peak or off-peak when a through journey across London is involved, in conjunction with the zone 1 centric cap.
It is vexing me greatly just how difficult it is to get this basic information. I didn't get confirmation of the September updated GWR off-peak caps until 8 weeks later!
Is there any likelihood of extension fares becoming available with the railway going back into public ownership, and therefore under freedom of information, or is it still commercially sensitive?
I think everything will eventually become available. The problem is the time it takes to get through processes. I requested the caps under FOI. Four weeks later the request was refused citing that it would exceed the maximum amount allowable per request. I put in an internal review request. Just as that ran overdue the RDG finally updated the page on NRE, so the request became moot. I've asked for the new caps for the stations going online this month. That should report before the go-live date of Dec 14th. If they refuse again it'll be another internal review before it can go to the ICO.
The ICO was how we eventually got access to the times allowed for each journey, though they still tried to refuse an update before I reminded them of the outcome of the previous request. They quickly supplied the information then. Someone else is asking about extension fares so I'm monitoring progress from the sidelines.
There is no way that information about what money will be deducted from your bank account when you make train journeys can sensibly be described as commercially sensitive.
They're not commercially sensitive, but TfL are being extraordinarily uncooperative about releasing them. This FoI request for them has been refused for being 'too costly' to fulfil. The requestor seems to have raised an Internal Review - it will be interesting to see if that yields anything.
That's the one I'm monitoring from the sidelines.
What I don't understand is that the NRailcard is a valid discount on rail services within the Oyster area. So if I use a service, I don't get a discount.
Given there is no statutory protection for the discount offered by the Network Railcard, the railway can choose what it wants to offer discounts for. The weekday minimum fare is often cited as a reason why Oyster discounts aren't available for Network Railcard users.
Family & Friends / Two Together Railcard holders aren't eligible for discounted Oyster PAYG fares either, since the discounts apply to groups rather than individuals.
...Actually, that may be a reason for Network Railcard non-applicability to Oyster PAYG as well. It's typically seen as a product for individuals and being able to use them for group discounts as well is arguably overlooked.
...Actually, that may be a reason for Network Railcard non-applicability to Oyster PAYG as well. It's typically seen as a product for individuals and being able to use them for group discounts as well is arguably overlooked.
Except that the Gold Card can be added to an Oyster card and that can also be used for group discounts.
The £13 minimum discounted fare on weekdays is probably the biggest issue.
Alex365Dash
Member
Other than the points made above, it’s worth noting that you can only be charged the difference between your ticket and the cheapest ticket for immediate travel (i.e. an excess) if you use your ticket* at the wrong time of day.
*Not applicable to Advance tickets used after a booked train, but that’s outside the scope of this discussion.
The Anytime Carnet tickets were replaced with Flexi Seasons in June 2021. These on withdrawal cost £14.10 per single, or £28.20 per return, compared to the then Anytime Day Single (SDS) of £19.30 or the then Anytime Day Return (from Luton) of £31.50, offering a 10% discount compared to the cost of an Anytime Day Return.
Off-Peak Carnets provide a 10% discount to the cost of an Off-Peak Day Return.
Adding the Anytime Day Single (SDS) from Luton to London and a Railcard-discounted SDS back (with the £13 minimum fare hit on the return) gives the return price of £32, which is indeed slightly cheaper than the per-day price of a Flexi Season at £33.25.
Considering that the Anytime Day Return is £38, that provides a 15% discount compared to the Flexi Season discount of 12.5% or the Anytime Carnet (if it still existed) of 10%.