Yes, that matches Mike's map.
Quite. In spite of Cubic's tweet, High Brooms (and possibly others) still waiting for validators arguably plays into waiting for next year as the delays are mostly on the faresetting side of matters.
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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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Bread & cheese
Member
The new validator at Earley is now in service. This is by the side entrance to the station. (The old validator, the sort with a yellow hood, is still in service on platform 1 by the ticket office.)
The new validator is surprisingly tall. The yellow disc where you touch your smartcard is mounted on a blue box at a conventional height. Above the blue box is a black structure, with a row of blue lights at about eye level. This currently carries the words: You can touch in and out with your Smartcard here.
The word 'here' is on a yellow background; I hope people do not try to touch in at the wrong place.
The new validator is surprisingly tall. The yellow disc where you touch your smartcard is mounted on a blue box at a conventional height. Above the blue box is a black structure, with a row of blue lights at about eye level. This currently carries the words: You can touch in and out with your Smartcard here.
The word 'here' is on a yellow background; I hope people do not try to touch in at the wrong place.
Which given I am not from an area with validators rather than a gateline is exactly what I could try, or try to touch above the yeallow wording here where there is the rectangle with '...touch....' and bottom left 'SWR'.
Above the yellow disc is the LCD screen showing 'Present Card for ...'. At shop payment pads it is normal to touch on to the screen so again could try the wrong place.
At the top should be ' You can touch in and out with your Smartcard on the yellow pad below ' with an arrow pointing down.
A real risk of people presuming the validator is not working and getting a penalty fare or being reported for prosecution for fare evasion.
What ought to be done is a test with a large sample covering the full cross-section of the population to create a design with very low probability of misunderstanding.
yes, absolutely. It's a terribly confusing design. Can't quite believe the incompetence
Exactly.
It’s galling to hear politicians going on about their wonderful fares freeze when my day return to Manchester from Wilmslow went up by 28%. And I won’t be in a small minority.
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Bread & cheese
Member
Presumably the wording will be changed when the extension of the contactless travel area takes place, so it is to be hoped that it will be made clear at that time.
I'm not at all clear about when the extension of the contactless travel area will take place.
aron2smith
Member
It's bonkers with this and being right next to London, into London fares went up 6% but were frozen the over way. And yet buy a Travelcard and it costs the same as last year! So individual journeys cost more but the cap I never reach stayed the same. Very confusing. National rail and London Overground here and the price still went up for the most likely journey people will make!
Basically, TfL fares went up because someone at the DfT or Treasury decided not to pay TfL for the Underground. They forgot that TfL includes Overground and Elizabeth line, plus some other operators who use TfL fares (chiltern, c2c, lnwr, gwr, ga and other bits in zone 1/2). Caps and travelcards are considered as a national rail product so they were frozen.
I'm honestly surprised some of the affected MPs have not made more fuss over the mixed messaging.
I would argue it's worse than that. They went up because the Government decided TfL had to as part as the spending review's capital funding deal. Even if TfL or the Mayor wanted to fund a fares freeze they couldn't, TfL has to raise fares by RPI+1% till 2030 if they want access to the money for capital spend.
redreni
Established Member
Surely if there were exemptions to the fares freeze, the posters at stations telling people that fares are frozen would make that clear? Otherwise, said posters would be deeply misleading.
They do make it clear... in that tiiiny text right at the bottom!
It's also mentioned on the Fares Freeze page on NRE.They do make it clear... in that tiiiny text right at the bottom!
An exception could have been given. It's never impossible. Maybe there is a lack of will, or better things to spend the money on, or there's not political capital in it though.
I'm surprised TfL fares went up, I did think the Government would U-turn (they do have form, after all!) and extend the fares freeze to TfL.
TfL fares are probably less elastic than other rail fares, especially for Zone 1. How else are you going to get there?
Absolutely, but my point is that the government might not even have had to pay for them to be frozen.
The ridiculous thing is that fares for national rail beyond the zones including underground/dlr were set at the fare to the terminal plus the zone 1 tube fare. These fares have been frozen so it's now cheaper to combine rather than separate tickets.
redreni
Established Member
Where? The posters at stations near me have no tiny text at the bottom.They do make it clear... in that tiiiny text right at the bottom!
But not on the poster.
And the poster does not indicate that the "further information" available at the URL qualifies in any way the information on the poster. It just informs you that fares are frozen and promises that if you follow the link, you'll find further information.
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redreni
Established Member
I have much less of a problem with the poster you saw. It's the one I saw and photographed that is misleading.
Even the one with the disclaimer leaves me puzzled as to why an off-peak single from Maidenhead to Eynsford has risen by 73% during the fares freeze, not as a result of expansion of Oval, but as a result of the unexplained withdrawal of the single leg priced DOS fare and reinstatement of the CDS (at a level that is undercut by the Anytime Single). I'm not entirely sure the disclaimer is broad enough to capture this sort of thing?
It appears that there is no difference to fares whether you travel through zone 1 or not. Both Denmark Hill and Herne Hill to Chelmsford have the same price with contactless even though the first goes via Whitechapel and never into zone 1. Re contactless these paper fares were priced on the ability to travel via zone 2 (even though you could travel via zone 1) and were cheaper than buying a ticket at Liverpool Street.
You have the fare freeze the wrong way round. The announcement was always deeply misleading, and the policy only ever applied to regulated fares. There’s every justification for claiming it was dishonest misrepresentation, but the issue is not about there being exceptions or not
Haywain
Veteran Member
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There are a number of options for that journey from Denmark Hill with several going via Liverpool Street, which is very much in zone 1.
I assume that the pink card reader at Whitechapel and Canada Water is essentially worthless with contactless for such journeys.
Just looked back and I bought an anytime day return between North Dulwich and Beaulieu Park for £25.80 at the end of October. This is also £34.90 now so a 35% increase!
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Haywain
Veteran Member
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If there is only one fare defined for a journey the pink readers are not required, they exist to verify lower priced journeys where more than one fare is defined.
Unfortunately this is one of the many journeys which are 'directionally priced' meaning the Anytime fare is significantly cheaper in the contra-peak direction. This made sense historically speaking but has generally been scrapped with the advent of single-leg pricing, since it isn't really possible to support directional pricing on TfL's PAYG system.
In most cases, the ratio between the Anytime and Off-Peak fare would mean that an Anytime Day Single on the way there, and an Off-Peak Day Single on the way back (generally no restrictions heading into London in the evening peak), would add up to a similar amount as the previous directional Anytime Day Return fare. But in this case, the Anytime Day Return heading towards Beaulieu Park was so cheap (in fact cheaper than the Off-Peak Day Return!) that this has not happened.
This is exactly the kind of scenario that MPs should be lobbying the DfT about. Clearly you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, but the fare increases for journeys such as this are very significant and without any clear justification.
I suspect the DfT's justification may come down to removing anomolies, along the lines of their comments about GBR fare setting principles.
In some ways, it is a little surprising that Project Oval hasn't been used as an opportunity to remove more anomolies, such as historically cheaper fares on some routes.
On MP interest, I note they are getting involved in 'with flow' journeys to and from London, where there is a clear group of passengers affected, but not sure how they would be interested in the cross London flows that affect smaller numbers of passengers, as it is another level of detail.
I don't think it's at all confusing or poor value for money that Anytime Day Returns are cheaper in the contra-peak direction, so the changes here can't be justified under that banner.
It's also not a regional disparity, though the irony of the government referring to this as justification for further increases is palpable, when it's the DfT who effectively brought this about by introducing the "fares basket" concept for fares regulation.
The real answer is that, with the government's blessing, the industry has decided to implement an overly simplistic, one-size-fits-all structure and weren't willing to sacrifice even the smallest amount of revenue or simplicity to minimise fare increases compared to today.
BurtonM
Member
This post on Reddit shows readers in place at Swanscombe.
To some extent, it has, but of course they'll inadvertently create new anomalies when doing so, especially around the edge of the Oval area. But then they can't fix those because of the fares freeze.
I think we'll see more rigorous fixes post-fares-freeze both within Oval areas, at the borders, and where the Oval changes impact long distance routes.