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Boundary Zone versus point to point fare

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Tester

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I'm planning travel for a friend between London and Southampton, using a combination of Older Persons Freedom Pass and Senior Railcard.

My first thought was a Boundary Zone 6 ticket, but I see that this is not e-ticketable, whereas the equivalent Surbiton ticket is. Both are £23.75 (Super Off Peak Return).

Apart from removing the possibility to travel via e.g. East Croydon (not relevant in this case), are there any other considerations when choosing between these two? Travel would be from/to Waterloo, using trains not calling at Surbiton.

All advice gratefully received.
 
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Watershed

Watershed

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Tester said:
I'm planning travel for a friend between London and Southampton, using a combination of Older Persons Freedom Pass and Senior Railcard.

My first thought was a Boundary Zone 6 ticket, but I see that this is not e-ticketable, whereas the equivalent Surbiton ticket is. Both are £23.75 (Super Off Peak Return).

Apart from removing the possibility to travel via e.g. East Croydon (not relevant in this case), are there any other considerations when choosing between these two? Travel would be from/to Waterloo, using trains not calling at Surbiton.

All advice gratefully received.
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The requirement to travel via Surbiton rather than the ability to enter the London Zones at any relevant Zone 6 boundary station is the only real difference. As you say, you can undertake non-stop splits when combining your Freedom Pass with an onward point-to-point ticket from the last Zone 6 station - it doesn't need to be a Boundary Zone 6 ticket.

Incidentally if the Super Off-Peak restrictions are too onerous for you (and they are really quite restrictive!) you can get an Off-Peak ticket for a cheaper price than SWR would like you to pay. Brighton to Southampton "not via London" fares are intended for use via Clapham Junction, but the Off-Peak Return on that flow is cheaper than a Surbiton to Southampton one.
 
T

Tester

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Watershed said:
The requirement to travel via Surbiton rather than the ability to enter the London Zones at any relevant Zone 6 boundary station is the only real difference. As you say, you can undertake non-stop splits when combining your Freedom Pass with an onward point-to-point ticket from the last Zone 6 station - it doesn't need to be a Boundary Zone 6 ticket.

Incidentally if the Super Off-Peak restrictions are too onerous for you (and they are really quite restrictive!) you can get an Off-Peak ticket for a cheaper price than SWR would like you to pay. Brighton to Southampton "not via London" fares are intended for use via Clapham Junction, but the Off-Peak Return on that flow is cheaper than a Surbiton to Southampton one.
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Thank you for that - confirms my understanding.

The Brighton tip is a good one - thank you. In this case not a problem as all travel is on Sundays.
 
T

themeone

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Just as a side question, what's the reason Boundary Zone tickets are only ever issued as paper tickets?
 
A

Adam Williams

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themeone said:
Just as a side question, what's the reason Boundary Zone tickets are only ever issued as paper tickets?
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There is no reason anymore. The train operators simply need to go through and enable them; they can be issued to E-Ticket just fine.
 
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OscarH

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Adam Williams said:
There is no reason anymore. The train operators simply need to go through and enable them; they can be issued to E-Ticket just fine.
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And given tube travel is the only valid reason to not enable a flow in 2026, there's either none or very few BZ flows that shouldn't be enabled, given very few will have any LU validity at all
 
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Adam Williams

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It needs someone to go through the list and, for each and every train operator, pull out an extract of all the missing flows to then bulk-allow after a quick sanity check.

It's exactly the sort of work you'd expect RDG to be proactively doing, given they are the custodians of the data-set.
 
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