BZ2 cheaper than BZ3 (to Gatwick Airport)

[pelli]

I have a Travelcard Season and was looking at Anytime Day Return (Route: Not Gatwick Express) fares to Gatwick Airport [GTW] for a trip that is likely to be morning peak both ways. I was pleased to find that with my Travelcard I could purchase a Boundary Zone [BZ]2 - GTW ticket for £24.10 and save 10p compared with London Bridge [LBG] - GTW for £24.20. Then I remembered that my Travelcard was actually for Z1-3 rather than Z1-2, so I gleefully looked up BZ3-GTW expecting to save at least another 10p, but instead was horrified to find that it was more expensive, at £24.20 again! (The price of the equivalent point-to-point ticket from any station in Z1-4 on the route is the same, £24.20.)

Are there any other examples of Boundary Zone fares where a longer journey from a lesser zone is cheaper than a shorter journey from a greater zone (for the exact same type of ticket)?

What do our esteemed fares experts think about combining a Z1-3 Travelcard with a BZ2 - GTW ticket? Could a conscientious inspector argue that a BZ2 ticket explicitly extends a Zones x-2 Travelcard, so is not valid to extend a Z1-3 Travelcard (much like it wouldn't extend e.g. a LBG - Sydenham (Z3) single nor be valid on its own starting short from Sydenham, or would it?)? The question is likely moot anyway, assuming the Oyster PAYG extension fares for BZ3 - GTW are given by the standard calculation (can anyone confirm this?), namely equal to the fare from a Z4 station such as Penge West, £11.00/£8.10, in which case I'll be better off just using PAYG.

 

[MrJeeves]

Are there any other examples of Boundary Zone fares where a longer journey from a lesser zone is cheaper than a shorter journey from a greater zone (for the exact same type of ticket)?

Boundary Zone 4 to Milton Keynes is more than Euston to Milton Keynes, and more restrictive!

 

[Watershed]

Bizarrely a ticket from somewhere between Imperial Wharf and Wembley Central (e.g. Kensington Olympia) to Gatwick is cheaper than either a Boundary Zone 2 or 3 ticket, or a ticket from Clapham Junction.

It's £22.80 for an Anytime Day Return from one of those stations to Gatwick, routed "Clapham Junction not London". That would also be valid on a non-stop Thameslink service via New Cross, as the mapped route LB allows you to trace a route from Clapham Junction via Streatham Hill, Crystal Palace and Sydenham towards Gatwick - thus covering you for the entirety of your travel beyond Zone 3. If you have a 16-25/26-30 or similar Railcard then you could of course also get a full 1/3 discount on top of this; for other Railcards it may be cheaper to get a Railcard-discounted single on the way back but that depends on what time you travel.

If your Travelcard is loaded onto an Oyster card, you might also want to consider 'splitting' at East Croydon. The PAYG fares from there to Gatwick are ludicrously cheap - £6.60 peak single - so when combined with the extension fare you'd be charged to East Croydon, that would probably work out as the cheapest option. It does mean having to change at East Croydon, of course. If you situate yourself well, ideally around coach 6/8 of an 8/12 coach train heading south or coach 5 of a northbound train, you'll be close to the northern footbridge where there isn't far to walk to get to/from the barriers.

I think your extension fare from zones 1-3 to East Croydon would be between £2 and £2.20 depending on the origin of your journey. As I understand it, you get charged the higher extension fare if your overall journey, even within the Zones your Travelcard covers, goes via Zone 1 and is deemed to count as 'mixed mode'. That's despite the fact that the part of your journey where you are extending beyond your paid-for Zones is only on an NR-priced route. I suppose the system isn't clever enough to work that out, so the only way to avoid that slight additional charge would to be avoid Zone 1, or to tap onto a bus (even if you don't travel on it) to break the usual OSI that would take place between the Tube and National Rail stations at London Terminals. Or I suppose you could touch out and back in at the last station in Zone 3, but that would add a lot of time to your journey for the sake of 20p each way.