I'm going to have to put my foot down here. If you check the single fare finder (or my one at https://oysterfares.com/fare-finder if you want) there are separate fares for via Gatwick Express for Horley, Salfords, Earlswood and Redhill. There are no separate fares for Merstham. Just because all 5 stations have the same daily caps does not mean that individual fares have to be the same.
It is if you don't use platforms 13-14 at Victoria.
Because some of the trains which form them come up the Slow Line from Streatham Hill Shed
Surely the Routeing Guide and its easements don't apply to contactless or Oyster, as they have their own conditions
Indeed, but the question was about paper tickets.
Probably, but a little disruption could cause issues. Zone 1-2 journey is allowed 110 minutes weekdays which is touch in to touch out. Overall journey time of at least 60 minutes plus wait to depart Victoria, connection time at Gatwick and time to descend escalators at London Bridge.
No, Oyster (and hence contactless PAYG) fares have always been based on the ASSUMED (rather than actual) route taken - sometimes, by pink reader touch or (enforced) OSI (or not) a selection between assumable routes is possible (and specified) - but not always. (There is a note in the TfL Single fares finder "Some journeys are charged via Zone 1 irrespective of the route taken")
I would say that it's intrinsic to the whole PAYG concept: when you start your journey by touching in, you are effectively contracting/agreeing to pay for a journey from your departure station to some other station, by some route, when you end your journey the fare (from start to end, by assumed route) is looked up, and charged, as if by magic. Beyond the (limited) cases of pink reader or via OSI alternative assumed routes the route to be or actually taken is neither specified, nor (without great difficulty/cost) determinable, so it has just be assumed - the system just knows starting and end stations, and so has to charge the appropriate station to station fare.
So are you saying Gatwick Express have gotten rid of their OBS now? If so then when did that happen?
You are indeed correct - when it was introduced I understood it was one fare for all the stations but didn't realise it wasn't one fare for travel elsewhere from each station. You learn something new every day.
I understand what you're saying, but ultimately if train companies don't like people going beyond their final destination and doubling back, they should have thought about that before they decided to accept contactless card payment. As far as I've ever been aware, the deal with contactless is you lose the right to break your journey that you would have enjoyed with a traditional paper ticket but you gain the right to double back. It seems rather unfair that the train companies can just take that away?
This depends on the scheme, it's true in the London contactless area, although capping can help, but with most TOC PAYG schemes, such as KeyGo and the GWR Bristol scheme, the pricing is based on paper tickets, and will allow breaking of your journey in it's calculations.
I commute almost everyday on it. Trust me, there are OBS staff making announcements on every journey I've done on it, from memory.
Even in the case of pink reader touches a fair amount of 'cheating' is possible. For instance, Hillington to Loughton via Finchley Rd and London Waterloo can be charged as Not via Zone 1 by tapping the pink reader at the bottom of the London Overground stairs when changing from the Jubilee to the Central line at Stratford. Though – does this constitute fare evasion or is it just a friendly loophole?
Slightly off topic, but for the fare you quote you also need a pair of touches at Finchley Road / Finchley Road & Frognal or West Hampstead (Jubilee) / West Hampstead (Overground), not just the one at Stratford.
Fare evasion is an interesting question, but arguably it could only ever be proved as 'intent not to pay'.
I suppose technically, if your intent is to avoid paying the correct fare, it would be an offence. Very difficult to prove though.
I thought they were on platforms 1/2. Are there some in (one of) the subways?
As long as you have touched in at the start of your journey and touched out at the end I think they would find it very difficult to prove any offence.
I could be mistaken. I haven't arrived at Stratford by London Overground since 2021 and my memory is fuzzy!
By touching in (successfully) you are demonstrating 'intent to pay' (for the journey you are starting to make). When you touch out you are 'paying' the fare [on Oyster by deduction of fare from balance, using contactless by increasing balance due in end of day processing] for the journey you have made - it is up to the railway to charge the correct fare. I fail to see that any offence has been committed.
Intent to pay a fare but not necessarily the right one. It really depends what you are doing though:
Those actions could be one part of the factual matrix as to 'intent to pay', but they aren't necessarily the end of the story. Touching a pink reader to trigger a lower fare but then not travelling via the route to which that fare is intended to apply to could, in certain circumstances, be construed against the passenger. I'm certainly not arguing that it should be, and it seems highly unlikely that anyone would be 'caught' - but if they were, it's within the realms of possibility that an accusation of avoiding the fare might be made.
In most cases I would agree - but if a fare is, for example, specifically described as being for "avoiding Zone 1" (as opposed to purely "via X"), then the passenger has arguably not paid the correct fare if they are charged it despite travelling via Zone 1. That then opens up the can of worms of whether they had "intent to avoid payment"...
If I were advising a passenger who had got in trouble for this I would emphasise the importance of not admitting that they understand what the pink readers are for. As is made clear on the TfL website, the pink readers are there to allow passengers to tell the system that they have avoided zone 1 and so shouldn't be charged for passing through zone 1. A passenger who understands that and still touches on a pink reader despite having passed through zone 1 (or despite intending to) is being dishonest.
This is a fallacy.
tfl.gov.uk
Take London Overground from Clapham to West Brompton, tap the pink reader, then take the District line to Victoria and the Victoria line to Highbury n Islington….no zone 1 charge.
The system isn't that smart; it isn't based on timetabled, or actual, running of services. The maximum journey times are of course influenced by how long journeys typically take, but they are very broad-brush (as they are based on the number of zones deemed to be passed through).
Who's to say that there can't be an altered service pattern at some point down the line (or perhaps a train that skips stations due to late-running)? It could lead to a fair number of people being overcharged. I agree with your conclusions though.
This is not quite true, the use of the word often is dubious.
