In the early days of Croydon Tramlink (now officially known as London Trams) there were three Tramlink feeder bus routes: T31, T32 and T33.
As I recall the T31 and T32 were originally operated by First Orpington Buses/Centrewest Orpington and worked by buses that carried the same red and white livery as the original Tramlink colour scheme, and the T33 was originally run by Metrobus.
If I remember rightly all three routes originally offered through fares to or from Tramlink stops without the need to buy a new ticket when changing from bus to tram or vice versa. Does anyone know if this arrangement remained in place until the T31 and T32 were withdrawn and the T33 became the 433?
If such a system was still in place after the introduction of Oyster and contactless payment, they would presumably have had to programme the card readers on those bus routes and at tram stops not to charge another fare if the card had already been used on a tram or on one of the feeder bus routes within, say, an hour. Since 2016 such journeys have been catered for by the Hopper Fare.
These feeder routes have already been mentioned in passing in some other threads such as this one on bus routes lost or changed with the opening of new light rail systems: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/bus-routes-lost-changed-due-to-light-rail.218535/ and page 2 of this one on bus route suffixes: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/bus-route-suffixes.239061/page-2#post-5915827 but as far as I can see there has never been a dedicated thread on them before.
As I recall the T31 and T32 were originally operated by First Orpington Buses/Centrewest Orpington and worked by buses that carried the same red and white livery as the original Tramlink colour scheme, and the T33 was originally run by Metrobus.
If I remember rightly all three routes originally offered through fares to or from Tramlink stops without the need to buy a new ticket when changing from bus to tram or vice versa. Does anyone know if this arrangement remained in place until the T31 and T32 were withdrawn and the T33 became the 433?
If such a system was still in place after the introduction of Oyster and contactless payment, they would presumably have had to programme the card readers on those bus routes and at tram stops not to charge another fare if the card had already been used on a tram or on one of the feeder bus routes within, say, an hour. Since 2016 such journeys have been catered for by the Hopper Fare.
These feeder routes have already been mentioned in passing in some other threads such as this one on bus routes lost or changed with the opening of new light rail systems: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/bus-routes-lost-changed-due-to-light-rail.218535/ and page 2 of this one on bus route suffixes: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/bus-route-suffixes.239061/page-2#post-5915827 but as far as I can see there has never been a dedicated thread on them before.
