Hi there, Southern's mixingdeck will sell (and produce itineraries for) a season between Norbury and St Pancras routed to 'go via' East Croydon. NRE tells me that I need 2 tickets for this journey, so I presume a season isn't valid as this would only be one ticket? Would anyone be able to let me know who's got it right in this case?
I don't think it's a question of right or wrong, but of what is likely to happen if you use such a ticket.
If you have a screenshot of the Southern web site which shows that they will sell such a season ticket for such a route, this should make it easier to explain why you're there with that ticket to any sceptical staff you encounter.
Incidentally, there are a number of stations north of St. Pancras to which the season tickets are a little cheaper than the one you were looking at (£936 p.a. rather than £956). I don't know if NRE would show a journey from Norbury to any of them as being valid via East Croydon, but I hope they would.
I suspect that this is due to WebTIS allowing 5 miles more than the shortest route, when the instructions only say to allow 3 miles, to allow more benefit of the doubt due to rounding errors.
The instructions don't say that now, and haven't done since November. The only references to 3 miles in the routeing guide are now to allow routes where the origin and destination stations have a common routeing point, and where the journey doesn't have both origin and destination routeing points (for any reason).
I was looking at Norbury-Finsbury Park routes, and I noticed that some which are within 3 miles of the shortest route are shown as invalid on one ticket on NRE. This isn't wrong, though.
