Revenue split between TOCs for London/PTE Cross Zone-1 Journeys

[hkstudent]

It is interesting to see fare modes of London and most PTEs areas use a pseudo-round-zone fare charging scheme, in which the highest fare zone charges fares and the lowest fare zone travelled, disregarding whether it is a simple High - Low zone journey, or a High - Low - High trip.

Does it mean that operators will make a great loss if a passenger travels from the edge of a PTE area to another edge, and especially if two or more operators are included when changing trains in zone 1 / Central?

 

[Kilopylae]

Do you mean something like (say) Hillingdon to East Croydon, or are you talking about a situation where someone travels from the edge of one PTE area to the edge of another, like Newton-le-Willows to Blackrod changing from TfW to Northern at Manchester Picc?

 

[swt_passenger]

It is interesting to see fare modes of London and most PTEs areas use a pseudo-round-zone fare charging scheme, in which the highest fare zone charges fares and the lowest fare zone travelled, disregarding whether it is a simple High - Low zone journey, or a High - Low - High trip.

Does it mean that operators will make a great loss if a passenger travels from the edge of a PTE area to another edge, and especially if two or more operators are included when changing trains in zone 1 / Central?

Yes, that’s always been how Oyster PAYG worked, for a journey right across London through the centre half the journey is effectively free. But i think it can only really work in an area with just the one main centre. They must have originally assumed in London that the proportion of people doing zone 6-1-6 journeys was not significant in comparison to people only travelling to the centre.

I suspect because the national rail structure was completely different, and that was part of the difficulty with getting the TOCs onboard back in the day. An example like Surbiton to Upminster by mainline services was presumably very close to the sum of the two fares as far as the main terminals?

 

[Haywain]

It is interesting to see fare modes of London and most PTEs areas use a pseudo-round-zone fare charging scheme, in which the highest fare zone charges fares and the lowest fare zone travelled, disregarding whether it is a simple High - Low zone journey, or a High - Low - High trip.

Does it mean that operators will make a great loss if a passenger travels from the edge of a PTE area to another edge, and especially if two or more operators are included when changing trains in zone 1 / Central?

Are the people who travel further under-paying or the people who make the shorter journeys over-paying? Does it matter? The train operators will receive payments based on some pre-defined formula either way.