RJ
Established Member
What is its potential as use as a cheap Travelcard including peak hours?
What is its potential as use as a cheap Travelcard including peak hours?
As mentioned above it is effectively the National Rail version of a zone 1-6 single issued by London Underground.
As a slight correction to the last paragraph of the previous post, tickets with a destination of 'U' are not valid to any station within the travelcard zones but only those which are served by LU/DLR (and in cases where LU/DLR services use the same station as NR services). Part of the agreement for the NR zonal fares structure in London was tickets were still to be issued from a station and to a station rather than a generic zonal ticket.
The quote from the fares manual states the following
Train Tube Zonal Fares
For a point-to-point journey:
· between two National Rail stations where the journey includes the cost of travel on London Underground and/or DLR services, e.g. ‘cross-London’ transfer, or for
I said in my previous post that it was valid not between "any" two National Rail stations but "any" two which you wished to take LU travel as part of your journey to them.
So it is not just for fares to NR stations served by LU as well, e.g. a ticket from London Liverpool Street to Selhurst would be just as quick for you to take the Central line to Bank and then the Northern line to Balham and then NR to Selhurst, If you were to just purchase a London Terminals to Selhurst, it would not be valid from LST as it would not include LU travel (hence this ticket being available) and would have to be used from LDB or VIC.
Or WAT/CHX and surely EUS via WLJ/CLJ.
So it is not just for fares to NR stations served by LU as well, e.g. a ticket from London Liverpool Street to Selhurst would be just as quick for you to take the Central line to Bank and then the Northern line to Balham and then NR to Selhurst, If you were to just purchase a London Terminals to Selhurst, it would not be valid from LST as it would not include LU travel (hence this ticket being available) and would have to be used from LDB or VIC.
I assure you that using a ticket marked 'From London Terminals, To U1234 London' is not valid to Selhurst. For confirmation of this check thetrainline or any other online ticketing website and ask it for the price of a fare from Victoria to Selhurst. Compare this to the price of a 'Liverpool Street to Selhurst' and indeed there is a discrepancy.
Prices in the 'U' tickets are based on the LU zonal pricing and not on the NR zonal pricing and hence this is why the tickets are not valid as such and this discrepancy exists.
If you approach the ticket office at LST and ask them for a single to Selhurst they'd give you a 'From U1234, To Selhurst' as shown by the wording you've quoted in the fares manuals. (This is the exact reverse of the ticket you'd buy from Selhurst to Liverpool Street). From Victoria this would be a 'From London Terminals, To Selhurst' ticket.
Journeys with an intermediate LU journey have fares routed '+Any Permitted' which allow travel on LU/DLR for a reasonable route appropriate for the through journey being made. E.g. Radlett to Clapham Junction route +Any Permitted will allow LU travel between West Hampstead(/Kentish Town)/St Pancras/Farringdon/Blackfriars/Elephant & Castle and Victoria/Waterloo/Vauxhall. Using such a ticket to say Paddington or Liverpool Street is not appropriate and is therefore not valid.
Tickets with an origin or destination of 'U' are not valid for such journeys where there is a NR leg at the start and end of the journey as '+Any Permitted' tickets cover intermediate LU usage.
Journeys with a first leg on LU and ending at (non LU) NR stations are issued as 'From Ux to [station]'. If the station is within the zones then the numbers after U will include all zones travel must be undertaken through. If the journey is out of the zones it will go upto 6 (again including all zones needed to be travelled through).
Journeys starting at NR stations with a final leg on LU (and finishing at a non-NR station nor one with coexisting routes between LU and NR as described in the fares manual) are issued as 'From [station] to Ux' with the numbers after U indicating all zones passed through to get to the destination station.
I am quoting DIRECTLY from the NFM and it does actually say
between two National Rail stations where the journey includes the cost of travel on London Underground and/or DLR services, e.g. cross-London transfer
reading the NFM carefully it states the following
· Train Tube tickets should also be issued for journeys from a designated London Terminals station where either
a) the destination is an Underground or DLR station, but the first leg of the journey is on an NR service. For example, London Victoria via Balham to Morden (LU) should be issued LONDON TERMINALS to ZONES U1234.
or
b) where the destination is a NR station, but the first leg of the journey is on an LU/ or DLR service. For example, London Euston to Clapham Junction via LU to either Waterloo or Vauxhall. In this example the ticket should be issued ZONES U12 to CLAPHAM JUNCTION.
So you could do what I said with LST to Selhurst as the first part of the journey is with LU, LST would not issue you a ticket to Selhurst from U1234, if they were to issue that ticket at all (maybe if you bought it from an LU ticket machine) they would issue it from U1 to Selhurst? But from a NR ticket office it would be LST to Selhurst