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Urgent inquiry! Heathrow Express ticket acceptance
- Thread starter lnerazuma
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Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Given how expensive HEx is, would getting a full refund and using contactless on the Lizzie or Tube not be financially more expedient?
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Sorry, thought you meant the other way round.
According to this:
Acceptance is on the Piccadilly line, not HEx.
Piccadilly line... what a complete utter joke! Even open access operator like LUMO & GC would have mutual ticket acceptance in place when there's severe disruption. How dare TFL not arrange that given that Network Rail is gonna pay the bill
It's been a very very long time since there has been ticket acceptance on the Heathrow Express. Has it occurred to you that may be their choice to avoid annoying their premium fare passengers?
Plenty of passengers around the country get 'annoyed' when disruption results in lots of additional passengers moving onto their train. Hard to see what is special about HEx passengers.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
What's special about HEx is that it's a private operation and not a National Rail TOC.
(I know it's run by GWR, but it isn't a GWR service - no more so than if I chartered a train from GWR)
Haywain
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If only that were true - only this morning GC were tweeting that they had no acceptance in place during disruption on the East Coast route.
I know. I was answering the point that there was something special about HEx passengers.
They pay a massive premium and the operator is hardly likely to want to upset them. Ticket acceptance other than rarely at weekends is pretty much unheard of.
Practically HEX services wouldn't cope with the volume of Elizabeth line travellers and there is no way on God's earth that TfL will pay HEX ticket prices for ticket acceptance so......
The problem is Piccadilly line itself is also experiencing severe delay at the same time!
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
In the future if similar issue happen again do I have the right to be rerouted by HEX given that XR has entirely given up serving Terminal 5 for hours (PRO right if delay is 60 mins or more)?
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
In the future if similar issue happen again do I have the right to be rerouted by HEX given that XR has entirely given up serving Terminal 5 for hours (PRO right if delay is 60 mins or more)?
Is the problem just getting to terminal 5 from terminals 2/3?
Good luck getting TfL staff to understand the PRO.
Let's just say Paddington to Terminal 5, I'm not obligated to change at T2/3 given that there are scheduled direct TFL services.
Do you want to get to your destination?
If the Elizabeth Line trains are running (some) services to Terminal 4, then they are essentially providing a service to Heathrow Terminal 5 as you can change to Heathrow Express for free at T2/3.
The staff there are mostly MTR-EL staff which should have better understanding on NRCOT. But still not much of high hopes.
The signalling issues have resulted in a thinning out of services out of Paddington. Contingency plan appears to only have half hourly Heathrow Terminal 4 services and not all have been able to run, because of consequent delays, leaving gaps in service.
In worst situation this afternoon tfl was providing ac hoc HOURLY service from Paddington to Heathrow 2/3, and HEX is proving regular half hourly service out of Paddington. In this situation do I really obligated to wait for an hour for XR and wait for potentially another half an hour for HEX connector to T5? Mate we are taking about train services to one of the busiest airport in the world...
I'm sure that issue wasn't lost on people, but sometimes you have to work with what you've got.
I don't know exactly what has happened either on the NR or LU services to Heathrow today, but I think expecting TfL to pay for acceptance on HEx all the way from Paddington was probably a bit unreasonable. There were other options available. If the delay exceeded an hour then you'd be eligible for compensation.
With a pre-paid ticket yes - so long as Heathrow Express have agreed ticket acceptance.
Heathrow Express could decline if they are also in service disruption (as they also were today). This happens often and may not be able to cope with passenger numbers.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Good luck getting to Terminal 5 then - contingency plans normally mean the Elizabeth Line doesn't serve T5 during disruption. However that doesn't automatically give you acceptance on Heathrow Express - you change at Terminals 2/3.
Even outside of disruption you can transfer between T5/T4 (i.e getting on a Heathrow Express and changing for Elizabeth line) via T2&3 for free anyway if you've come from London. The charge is booked based on where you tapped in.
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This is what happened yesterday. HEx trains were reported as full and standing so they did not agree to ticket acceptance.
greatkingrat
Established Member
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Sectional Appendix gives platforms lengths as T23 - 195m, T5 - 217m, T4 - 195m, so no. Presumably there must be provision to expand the platforms if the Class 345 are ever extended to 11 cars.
On a related note, how does ticket acceptance work when the Piccadilly Line is disrupted?
How can a passenger to Hatton Cross and/or Heathrow avoid paying the huge Elizabeth line premium?
I know that the Elizabeth line premium can be massively reduced by tapping out, and back in, at Ealing Broadway, but the sum of the two cheaper fares is still far higher than the cost of using the Piccadilly Line.
My intended journey right now is from King's Cross to Hatton Cross (£3.60). I then intend to make a separate journey from Hatton Cross to Heathrow (£0.00).
However, the Piccadilly fare to Heathrow (without the Hatton Cross tap out/in) is £5.80; I don't mind paying that price if I am able to use Elizabeth Line.
However, if I tap in at King's Cross, and use the Elizabeth Line and tap out there, I would be charged £13.90; I doubt staff will allow me to exit there without tapping and to resolve the journey by contacting the TfL helpdesk!
The fare from King's Cross to Ealing Broadway is £3.80; again if the staff allowed me to tap out there and not pay for the onward travel, that would only cost me 20p more, which I'd find very acceptable, but I can't see them doing that either.
The onward fare from Ealing Broadway to Heathrow is £7.50 (i.e. total from King's Cross to Heathrow is £11.30); could I claim that back from TfL if I unfairly get charged this, when acceptance is apparently in place?
The final alternative is to pay £7.00 for a paper ticket (Zone U1256 London), which is more than the cost of the intended journey, but less than the cost that I believe I would be charged if I simply followed TfL's advice using Contactless.
I am not so fussed about the amounts involved; this is more about the principle, and also to help anyone else reading this in future (when I searched the topic on Google, this thread was the top result).
How can a passenger to Hatton Cross and/or Heathrow avoid paying the huge Elizabeth line premium?
I know that the Elizabeth line premium can be massively reduced by tapping out, and back in, at Ealing Broadway, but the sum of the two cheaper fares is still far higher than the cost of using the Piccadilly Line.
My intended journey right now is from King's Cross to Hatton Cross (£3.60). I then intend to make a separate journey from Hatton Cross to Heathrow (£0.00).
However, the Piccadilly fare to Heathrow (without the Hatton Cross tap out/in) is £5.80; I don't mind paying that price if I am able to use Elizabeth Line.
However, if I tap in at King's Cross, and use the Elizabeth Line and tap out there, I would be charged £13.90; I doubt staff will allow me to exit there without tapping and to resolve the journey by contacting the TfL helpdesk!
The fare from King's Cross to Ealing Broadway is £3.80; again if the staff allowed me to tap out there and not pay for the onward travel, that would only cost me 20p more, which I'd find very acceptable, but I can't see them doing that either.
The onward fare from Ealing Broadway to Heathrow is £7.50 (i.e. total from King's Cross to Heathrow is £11.30); could I claim that back from TfL if I unfairly get charged this, when acceptance is apparently in place?
The final alternative is to pay £7.00 for a paper ticket (Zone U1256 London), which is more than the cost of the intended journey, but less than the cost that I believe I would be charged if I simply followed TfL's advice using Contactless.
I am not so fussed about the amounts involved; this is more about the principle, and also to help anyone else reading this in future (when I searched the topic on Google, this thread was the top result).
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The hassle-free way is to buy the £7.00 paper ticket. I read somewhere (maybe an FoI) that when they say ticket acceptance is valid on x,y,z they really do mean ONLY paper tickets or concession passes that wouldn’t normally be valid on the alternative (staff pass etc).
You could try tapping in at King’s Cross and when you get to Heathrow Rail you could tell them that you’re told to tap out at the LU station. No guarantee
Rather unlucky to have signal failures two days in a row on the Piccadilly line. Serious disruption last night, with trains being held for ages at random stations.
With PAYG the position seems to be that you are charged the prevailing fare for the mode(s) you actually use and Zone(s) you actually travel through, regardless of what your intentions were.
AFAIK it's only "prepaid" tickets such as Travelcards and Zonal singles/returns which ticket acceptance actually applies to in practice. If the Elizabeth line were affected then it could also cover point to point ticket holders, as well as ALR/Interrail/Eurrail/BritRail passholders and the various concessionary and National Rail staff passes.
Given the substantial premium which applies to Zonal singles vs the PAYG fare in most scenarios (admittedly here the difference is smaller), this could be regarded as unreasonable, but unfortunately this is the way TfL have made their system work.
With PAYG the position seems to be that you are charged the prevailing fare for the mode(s) you actually use and Zone(s) you actually travel through, regardless of what your intentions were.
AFAIK it's only "prepaid" tickets such as Travelcards and Zonal singles/returns which ticket acceptance actually applies to in practice. If the Elizabeth line were affected then it could also cover point to point ticket holders, as well as ALR/Interrail/Eurrail/BritRail passholders and the various concessionary and National Rail staff passes.
Given the substantial premium which applies to Zonal singles vs the PAYG fare in most scenarios (admittedly here the difference is smaller), this could be regarded as unreasonable, but unfortunately this is the way TfL have made their system work.
In practice, I don't think you can. You would have to claim back later, with TfL using the service status of the line as evidence.
Correct; that is certainly how it works for Heathrow Express / Elizabeth line acceptance (without claiming back, as above)/
Thanks all, this is what I thought.
Whether it's lawful or reasonable to demand that higher priced paper tickets are bought, I'm not convinced, but was not going to go down that road, so I bought a paper ticket.
Staff at T5 were aware of acceptance and let me out with my paper ticket, but whether they would have let me out using Contactless without tapping, I'm not so sure (and I certainly wasn't going to ask with a big queue of people behind me!
)
Whether it's lawful or reasonable to demand that higher priced paper tickets are bought, I'm not convinced, but was not going to go down that road, so I bought a paper ticket.
Staff at T5 were aware of acceptance and let me out with my paper ticket, but whether they would have let me out using Contactless without tapping, I'm not so sure (and I certainly wasn't going to ask with a big queue of people behind me!
)
Staff at T5 were aware of acceptance and let me out with my paper ticket, but whether they would have let me out using Contactless without tapping, I'm not so sure (and I certainly wasn't going to ask with a big queue of people behind me!
I suppose that's the issue with Contactless / Oyster / point to point live ticketing - during times of disruption you might legitimately pay for your journey (at the reduced, diverted rate) but should you be allowed to not pay at all? It opens up a whole can of worms that I don't think the system can deal with well.
Same goes for bus ticket acceptance within London - even though it is likely to be cheaper than any rail fare, should you just be allowed on? Especially if you haven't "bought" a "ticket" yet before being re-routed onto buses.
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