- This topic has 12 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 3 months, 2 weeks ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Hello
I live in Reading and regularly travel to London, however after a few years of using the service I am still not clear as to the pricing structures in place. I wonder if anyone knows of a pdf, website or spreadsheet that would allow to analyse the fares from Reading to destinations within the contactless zone. I know there is a single fare finder (both here and on TfL) but it does not give the rationale behind how the fares are calculated. I also feel it does not include all restrictions and exceptions. For example, a Paddington to Reading fare is shown as being £29 within the 16.00 – 1900 peak, however my understanding is that travelling on a slow Elizabeth line train allows one to travel on off peak tickets in a similar way to how one can do this on off-peak paper tickets. My understanding is that this also applies to other London Terminals, however I cannot be sure and wondered if there is anywhere I can find it out. For example, for zones 1-9 this website’s Fares Guides and Tables is extremely useful as it allows to see how single fares are calculated. For National Rail there is a Routeing Guide which serves a similar purpose. Do you know if there is a similar database for the contactless zone?
For reference, one of the reasons I find the fares from Reading so baffling is that I have a Railcard and so often need to combine discounted paper tickets with non-discounted contactless fares, especially if I am staying in London overnight and cannot use Day Travelcards. I often find myself trying to understand the cheapest ways of traveling which is currently difficult.
Hi Alexander,
Beyond zones 1-9 there is no set rationale for setting fares or caps. They are both set by the operator responsible for the fares. In the case of Reading to London this is GWR. Because PAYG fares are all singles, peak fares are charged going away from London in the afternoon peak. This is so that commuters pay two peak singles (equivalent to an Anytime return). If all your travel is after 0930 then the off-peak cap will apply and will limit the effect of a peak single.
The routeing guide is not really about fares in the same way my tables are for zones 1-9. It’s concerned with defining permitted routes.
Until TfL work out how to handle discounts on contactless then sadly you may find paper tickets with a discount are cheaper than contactless fares.
This is helpful info thanks. Travelling in the same direction I’ve noticed that I’m being charged £32.10 to get to a central station (let’s say Farringdon). However, peak RDG-PAD is £29 and a zone one ticket is £2.80, whilst the difference is 40p off peak. I’ve asked TFL but they just say the Single Fare Finder is correct. Has anyone tried to challenge TFL on a similar anomaly or should I just give up and switch cards at PAD? Thanks!
Hi,
GWR set the fares from Reading to anywhere else. I agree that something is wrong, but TfL just charge what they’ve been told. I suggest you contact GWR and ask them why it’s cheaper to split with two cards.
Actually I’ve worked out what’s happened. When the fares were increased back in March, GWR have added the standard increase to all their fares. What they forgot was that the zone 1 tube fare did not increase, so the difference between Paddington and any other Z1 station should have remained at £2.80 or £2.70 off peak.
Hello Mike,
Thank you for your reply.
Point taken about the routeing guide, though my badly-worded intention was to highlight that the routeing guide is comprehensive and allows to analyse each rail fare. The same goes for your very helpful Fares Guide in that it allows one to analyse the fare structure to make informed choices about how to plan journeys. For example, it makes it clear that if travelling from Chiswick House to the South Bank, it would be cheaper to use the Tube from Chiswick Park than National Rail from Chiswick. Furthermore, it allows to conclude that walking an extra 5 minutes to Turnham Green makes the journey cheaper still. I am trying to find a similar information source for analysing fares but with journeys from Reading. After reading your post I might try contacting GWR.
On a separate note, my understanding that Elizabeth Line trains from Paddington to Reading during 1600-1900 should be off-peak comes form this BRares.com link which does not mention any evening restrictions. The fare was suggested by a very knowledgeable GWR ticket seller at Reading station and until last week it seemed to appear on National Rail journey planners, although they seem to have removed all contactless fares since then.
Separately still, do you know why there are no fares displayed on the Single Fare Finder for Reading to Hounslow West?
Best wishes,
AlexanderHi Alexander,
I think I’m getting what you are after. Starting from Reading, the fares to stations within the zones do follow a certain structure, but it is unique to Reading and I’m not about to create a grid for every contactless only station. The fares to Ealing Broadway [3], and Greenford [4] (via West Ealing [3]), are indeed the same.
The PAYG fares shown on brfares.com are not always correct. This is because it’s the rail industry database and not linked to the PAYG database run by Cubic on behalf of TfL. I can assure you that no fares heading out from zone 1 have ever been off-peak in the afternoon peak. This is because the PAYG fares are single only and the sum of two of them needs to match the Anytime return. Fares for paper tickets are completely different and off-peak fares between Paddington and Reading are indeed valid on Elizabeth line services in the afternoon peak. It should be noted that stations being added as part of Project Oval have had their restrictions changed for paper tickets so that they better match the PAYG structure. This may eventually happen on lines which already had contactless PAYG before Oval, especially if Oval extends the coverage further. We’ll have to wait and see.
Finally, some journeys are defined as being unlikely to be undertaken and so no fares are defined. This is true of Reading to Piccadilly line stations between Osterley and Heathrow inclusive. I imagine the expectation is that you’d use SWR to Hounslow or Syon Lane, or change at Hayes and Harlington for Heathrow. If you actually make the journey then you will be charged a fare, but it might be more than you’d expect.
There seems to be the following off-peak single fares to/through Zone 1 from Reading. This list is not complete, and it there is no doubt further weirdness!
Reading – Paddington: £12.60
Reading – TfL-LU scale stations in zones 2-6 via Zone 1: £15.40
Reading – Elizabeth line (not Stratford) and NR-scale stations in zones 2-6 via Zone 1: £15.60
Reading – Zone 1 stations: £15.70Peak is a bit more complicated, but seems to be in the right order that going to zone 1 is cheaper than going through zone 1 – unlike off-peak!
Hello Mike and Si,
Thank you for your responses.
I have submitted a FoI request from TfL for a spreadsheet of all single fares from Reading. It will be interesting to see if they fully correlate with Si’s information.
Thank you, Mike, for explaining the different fare databases of Cubitt and National Rail. It seems very bizarre why National Rail created a contactless fare from Paddington to Reading with restrictions so different to the Cubitt ones. I wonder if it is possible to argue that the National Rail fare database takes precedence given that the journey is made on a National Rail service.
Hi Alexander,
No, you can’t. The National Rail fares database has existed since at least privatisation, maybe before. The PAYG fares database was created to run the original Oyster system in the early 2000s after TfL gave up waiting for the government to specify a smartcard solution. [It’s Cubic by the way, not Cubitt, who run TfL’s revenue contract] As far as charging people for PAYG the master database is TfLs. National Rail wanted to show PAYG fares on National Rail Enquiries so they set up psuedo fare types so they could handle that. I don’t know why they didn’t access the live fares database like my site does, but I’m sure there were reasons. Because there is no link between the databases it is a manualish job to enter the fares onto National Rail. Mistakes often creep in via this process. The bottom line is that all PAYG fares are charged according to TfL/Cubic, be they tube, dlr, NR, cable car, boats, buses, trams etc etc etc.
Reference your comment about some journeys being considered as unlikely to be made, and so not having fares defined. While there may be such unlikely journeys, saying they won’t be made is asking for trouble and dispute when they are. Perhaps if they can’t come up anything better, they should be set to £0.00 (which might concentrate minds).
In your particular example (of Reading to Piccadilly stations between Osterley and Heathrow), I don’t see these as any less likely than other journeys to outer London tube stations. And the London Tube & Rail Map doesn’t indicate SWR as likely route (and probably won’t until Oval reaches the line via Wokingham). So such Reading to Picc. jouneys may be made be made Hayes & H-Heathrow or Ealing B.-Acton T. (or even Zone 1) – which ever way, passengers will just expect to be charged an appropriate fare. As if they were travlling from West Drayton…
All journey pairs have fares set in the database, it’s just that illogical ones aren’t displayed on fare finders. In many cases the set fare is correct, though I have found some which are wildly inacurate.
I’m in agreement that they really ought to show fares, but accept that some of these journeys are unlikely to be made. Another example is Thameslink fares from Luton AP do not include stations on the Edgware branch of the Northern line because no-one in their right mind is going to change at Kentish Town* and Camden Town to head back to Hendon Central, when they could get a bus from Hendon.
*obviously even less likely while the Northern line isn’t stopping.
While I agree that Luton Aiport Parkway to Hendon Central is via Kentish Town and Camden Town (or even St Pancras, ie Zone 1) is non-sensible, and that right minded people would change to a bus, I fear you woefully underestimate the extent to which people navigate by tube map (which is why it so cluttered).
Checking the overall figures of rail journeys made by Oyster in 2023 (revealed by FOI-0938-2425), 81 passengers travelled to Hendon Central from Luton Airport Parkway, along with 56 from Elstree, 22 from St Albans, 25 from Mill Hil Broadway, 103 from Mill Hill East, and 125 from St Pancras International (sic – how, I wonder?). While low, I don’t think I would put these in the ‘highly unlikely’ category – the stats include 739 stations (or gatelines), a quick bit of analysis says that’s 545 thousand possible journeys, of which 104 thousand wern’t made at all (there were just over 60 stations from which no one travelled to Hendon Central, while 672 destinations were reached from Reading). How do those figures compare to what’s in the fare database, I wonder?
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.