Mike

I’ve added a new section in the menu above called Longer Reads.  This is for articles which don’t really fit in the information pages but have a longer shelf life than latest news.  I’ll be adding more topics in the future, but the first one is a look at the cheap short-hop fares which cross … Read more

Today the zone 1 boundary moved south to Kennington station and then along the Northern line to Elephant & Castle. This means that Kennington is now on the boundary between zones 1 and 2 rather than in zone 2 alone. The reason for this is because the new Northern line extension to Nine Elms and … Read more

When Oyster was rolled out to National Rail services in 2010 there were a number of National Rail stations where ticket offices had facilities to retail Oyster products. This included selling travelcards, adding discount entitlement, printing journey histories and of course selling the Oyster cards and topping up credit. To do this a station had … Read more

TfL have announced that Kennington will be moved from zone 2 to the boundary of zones 1 and 2 from next Sunday, May 16th. The move is necessary to enable the new zone 1 stations at Nine Elms and Battersea Power Station to be connected to the rest of zone 1. The Northern line extension … Read more

You may have noticed that not much has happened on this site in the last two months. The reason for this is that I’ve been working for the ONS as a Census Officer in the field. I finished last week and gave myself a restful bank holiday weekend off from any work, the highlight being … Read more

The transfer of the information pages from the old site is just about complete now.  While copying stuff over I’ve taken the opportunity to improve some of the pages.  The highlights are listed below.  I’m still in the process of clearing down much of the old site.  Many of the old information pages now automatically … Read more

It’s nearly a year since TfL changed the £5 deposit for an adult Oyster card to a £5 fee, refundable after a year. They’ve now provided some details as to how this will work. First here’s the general text: From 23 February 2021, customers who purchased a new Oyster card in the past year will … Read more

At the same time that the single bus/tram fare rises by 5p to £1.55, TfL are making a change to the ‘secret’ grace period at the end of the hopper hour. As many people have found out, the hopper hour has actually been 70 minutes long.  Originally 70 minutes was the time allowed to enable … Read more

You may remember that I wrote about a problem with National Rail fare increases back in October.  I’m disappointed to report that exactly the same problem will occur on March 1st this year, meaning that the cumulative effect is getting worse. As a reminder, when applying small increases (circa 2.5%) to fares below £4, the … Read more