The press release from TfL outlining the extension of PAYG to Reading from Jan 2nd 2020 certainly raised a number of questions and talking points. I’m not going to cover discussion about zones and Oyster here, but rather concentrate on the cards which will and won’t be accepted. Nothing changes between London and West Drayton, so this list solely applies to people using stations between Iver and Reading inclusive, and only on TfL Rail services.
General News
Tap, Tap, Fly, from Luton Airport
Tuesday saw the launch of contactless payment at St Albans City, Harpenden and Luton Airport Parkway on the Thameslink route. Note that it is not accepted at Luton or beyond. With contactless payment already accepted on the shuttle bus from Parkway to the Airport* it means that Luton becomes the 4th airport accessible from Central … Read more
Brookmans Park in Action
So my friend Geoff Marshall (of All the Stations fame) decided to try out some scenarios using contactless out to Brookmans Park. You can watch the video here.
TfL Rail to Reading – No Oyster
Yesterday TfL announced their initial plans following takeover of the GWR suburban services between Paddington and Reading on December 15th. In contrast to any other TfL takeover, neither Oyster nor contactless will be available on day 1. To ensure a smooth introduction, contactless PAYG will be introduced from January 2nd 2020.
The big news though is that Oyster PAYG will NOT be valid between West Drayton and Reading. This means that adults with railcards, 11-15 and 16+ zip card holders will not be able to make use of PAYG. And holders of Apprentice, 18+ Student and Jobcentre Oyster cards will not be able to seamlessly transition between using a travelcard stored on the card to PAYG. On the plus side, under 11s accompanied by adults will be able to travel free, but only on the TfL Rail services.
Radlett, Potters Bar & Brookmans Park
Last Thursday, 29th August, PAYG was extended to Radlett, Potters Bar and Brookmans Park. Both Oyster and contactless are accepted at the first two, while Brookmans Park is the pilot for a new breed of stations accepting contactless only. The official launch took place at Radlett in the morning with the local MP, the new transport secretary and other GTR senior staff. More detail about fares follows, but first some quotes on the day:
Fare Finder Changes
Yesterday GTR launched new PAYG stations at Radlett, Potters Bar and Brookmans Park. While the first two accept both contactless and Oyster PAYG, Brookmans Park is the first contactless only station. It was clearly necessary for my fare finder to indicate this for any journey to/from Brookmans Park, so some coding changes were rapidly required. … Read more
Contactless might cost more than Oyster
We’ve all heard the annoying announcements at tube stations. Why not use contactless? The fares are the same as Oyster and there’s no need to top up. In fact, as described elsewhere on this site, contactless can often be cheaper than Oyster thanks to the way it compares all combinations of caps and extension fares. However, TfL have unwittingly introduced an issue which means that sometimes contactless may cost more than Oyster.
New Northern Extensions
There’s been a bit of excitement since the publication under FOI of an internal staff magazine by TfL. One of the topics covered was upcoming extensions on Thameslink and Great Northern. Sadly the original publication date was quite a while ago (early May) and there was also a shocking geographical error mixing up the positions of Brookmans Park and Potters Bar stations. The article and other sources suggested that extensions to Radlett and Potters Bar would be live imminently. A more cautious approach was being suggested on the Thameslink and Great Northern websites, so I sought clarification from both TfL and Govia Thameslink Railway.
St Pancras Resolution of Overcharge
I’m delighted to be able to report that the issues at St Pancras over the two bank holiday weekends in May are being resolved. A GTR spokeswoman said: We apologise to the passengers impacted by this charging error. As soon as we were alerted to the isolated issue our revenue team worked with the technical … Read more
Overcharged at St Pancras?
Potentially hundreds of Thameslink passengers may have been overcharged over the two bank holiday weekends in May. On both weekends the line between West Hampstead Thameslink and St Pancras (low level) was closed for engineering work. Trains from Bedford/Luton terminated in platforms 1-4 at St Pancras (high level) and passengers wanting to continue south had to walk down to the low level platforms (A-B). The problem is that there was no internal out-of-station interchange (OSI) set up between the Oyster validators for platforms 1-4 and the gateline for platforms A-B. Thus a journey from Elstree to Blackfriars was charged as two journeys; Elstree to St Pancras and St Pancras to Blackfriars.