The Southeastern website confirms that Oyster will be accepted at Dartford from Sunday September 6th. It doesn’t list any fares, and customer services can’t confirm them either, but a little digging through the new fares database reveals that these are likely to be the adult fares:
General News
Oyster at Stratford International
Oyster and Contactless PAYG are now accepted for travel on Southeastern High Speed services between St Pancras and Stratford International stations. The fare charged is a special fare, like those for the Emirates cable car and the Thames Clipper riverboats and it does not count towards any daily caps. It will also split any longer … Read more
New Hackney Interchange
Thanks in part to Noel and PC for spotting this. I visited the stations at Hackney Central and Downs last night and spoke with staff. The new link is due to open in the summer and will provide a direct walkway from Platform 1 at Hackney Downs to Platform 2 at Hackney Central. There will … Read more
New fares for Greater Anglia services
Details have been announced about the new Oyster fares from Liverpool Street starting on May 31st. TfL zonal fares will apply to all services between Liverpool Street and Cheshunt, Chingford or Harold Wood except where the TfL rate is higher than the old NR rate. Some fares, particularly off-peak outside zone 1, will be higher … Read more
Brentwood moves to zone 9
Information is slowly trickling through about the transfer of various Greater Anglia services to TfL. It seems that Brentwood is due to move from its own zone to zone 9 from next month. It’ll be quite a jump from zone 6 at Harold Wood though.
Odd period seasons available online
Quite by chance I noticed that odd period travelcard season tickets can now be ordered online for collection by an Oyster card. Previously you could only order weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and annual travelcards. Now you can specify any period between one month and one year. This is especially useful when making monthly tickets last … Read more
Off-Peak Cap Refunds Due Today
I have found out more about the automatic refunds for people regularly travelling after 0930 (or any time at weekends) from zones 4-6. The good news is that the first refunds should be available today. Here is my understanding of how the system works.
Contactless charging less than Oyster
I’ve recently had several queries where people were charged less than they expected using a CPC, or even less than they were charged making the same journeys with Oyster at a different time. The reason is the different way that capping is calculated when using CPCs. There’s a new page which tries to explain the … Read more
Oyster at LM ticket offices
It’s been brought to my attention that London Midland are to cease allowing Oyster transactions at their ticket offices at both Euston and Watford Junction from April this year. This is yet another kick in the teeth by TOCs following similar actions by Southeastern and South West Trains in recent years.
U-turn on Off-Peak Caps
There has been considerable unrest over the abolition of the cheaper adult off-peak cap, particularly in zones 4-6 where the increases are quite significant. Of course this was part of the package which made commuting 2-3 times a week at peak times a lot cheaper, but it disadvantaged a number of people who work part-time or shifts and travel at off-peak times.
So, from April the off-peak caps of £8.00 (zone 4) and £8.80 (zones 5-6) will be re-introduced for people travelling 2 or more times a week, or 8 or more times in 4 weeks. Refunds will be back-dated to January and then processed every month.