As part of the set up for the additions to Project Oval next weekend, many of the caps for GTR family routes are being revised for contactless PAYG users from tomorrow. All the daily caps will be set at a small discount (usually 3%) to the price of the one day travelcard, in common with the stations already live under Project Oval, and those due to go live next weekend. This removes one of the inconsistencies with early contactless adoption. I’m hoping similar adjustments happen to the GWR anytime caps and the C2C caps around the Grays area, but we will have to wait a little longer for that.
This does mean that where Oyster is also accepted (Merstham to Gatwick, Radlett, Potters Bar, Cuffley to Hertford North) there will be different caps applied to contactless users as opposed to Oyster users. Where the contactless cap is cheaper than Oyster the Oyster charge (undiscounted only) will be updated the following day with a credit available to pick up within two weeks.
Finally, GTR have confirmed that they are in talks with TfL to implement out-of-station-interchanges between the gatelines at Stevenage station and also between Hertford North and Hertford East. Initially there will be automatic refunds if people are overcharged at Stevenage because they are charged two fares instead of one.
Some examples of the new caps
Redhill (anytime): £40.00 currently, £36.00 new, £37.10 travelcard
Redhill (off-peak): £26.80 currently, £20.00 new, £20.60 travelcard
Welwyn GC (anytime): £36.30 currently, £35.40 new, £36.30 travelcard
Welwyn GC (off-peak): £26.30 currently, £23.50 new, £26.30 travelcard
Full details will hopefully be live on this site tomorrow, at some point.
While a 3% is fantastic it’s not really clear to me why there is a discount, though I do understand that this was done at other Project Oval stations.
As part of the settlement with Transport for London for the continued acceptance of Day Travelcards on TfL services, a one-off additional increase of 3% was applied to ‘out-boundary’ Day Travelcards in March 2024. This made the increase 7.9% rather than the 4.9% increase to regulated rail fares.
This additional increase doesn’t apply to the daily caps in the Oval area, but appears to have been applied in two different ways:
For the 53 stations in Phase 1, they’ve been calculated as a 4.9% increase on the 2023 Day Travelcard prices and then had a 4.6% increase applied in March 2025. So if the 2023 Travelcard had been £20, the initial cap would have been £21.00 (as fares are rounded to a multiple of 10p) and would have increased to £22.00 in 2025.
These new GTR caps have been calculated as a 3% discount on the Travelcard price, giving a consistent difference as time goes on.
Thank you for your response. However, it still doesn’t clarify the reasoning behind the discount in the Oval area. The entire premise of the fare increase was based on TfL’s assessment that they were not receiving a sufficient share of ticket revenues from the day Travelcard. This discount appears to undermine that rationale.
The Z1-6 day cap is cheaper than the equivalent (Off Peak) Travelcard – albeit by just 1.8% – so it may be a continuation of that principle.
Unless I’m mistaken Day Travelcard revenues and day-capped CPAY revenues from the same origin are not identically apportioned. The former is determined by agreed percentages in the Travelcard Agreement (which vary depending on where the tickets are sold) whereas the latter is determined by the journeys you specifically made.
TfL also receive commission on CPAY transactions. Last I read it was in the region of 1.5-2.5%.
As Edvid says, travelcard revenue is apportioned according to a set formula. This takes account of factors like where the travelcard was purchased and assumes a fixed share of revenue among all operators once the likely journey into London has been accounted for. With PAYG, even when capped, TfL can see what routes it is likely to have been used on and thus make a much better split of revenue. Thus there was no need to increase caps to provide a bigger share for TfL as they are happy that they get their fare share.
Sorry to be a bit dim on this, but am I right in thinking then that it’s cheaper using my Oyster card rather than a contactless card when travelling from Hertford North, instead of a one day travel card?
Hi Murray,
Hertford North is cheaper with contactless. If you use an adult undiscounted Oyster card I would expect the fares to be adjusted after the event. The other thing to note is that the slightly higher caps and travelcard prices shown from Hertford East are also valid/included with Hertford North, giving a bit more flexibility.
That’s brilliant, thanks so much for the reply.
Merry Christmas