As part of project Oval, new cash fares have been implemented on all lines affected by contactless expansion, in order match the new contactless fares. There are new peak and offpeak single fares. This has good and bad effects.
The good news is that single fares are cheaper. Instead of the old practice that a single was more or less the same price as an offpeak day return, the new offpeak single is now half the day return fare.These cash single fares are the same as the contactless fares, which are shown on brfares.com.
The bad news is that the TfL system of treating a journey out of London between 16:00-19:00 as ‘peak’ means that an offpeak trip to London returning between 16:00-19:00 is more expensive. Moreover this applies to all journeys – including local journeys where you travelling away from London in the peak. You can still buy a cash offpeak return, but it’s not valid at those times. I wonder how many innocent people have been caught in this trap. And unlike on the tube, the difference in price between offpeak and peak fares can be large.
The only way round this is to buy an offpeak return to London with Travelcard, which does allow return anytime after 09.30 M-F.
Finally, a positive feature of Oval is that the cash single fares are the same as the contactless fares – unlike the Tube, Lizzie and earlier contactless implementations. In the latter cases, the choice is between a contactless offpeak fare and an anytime cash single fare at a much higher price. This means that discounting the cash fare with a railcard often leaves you with a ticket that’s more expensive than a contactless fare (which cannot be discounted using a railcard).
From what I can see, the above applies to all of the lines to which contactless is being extended.