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Hi,
What does “tickets accepted on any reasonable route” mean for Oyster PAYG when there’s unexpected disruption?
Often for the outer stations served by only one line, a reasonable route might mean a bus or walk to another station. However for PAYG I guess you don’t have a ticket yet for the whole journey, and it’ll be figured out at the end. If you tap in again at another station it’ll be treated as another journey, perhaps even a more expensive one if it now triggers the peak time, compared to the one that you started to pay the “ticket” for. They effectively don’t give you the benefit of the max charge you already paid.Is there currently a way around this so you don’t pay twice?
If not, IMO there should be a few suggested alternative stations/ buses for which you can get a free entry slip, for a limited time when leaving the station with the problem, similar to how some transport systems do transfer slips.“The Max charge you’ve already paid” should be refunded when you contact them to explain what happened so there’s no “benefit” to be had from it.
In that situation, I’d probably tap in and out of the original station with no service to make it clear what I did and then in again at the alternative. It would be nice if there was something more technological to handle these situations but I don’t know what that would look like.
Before the hopper fare, getting kicked off an early terminating bus gave the option of getting a transfer ticket but I don’t know if that’s still done since the hopper would absorb most consequential problems.
I mean when you’ve traveled part way, and then there is disruption preventing you from continuing the journey. So it wouldn’t be a same station exit. In the past I’ve exited at the station with the disruption and then walked to the nearest station on another line to tap in and continue the journey. I don’t know how much logging of such incidents they maintain, but everyone was ordered out of the station through announcements. However when calling the oyster helpline, once I got a refund given for the difference vs what the overall journey should have cost and once it was refused. Tbh shouldn’t even have to call in for something that’s an issue with the line and presumably affecting lots of people.
Re how a smoother solution could work – they could allow people to leave the disrupted station without tapping out and notify the surrounding stations so that the barriers be kept open, with no expectation of tapping in. This could be done for either anyone within a short timeframe, or for those with a transfer slip provided by the first station. This doesn’t need much integration with the main charging system.
Anyway, key question maybe just in my musing was – what does the “tickets accepted on any reasonable route” announcement mean on tubes when tfl encourage most people to use contactless/oyster
In practice, not a great deal.
If you travel with Oyster/contactless, you just tap in/out as normal. If you’re charged more due to disruption, you can usually get the difference refunded via the helpline.
If using paper tickets then they will be nodded through.
The worst deal is when using National Rail issued tickets on ITSO; TfL just blanket refuse them.
As far as I’m aware, for TfL to accept someone else’s ticket there needs to be a formal agreement in place between the companies for the duration of the disruption and this is normally explicitly announced as part of the disruption messaging.
Thus, at any other time, NR tickets will simply be refused.
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