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I have noticed that Denhan to Ruislip Gardens have the peak hour listed as both morning peak and evening peak, unlike to nearby stations West Ruislip and South Ruislip.
However, the SWR website says that
“If you are travelling towards a London station, the evening Peak times will not apply, and you can travel with an Off Peak ticket. However, if your journey requires you to change trains within the London Zones 1-9, via a Zone number lower than the destination station, you will usually be subject to a Peak fare.”
In this situation, there is no change of trains from a lower zone to a higher zone, as the journey is just from outside the zones – zone 6 – zone 5, but why is an evening peak fare charged? I presume that the ticket prices are aligned with the contactless price for the peak period. Is the data or the website wrong?
Hi Michael,
The fares from outside the zonal area are set by the relevant TOC. From Denham this is Chiltern. SWR will also have Project Oval stations eventually, but they might set different peak restrictions. There does seem to be a misunderstanding about how the fares for a journey work though. I’ll take a look in due course.
That’s definitely wrong. Can you query it with TfL Customer Services so they can flag it up with their fares team?
Hi Barry,
Can you clarify what is wrong?
Digging a little further it seems that fares from the extension to Chiltern served stations only have a morning peak, but to any other stations they have both. Is that wrong? Should it be like GWR so any eastbound fares from the extension only have a morning peak?
Heading towards London there should only be an AM peak.
PM peak only applies when heading away from London or for cross-London journeys.
Not that you’d know that from the page on NRE.
We are into the area where what is right and what is wrong is unclear.
The issue is the inconsistency of whether the evening peak restriction applies: we now seem to have at least four sets of exception to the rule that it (always) does, with another to come when Project Oval extends to SWR (if the quote from their web site is accurate and applicable). And how many more to come?
Within Zones 1-9, the only scenario that evening peak doesn’t apply is when the origin is outside zone 1 and the destination is inside zone 1, or for the reverse-commute direction on the Watford DC line (which is the only line within the system not to have a morning peak in the reverse commute direction as well).
A zone 6-5-4-3-2 journey has an evening peak as normal.
The Chiltern website will sell you a ticket to Marylebone with exactly the same peak/off peak price differential in the evening so I wouldn’t rush to say TfL have it wrong and no evening peak applies when they agree with the operator who actually runs the trains and sets the fares.
Thanks for the further thoughts. I’m not at this stage suggesting who is wrong, if indeed anyone is. There are some potentially unwanted side effects to what is currently set up though. More later.
So, I’ve done some manual analysis and it appears as though Chiltern are copying the usual pattern of charging off-peak in the afternoon peak if the destination is in zone 1. Additionally it’s off peak if you only use Chiltern trains, hence the two Ruislips, Sudbury Hill Harrow and Wembley Stadium all get afternoon off-peak. This may be the way all the Project Oval extensions work, we’ll have to see.
There are some anomalies, particularly the alternative routes for Oxford Circus.
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