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While I agree that Luton Aiport Parkway to Hendon Central is via Kentish Town and Camden Town (or even St Pancras, ie Zone 1) is non-sensible, and that right minded people would change to a bus, I fear you woefully underestimate the extent to which people navigate by tube map (which is why it so cluttered).
Checking the overall figures of rail journeys made by Oyster in 2023 (revealed by FOI-0938-2425), 81 passengers travelled to Hendon Central from Luton Airport Parkway, along with 56 from Elstree, 22 from St Albans, 25 from Mill Hil Broadway, 103 from Mill Hill East, and 125 from St Pancras International (sic – how, I wonder?). While low, I don’t think I would put these in the ‘highly unlikely’ category – the stats include 739 stations (or gatelines), a quick bit of analysis says that’s 545 thousand possible journeys, of which 104 thousand wern’t made at all (there were just over 60 stations from which no one travelled to Hendon Central, while 672 destinations were reached from Reading). How do those figures compare to what’s in the fare database, I wonder?Reference your comment about some journeys being considered as unlikely to be made, and so not having fares defined. While there may be such unlikely journeys, saying they won’t be made is asking for trouble and dispute when they are. Perhaps if they can’t come up anything better, they should be set to £0.00 (which might concentrate minds).
In your particular example (of Reading to Piccadilly stations between Osterley and Heathrow), I don’t see these as any less likely than other journeys to outer London tube stations. And the London Tube & Rail Map doesn’t indicate SWR as likely route (and probably won’t until Oval reaches the line via Wokingham). So such Reading to Picc. jouneys may be made be made Hayes & H-Heathrow or Ealing B.-Acton T. (or even Zone 1) – which ever way, passengers will just expect to be charged an appropriate fare. As if they were travlling from West Drayton…
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?
I think this is one of those journeys coverered by the “Some journeys are charged via Zone 1 irrespective of the route taken” statement on the TfL Single fare finder… 🙁
Issue of websites not selling Boundary extension fares is down to most, if not all, of them being itinerary based – ‘Boundary Zone N’ is not in the timetable data used to come up with itineraries, so they can’t handle it… (at least in their normal way)
Somthing I’ve noticed is that many of the local ticket machines (this in Croydon) provide for (Travelcard, &c, extension tickets) from Boundary Zone n to Wherever – indeed the (TfL) machines at West Croydon invite you to touch Travelcard (or Freedom pass in my case) against reader to deternine ‘n’ (6 for Freedom pass – I assume 60+ is the same). I would expect (or at least hope) that Woolwich ticket machines would do the same.
