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Hi Reg,
Sadly not. The Gatwick Express will be charged separately at full price, then there will be a zone 1 tube fare.
Hi Amber,
Apologies for the delay.
If you cross zone 1 from one side to the other then you will be charged a zone 1 single from your PAYG balance.
Time limits do apply when using a travelcard, but in your specific example you might get away with no further charge. I would advise having some credit in case you find yourself needing to exit outside of your zones.
Hi Chris,
There are no OSIs between the NR and LU stations at Heathrow, so you’d be ‘charged’ for two journeys, albeit that the second one would be free.
Hi James,
As long as you don’t exceed the interchange time between the Finchley Road stations then the whole journey will be charged as off-peak. I do try to make this clear on the peak, off-peak and caps page. This can have undesirable consequences at the other end of the peak periods, but that is how the system works.
Thanks for the input, Michael. Yes, fares which go beyond zone 6/9 do not conform to any pattern. There are other split points like East Croydon on fares from Gatwick Airport and many points on fares from Reading. With the latter one it wouldn’t be possible to use the fast trains if a split was desired.
Hi,
Yes, using the Underground from Hertford North will add extra to the cost for travel to zone 1. I don’t think there is likely to be any significant reduction in peak fares anytime soon. In to Covent Garden and out from Moorgate is quite an interesting journey combination. How do you get between the two during the day?
There are no avoiding zone 1 fares between Hertford North and South Bermondsey. You can avoid zone 1 if you go to Bermondsey on the Jubilee line via Stratford. The cheapest fare means using Thameslink between either Finsbury Park or St Pancras and London Bridge and then Southern to South Bermondsey. If Thameslink is shut for engineering works then you may have to pay the extra to use the tube.
The other thing to note is that the TfL Oyster app is the most affected Oyster thing by the cyber security alert. Even if you do get a card to view on there you won’t be able to top up. I don’t know whether this also affects the website because I very rarely use my Oyster card these days.
More details of the cyber security alert will be coming shortly – watch latest news.
Hi,
Weekly capping on Oyster is currently only done on normal adult Oyster cards with no discount entitlement. If you are certain that you won’t need to use the discounted travelcards then I agree that a normal Oyster is ok. The 16-25 railcard can be added to both normal and Student Oyster cards.
Hi Chantal,
The Oyster app doesn’t actually let you travel, its for managing your account on the go. You need an Oyster card. Take it, and your senior Railcard, to an Underground station and ask one of the staff to add the discount entitlement. It should only take a couple of minutes.
The zone 1-2 cap is a cap on charges for travel solely within zones 1-2. If you use zone 3 then your cap becomes zone 1-3. Yes, your single fares between zones 1-3 have contributed towards a zone 1-2 cap, but you still have to pay for the zone 3 bits. These are called extension fares and are calculated at the same rate as the fares just for the extension bit. If the extension fares plus the smaller cap end up being more than the larger cap then the larger cap is charged.
It doesn’t matter when the zone 1-3 journeys are made, they will never fully contribute to the zone 1-2 cap.
Hi,
Oyster always charges up to the cap of the highest zone used. This sometimes can cause a perceived overcharge (when you come in from zone 6 and don’t return beyond zone 2 for instance), but in this case you’re still better off. The single zone fare with a railcard is £1.15 off-peak and £1.90 peak, so if you want to use the zone 1-2 cap you would have paid £5.60 + £1.90 + £1.15 = £8.65. Instead you’ve been capped at £6.60.
Hi Peter,
Can you tell me where you are seeing the £11.20 fare, please. I can’t find it.
Within zones 1-9 the EL fares are set by TfL and are the same as used on the Underground. Cash fares are significantly more expensive to try and push most people to use PAYG.
Fares to Heathrow EL stations include a supplement charged by the airport who own the tracks between Airport Junction and the Terminals.
Hi Feathers,
It’s the same across the whole of zones 2-6 on late adopting NR routes. Any 2 zone fare.
The reason is that at every fares increase the PAYG single fares are increased by the standard amount with rounding to ensure a multiple of 10p. The paper return fares are also increased by the standard amount with rounding, but as the fares in question are twice as much the rounding is often less of an issue.
I’ll see if I can get in touch with someone who can flag it to appropriate people.
Hi Adam,
Assuming these were the yellow validators between the Victoria line and GN platforms then you haven’t done anything wrong. Very very occasionally the Oyster system throws up a curveball like this. If it happens again then when you call the helpdesk press them to explain what has happened. You hopefully won’t get it again though.
You are correct that routeing cannot be applied unless a pink reader or out-of-station interchange is present to define the route taken. I can only speculate that the routeing mentioned on brfares.com is likely down to a misunderstanding on the part of the fare setter.
The other thing to understand is that traditional tickets are able to stop/start short, so in the case of a double back the fare needs to reflect the most expensive station. With PAYG you define the journey by your touches so you wouldn’t be able to exit at Sevenoaks without paying the fare to there.
John,
Thank you very much for this information. I’ll try and answer your questions as best I can.
1) Unless they have changed things then yes, the first touch in on a journey sets the rate for the whole journey.
2) Yes, if you pass through zone 1 and out the other side then a peak fare is payable, unless you’ve come from GWR stations from Iver westwards (including the branchlines) where it’s off-peak for any eastbound journey in the afternoon.
3) The fare-finder does specify whether the fare will be peak or off-peak in the afternoon. The times against the peak fare change depending on whether it is am only, am and pm, or pm only.
4) Correct, the off-peak cap applies at any time after 0930 and limits the effect of peak evening fares if earlier travel was off-peak after 0930. The anytime (or peak) cap protects revenue when the inbound journey is before 0930.Do come back to me if you get any further questions.
Hi Saj,
TfL services are not covered by the normal National Rail delay repay so in this case your journey is treated as being in two halves. If the Thameslink journey was delayed by 15 minutes then you might have a claim with them, but they will look at your arrival time at Blackfriars/Farringdon and compare the time you arrived at City Thameslink with what you should have expected at that time. The Underground and DLR also make refunds if you’re delayed by 15 minutes or more. If they were the main cause of the delay then use the Oyster online site and select either Blackfriars or Farringdon as the destination.
Good luck.
Hi Martin,
Thameslink on the LU scale does include London Bridge or Elephant & Castle to Kentish Town and Finsbury Park, but none of those options include London Bridge to New Cross Gate. That’s why you have to touch the pink reader at Whitechapel or Canada Water, or change betweek stations at Shadwell.
I’d agree with Feathers. Fares on late adopting NR services within zones 1-6 are set by representatives of the TOCs concerned under the umbrella of ATOC (now RDG). This group will include SWR, but I don’t think the people setting fares from Epsom will particularly have thought about the fares within the zones.
You could write to SWR and ask them if they have any comment.
Hi Alexander,
No, you can’t. The National Rail fares database has existed since at least privatisation, maybe before. The PAYG fares database was created to run the original Oyster system in the early 2000s after TfL gave up waiting for the government to specify a smartcard solution. [It’s Cubic by the way, not Cubitt, who run TfL’s revenue contract] As far as charging people for PAYG the master database is TfLs. National Rail wanted to show PAYG fares on National Rail Enquiries so they set up psuedo fare types so they could handle that. I don’t know why they didn’t access the live fares database like my site does, but I’m sure there were reasons. Because there is no link between the databases it is a manualish job to enter the fares onto National Rail. Mistakes often creep in via this process. The bottom line is that all PAYG fares are charged according to TfL/Cubic, be they tube, dlr, NR, cable car, boats, buses, trams etc etc etc.
Actually I’ve worked out what’s happened. When the fares were increased back in March, GWR have added the standard increase to all their fares. What they forgot was that the zone 1 tube fare did not increase, so the difference between Paddington and any other Z1 station should have remained at £2.80 or £2.70 off peak.
Hi Tracy,
Unfortunately very little is logical about UK rail fares since privatisation 30 years ago. The specific issue here is between who sets the fares. On the Cricklewood line it is GTR. They charge by zones within London, and there are no off-peak fares to encourage use of PAYG. London Overground is part of TfL and their stick to promote use of PAYG is to charge very high cash prices.
This is all well and good until you need to use a paper ticket for a days out offer.
