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Hi Adam,
If you have a weekly travelcard on the Oyster card then it will work out properly straight away. The Gatwick to East Croydon and East Croydon to boundary of zone 2 will be deducted from PAYG credit and the rest will be covered by the travelcard. Likewise on the way back to the airport.
Hi Martin,
I’ve had a look on the TfL site and it doesn’t mention any further charge to add the discount. However, it does seem to assume that you’ve already got the Oyster card. It is just possible that you do have to add credit before you can set the discount flag. I’ll try and find out.
With the improved daily and weekly capping on Oyster you could now switch to using your Oyster card rather than contactless.
Hi Adam,
Sorry for the delay in responding. You’ve answered one of the points in that yes, you aren’t dealing with OSIs.
The best way to explain the surcharge is to give examples. Purley (zone 6) to London Bridge (1) costs £4.30 off-peak. That is a National Rail only journey. If you extend it to be Purley (6) to Oxford Circus (1) then the fare becomes £5.80. The extra £1.50 is the surcharge for mixing National Rail and Underground on a journey involving zone 1. Looking alternatively at Upminster (6) to Fenchurch Street (1) the off-peak fare is £3.30 because even though it is National Rail, that line charges the same fares as the Underground. The fare thus does not increase if you extend it further into zone 1 on the Underground. Note that any fare (with a surcharge or not) is limited by the daily cap for the zones used, so if you make lots of journeys you’ll end up paying the same amount.
Sadly, Gatwick is a complicated place. The fare between there and East Croydon (5) is historically low and this caused issues when people used contactless to commute for a day. Rather than paying the full Gatwick to zone 1 single fares each way the system split it up as a zone 1-4 cap and two singles Gatwick to zone 5. The train company weren’t happy with this and so the contactless extension fares were fiddled so that the ‘right’ fares were charged. With Oyster it’s even worse because if you start at Gatwick the system will continue charging until the Gatwick cap is reached. The recently added overnight recalculation should queue a refund which would be picked up the next day if all the rest of the travel is in zones 1-2. The net result is that if you start at Gatwick and zap around zones 1-2 without returning beyond zone 2 then you should be charged £8.70 + £7.40 = £16.10. This is always assuming off-peak fares.
If you break the journey at East Croydon then it should become £3.40 (Gat – EC) plus £2.70 (zone 3-5 extn) plus £7.40 (zone 1-2 cap), totalling £13.50. Contactless should charge that straight away but Oyster will again overcharge and refund the next day. Again off-peak fares are assumed.
I hope that helps explain things a bit.
Hi Martin,
I think it’s common practice when a shop needs to do anything that doesn’t involve money. Whether £1.50 is the prescribed amount or not I don’t know.
Hi M,
If you do make this trip with an Oyster card then I expect it will overcharge. The total should be adjusted by £1.10 overnight by the back-office. You’ll get this back when your total of adjustments exceeds £1.50 or two weeks later, whichever happens first.
Hi Nick,
Thanks for the update. The next update to the other page will show that I picked up a refund after 5 days, on a Sunday, so it looks like the rules are different for this type of refund.
As to auto top-up, my understanding is that it is triggered after any other additions while touching in, so you wouldn’t have had one if the balance was over £20. The downside is that if your refund had to be set up by the first touch and picked up on the second then the auto top-up would be triggered in the meantime.
Hi Andyboy,
Tooting Broadway to Shepherd’s Bush NR does separate the different routes from Balham. The OP actually added on a further leg to White City which then combines changing at either Clapham North or Balham with the same fare.
This actually complicates things somewhat. Using contactless you’ll be charged the fare that the single fare finder says. If you use Oyster it will charge the higher fare on exiting at Shepherd’s Bush NR and won’t refund it when you end the journey at White City. However, when the journey is run through the contactless back end later it will then refund the difference.
That’s a good spot about Shepherd’s Bush.
Hi M (007 related?)
I think the main issue is the difference between types of NR. Most of London Overground is treated as if it were the Underground so any permutation of your journey which doesn’t involve Balham to Clapham Junction will be charged at the cheaper rate.
Offering cheaper journeys via Balham does appear to be a possible error. I may try it out in the coming weeks.
Hi Alan,
Right, got it now. Pleased that they’ve agreed to refund to your bank.
You can’t resolve missing journeys until the next day in case there are touches that have been delayed. By the next day it is normally safe. It’s worth noting that if there’s a potential missing touch they won’t take the money due on contactless that night in the hope it’ll be resolved the next day.
Hi Mike,
That changes everything.
The disabled railcard discounts all rail fares and caps. Morden is in zone 4 so the anytime cap is £7.00. It doesn’t matter when you travel during the day.
Hi Mike,
There’s an awful lot of missing info in that question? I’ll guess that you have a railcard and that the Underground journey will involve zone 6 and be after 0930 rather than before 0630.
My best guess is that you won’t be capped in that scenario. The most you can pay on buses in one day is £4.65 and the off-peak zone 1-6 tube journey is £2.20 making a total of £6.85.
If you were to make more tube journeys, or travel once in the evening peak, then it would depend on how many of your chargeable (ie not hopper) bus journeys were before 0930. They would not count towards the off-peak cap but would be added on afterwards. Worst case would be three chargeable bus journeys before 0930 (difficult with the hopper) making £4.65 and enough tube journeys to reach £8.85 at which point the anytime daily cap of £13.50 would cap you just before the £8.90 off-peak cap could.
Take a look at the capping examples page.
Hi Chris,
It should allow you to have multiple topups active. It certainly allows multiple refunds. I’ve added details about Faster Universal Load to the topping up page.
Hi Thomas,
Journeys on Thameslink between Elephant & Castle or London Bridge and Finsbury Park or West Hampstead Thameslink are charged using the TfL-LU fare scale.
The £3.20 fare shown on brfares is incorrect. Sadly this is not an unusual problem as there is no direct link between the fares database used by brfares and the official TfL PAYG database used to actually make the charges.
From Greenwich there is no way of knowing whether the passenger went via Bank, Moorgate and Farringdon (TfL-LU) or London Bridge NR (NR1) so the cheaper fare is charged.
Hi Alan,
Firstly those gates at Waterloo are a major nightmare. You aren’t the only person who thinks they’ve touched into the Underground because you’ve already gone down steps from the National Rail station.
Forgive my confusion but can you clarify. You tried to let them know where the incomplete touch was but were told in an email that there was a problem. Then you saw another message saying you could pick up a refund by using your card? Does this mean you have a refund queued? If you have then read my new bit about Faster Universal Load on the topping up page.
Otherwise perhaps you could clarify what you have done and what and how you’ve been told.
Hi Nick,
I’ve just had it confirmed. After 3 days the refund will go on a dormant list. When you next touch the card it will resend the refund ready to pick up on the touch after that. This should always work for rail journeys (unless it’s a really short one) and will only fail if the only journey is a singular bus or tram journey. It will keep trying for six months after which you would need to call customer services.
Zone 1-9 off-peak day travelcard with railcard is £9.70. Epping to Chesham off-peak single £4.30 and valid on Chiltern trains out of Marylebone too.
Travelcard is better value for you Chris, I know.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the journey history. I should have realised the issue sooner but it’s clear now. You took 141 minutes to get from Slade Green to Epping. The expected route is via Woolwich and Stratford using 7 zones (6-5-4-3-4-5-6). That gives a maximum journey time of 130 minutes. They broke the OSI to avoid charging two incomplete journeys.
Hi Wiggy,
I’ve got a new article coming shortly about those dotted lines. For the moment note that they are simply nearby stations within a certain criteria. Most happen to be OSIs but that’s just coincidence. OSIs are a very specific thing in the fares data.
Hi Wiggy,
No, you’re not missing anything. I redesigned the page splitting the list into 3 different sections. The notes related to different gatelines within a station which is the third list, and the note is now alongside the details for each station. In the main list the notes just stated that details for each different gateline were the same, which seemed a bit pointless. I’ve now deleted the notes column from the main lists.
Thanks for spotting the error.
Then again I think most people don’t care what fare they are charged, eg all the people at my work who get the train to Waterloo and then connect on the Jubilee line to London Bridge(!)
Well if they have a travelcard then it doesn’t matter, but if their using PAYG then perhaps they should be educated.
Hi Chris,
Nice map … except the extension is going the wrong way.
The zoning issue is going to be a nightmare locally on the ground. You could come out of Sainsbury’s and pop next door to zone 1 Nine Elms station, or walk half a mile towards central London and board southbound trains from Vauxhall in zone 2. I think it’s likely that the stations will start in zone 1, but I wouldn’t bet against them becoming zone 1/2 in the future.
As for the map, the only way it will work sensibly is to put the extension over the top of Vauxhall. There are other places where stations are not in the correct place on the current map (eg the two Bethnal Green stations). The dotted link to the pier from Vauxhall will have to cross the extension line, but that’s probably the least worst side effect. Alternatively they could just lose the dotted line and put the boat symbol by the station name as they do at London Bridge.
Hi Chris,
I’m not aware of an issue. Can you copy full journey history and I’ll enquire.
Out of interest, did you need to go via Charing Cross? I’d have used DLR from Woolwich to Stratford personally.
Thanks John,
It almost certainly is an LU cash fare, though quite why that is available from National Rail outlets is beyond me. I don’t think it’s anything to do with Crossrail because the fare from Farringdon to the rail stations at Heathrow will be the same as, or more than, it currently is from Paddington. And the Crossrail fares which were added to the database in 2018 are all still there.
It will be interesting to see if it’s still there later today as it’s the third fare change day of 2021.
