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For clarity, St Albans City already supports contactless, as does many other stations on the north end of the (original) Thameslink, at least as far as Luton (ISTR).
City to Abbey is indeed borderline for an OSI type arrangement, knocking on for a 20 minute walk (1.25 miles, Google maps says 30 but I think that’s generous). But maybe should be allowable in case of disruption on Thameslink.
I wonder if there are plans (or a date) when the capability is extended to Woking (Southwest Main line–last contactless point currently is Surbiton I think) and Chelmsford or maybe Sudbury/ Marks Tey/ Colchester / Ipswich.
The unpalatable answer is don’t keep the zip card in the case of a phone that has NFC payment capability.
Then such a confusion can’t happen.
What would be nice is if TFL could issue a version of the Zip card that could be put into the NFC wallet capability of the phone. To do this they would probably need to issue the card as a “scheme” branded debit card that only works for TfL readers, and handle discounts at the “back end”.
Same as the former Citymapper pass card, which was really a Mastercard debit card that “whitelisted” TfL for authorisation, and hence could be put in an NFC wallet.
Arhive.org seems to have at least one copy of the “old” 20 zone page–link below is their oldest capture of that URL (2019)
I haven’t flicked through the other captures from 2019 to now to see if the maximum times for the “missing” zones were updated before the information for crossing more than 11 zones was removed.
There may be older versions under a different URL but would need some browsing/special search to find the URL, starting from the archived versions of home page (with the websites own search not working and not having an obvious site map URL)
That data (historical to current) might be worth capturing as an article here (referencing back to source on archive.org), with a “health warning” that this history can’t be relied on to be correct, use as a guide etc. I’m willing to believe the data hasn’t changed that much but times may have been shortened to get the balance between accepting legitimate journeys, accepting a few claims case by case, but not creating too much of a widespread concern. Verifying current times by empirical testing (actually trying to exceed the times for varying number of zones and seeing when a fine was added, working backwards from last published time) would be a lengthy labour.
Two thoughts based based on @etr221’s comment
1/ I recall there being an ongoing pair of group action lawsuits aimed at train operators and other ticket sellers not making Boundary fares explicitly available through all sales channels (I think GTR was one of the operators being sued).
And websites don’t always allow boundary tickets to be bought, and certainly don’t do it in a consistent way. A spot check of a few: Nationalrail, thetrainline, Thameslink: NO. GWR: yes, search for zone/underground, Greateranglia yes zone/travelcard.
Note none of these prompt with anything useful if you put “boundary” as the search. Not at all satisfactory.
2/ @Mike seems like a lot of the questions on oysterfares forums recently are dealing with extension fares/edge cases for season travelcards/60+/zip/gold, etc. I wonder if the fare finder could start highlighting what is needed and where to buy for the more common examples e.g. the ends of the Elizabeth line and other special fare zones (contactless not oyster, Gatwick/Luton/Southend airports) , and maybe a “flowchart”/”Wizzard” type experience for boundary fares on national rail more generally.
If you are claiming some/all of your journeys, you may be able to do this at a weekly rate using contactless (with a cap) instead of a slightly cheaper monthly fare. May not need to pay in advance for a travelcard, unless you can claim the whole of the travelcard cost, in which case that may be simpler.
Contactless history can be seen via TFL account (if you register the card), but can also print a history for unregistered cards on TFL website.
If you don’t have a suitable contactless card, or don’t want to use an existing one, you can use a mobile phone contactless payment app linked to an existing card, or buy a reloadable prepaid contactless debit card (need to keep enough balance on the latter).
I wonder if citymapper will get onto the case of making the two card shuffle simple using their app which can do NFC (with permission / engagement from TfL).
Citymapper could also ask for permission for qualifying users of their pass card to have qualifying travel refunded to citymspper (their pass card is really just a contactless MasterCard and city mapper passes through some charged but not others depending on pass tier..from none/suspended through to multiple zones weekly plus bike/taxi)
I suspect the Paddington/Marylebone OSI is also partly there for those occasions when there is a train blockage between Birmingham and Euston (WCML) and travellers are diverted onto the Birmingham to Marylebone route. And vice versa.
Marylebone tube is not really designed for dealing with heavily loaded express train surges of passengers so having nearby OSI to Paddington (and other Local tube options) makes sense in terms of onward journeys in a safe and quick way.
May make even more sense once the Lizzie line is fully operational, to allow continuations from zonal train journeys into Marylebone (not served) to Lizzie Line destinations. (I assume there are some..haven’t checked, not my line, I’m local to Marylebone)
A list of station pairs that offer interchanges that are under half a mile and not benefiting from an OSI would be useful as part of a campaigning list including the dotted not OSI–avoiding the two long outliers mentioned by Mike would be useful.
Maybe combined with a list of station pairs that benefit from the “short journey just over a zone boundary” discount (e.g. St Johns Wood to Baker Street/Marylebone gets a discount in peak so isn’t the full cost of Z2 to Z1 peak fare om Oyster)
Having a succinct list of the “dotted not OSI” would help with campaigning, which is the real benefit, in the sense of TfL setting incorrect expectations.
As would a list of station pairs (which have line/mode interchanges) that are shorter than the current most distant OSI (in m) to argue the precedent for those too.
I agree, the other way round is less useful
The Santander bikes are stolen quite frequently to facilitate crime using the bicycle (i.e. phone snatches). They are good enough for that task and have the advantage of being anonymous, and potentially hired legitimately (less likely to trigger a police stop and search).
If you use a payment card or mobile phone payment app for your travels, then the bikes are integrated, in effect.
The citymapper app/pass does quite a good job of integrating the bikes for people who don’t want to take out an annual subscription, although you have to have one of the high grade passes which includes bike credit, the basic one doesn’t. The pass is really a payment card (mastercard) with the back end rigged up to only accept requests from certain merchant IDs (TfL and other transport, including the bikes), and citymapper recharge the travel to you via your choice of payment card, at a discounted rate compared to TfL cap (but no refunds if you don’t fully get up to the pass/cap value in the week). Because the pass is a payment card, it can also be added to various TFL apps (maybe including the bike app).
I think the remaining question is why the Bikes are not integrated to the rest of TfL, i.e. if you subscribe and have the keyfob or use the bike app, why couldn’t the keyfob embed an oyster card and share an account, with autotopup, or allow the bike app to act as an oyster card (via the phone NFC payment card capability). There wouldn’t be the £300 loss charge blocker that way round, just needs a change to fob hardware/app.
Is there a definitive list of dotted lines that are not OSI? (Chris D pipped me to the Swiss Cottage one, which is local to me, and is a longstanding gap in stations which should be an OSI although wouldn’t get a huge amount of use).
Is it worth updating the OSI list on the main website to indicate which OSI are marked with dotted lines and have a supplemental list of which are not?
Worth passing this as a complaint to various “official” representative groups (Londontravelwatch? or am I mis-remembering )
