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Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi Adam,
In that situation it’s probably better to not touch out. You’ll still have one incomplete journey which can be adjusted by the helpdesk. If you touched out at Moorgate you might get into difficulties if a revenue inspector checks you on the train to Hertford. They don’t always see the continuation exit marker.
Please complain to Great Northern about the gates. It’s not acceptable to prevent people from paying the correct fare.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi Joana,
They’re not silly questions, there was a lot to get in and I wasn’t sure if I’d made it clear enough.
To explain the Oyster a bit more. Yes, all Oyster journeys are single like you’ve been doing on the tube. You touch in at the start of the journey and out at the end. Oyster also has this clever feature where it will join together journey legs where you have to leave one station and walk to another nearby. So for Hendon to Southfields you touch in at Hendon, touch out at West Hampstead Thameslink, walk to West Hampstead Overground and touch in again, touch the pink reader within West Brompton to say you’ve avoided zone 1 and touch out at Southfields. Providing you don’t take longer than 20 minutes between touching out and back in again at West Hampstead it will join the two journeys together and charge the fares I said for the whole journey from Hendon to Southfields. There is a map here showing West Hampstead and how close all the stations are.
Now, normally you would find that buying two tickets is more expensive, as indeed you see with St Albans to Hendon and Hendon to West Hampstead versus St Albans to West Hampstead. The reason it works here is that on Oyster you only pay for the zones you travel through once, so Hendon to Southfields is zone 3-2-1-2-3 (or 3-2-3 if you avoid zone 1). This isn’t always true for paper tickets from outside the zones (eg St Albans). Also, as I said earlier, Hendon is on the boundary between zones 3 and 4, so your paper ticket ends in zone 4 and you start using Oyster in zone 3.
Where your first journey is in the morning peak I’ve quoted the undiscounted peak fare and assuming you start travelling back before 1600 you’ll get the off-peak discounted fare for the way home. So you don’t have to double anything unless I’ve done it by saying x2.
So your weekly total IF you always AVOID zone 1 should look like this:
Afternoon in Wembley Park: 2x £10.60 = £21.20
Morning in Southfields: 2x £18.30 = £36.60
All day in both places: 1x £19.55
Saturday in Southfields: 1x £9.80
TOTAL £77.35 (M-F) or £87.15 (inc Sat)Now, I do have to make a small confession. If you want to go via Blackfriars there is a different ticket you can buy which I’d forgotten about. It’s St Albans to “ZONE U123* LONDN” which costs £22.00 with your railcard. It allows you to travel fast into London and then make 1 return journey on the Underground in zones 1-3. It’s a bit cheaper because you don’t end up paying full single fares on Oyster in the morning. There is an avoiding zone 1 option to “ZONE U23* LONDN” but that costs £20.00 which you can beat with Oyster. There also isn’t a super off-peak version of this ticket, so Saturdays is better off with Oyster. For the long day the fact you’d still have to pay to get from Southfields to Wembley Park and the bus makes it more expensive than using Oyster.
I realise there is a hell of a lot to consider here, and maybe some of the Southfields days you’d prefer the fast train to London and only one ticket, even though it costs a bit more. Hopefully the Wembley Park days will be a big saving using the bus.
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This reply was modified 1 week ago by
Mike (admin). Reason: correct map link
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi Joana,
Thank you for those details. I think I can help quite a bit. I hope I’m right to assume that you have either a 16-25 railcard or a 26-30 railcard? If not please let me know because it may change some of this.
So, firstly for Wembley Park I recommend travelling from St Albans to Hendon on Thameslink, then get out and take bus 83 towards Wembley Park station. The bus takes around 20 minutes but easily beats the train doing Hendon – West Hampstead – Wembley Park which is a lengthy double back. It’s even worse if you go to St Pancras. A railcard discounted off-peak day return from St Albans to Hendon is £7.10, plus £1.75 x2 for the bus – total £10.60.
For Southfields there are some options depending on how long you want the journey to take. The fastest way is St Albans to Blackfriars on Thameslink and District to Southfields from there. That’s £18.10 for Thameslink plus £3.80 peak single and £2.05 discounted off-peak single for the District – total £23.95.
Splitting at Hendon requires taking the stopping trains and potentially waiting 15 minutes at Hendon for the next train after you’ve touched the Oyster card in (or out on the way back). You’d then need the Anytime day return from St Albans to Hendon which is £12.75, plus £6.60 peak single and £3.55 discounted off-peak single for Hendon to Southfields via Blackfriars – total £22.90.
For a bigger saving you’ll need to take 4 trains. St Albans to Hendon, Hendon to West Hampstead Thameslink, West Hampstead (Overground) to West Brompton and West Brompton to Southfields. That will be £12.75 as above, plus £3.60 peak single and £1.95 discounted off-peak single for the other three trains combined – total £18.30.
Now for the long day. Start with whatever is your preferred journey to Southfields. Once you finish there take the District to West Brompton, Overground to West Hampstead and Jubilee from West Hampstead (Underground) to Wembley Park. It’s not as bad as it sounds and costs just £1.45 discounted off-peak single. Then it’s the bus to Hendon and use whichever return ticket you bought in the morning to get back to St Albans. It doesn’t matter if the ticket was to Blackfriars, you can still use it only for the Hendon to St Albans part in the evening.
So £18.10 + £3.80 + £1.45 + £1.75 = £25.10 to go fast to Blackfriars,
or £12.75 + £6.60 + £1.45 + £1.75 = £22.55 to split at Hendon and via Blackfriars,
or £12.75 + £3.60 + £1.45 + £1.75 = £19.55 via Hendon, West Hampstead and West Brompton.Finally for Saturday it’s off-peak all day, plus you can buy cheaper super off-peak returns from St Albans which are only valid at weekends. St Albans to Hendon is £5.90 day return while to Blackfriars it’s £8.15.
So £8.15 + £2.05 x2 = £12.25 fast via Blackfriars,
or £5.90 + £3.55 x2 = £13.00 split at Hendon via Blackfriars (NOT WORTH IT),
or £5.90 + £1.95 x2 = £9.80 via Hendon, West Hampstead and West Brompton.Other things to note. The tickets from St Albans are all railcard discounted. Everything else is on Oyster and is disounted off-peak but not peak or for the bus. I assume you return from Southfields outside the evening peak 1600-1900. The three stations at West Hampstead are very close together taking no more than 5 minutes to walk between any two. If you change at West Brompton you MUST touch the pink reader in the passage way between the Overground platforms and the District line platforms.
I think I’ve covered everything, but do come back if you have any questions.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi Joana,
You don’t say where your final destinations are, so it’s difficult to give tailored advice. However, if you use an Oyster card to PAYG then definitely add your railcard to it. You will get cheaper off-peak fares, and even though you’ll pay full price in the evening peak on weekdays, the discounted off-peak cap will limit the effect of that. You can’t at the moment get railcard fares when using contactless on bank cards or mobiles.
Depending on where you need to go to, Hendon could be a very good place to switch as it’s on the boundary between zones 3 and 4. You will need to get off the train and use your ticket from St Albans to exit, then use your Oyster card to enter again. Let me know the places you end up in and I’ll see what specifically I can suggest to keep the costs down. If you can give rough times of journeys involved too (both to and from work) then it’s even better.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi Steve,
The daily caps within zones 1-9 are cheaper than the relevant day travelcards, but you need to be careful if you are spending a lot of time within the system without touching out. I’m not sure where the labyrinth plaques are within each station, but if they are within the paid area and you get off a train, take a picture (selfie?), and get back on the next train, you could quite easily exceed the time allowed for a journey to where you eventually touch out. If you feel that this isn’t a problem then you will save a little (off-peak zone 1-9 cap is £10.85 versus £11.80 for the off-peak zone 1-9 travelcard). However, you would need to step back a train at Hadley Wood to be able to touch in there (and out on the way home). If you pay for a ticket to Kings Cross then that will wipe out any saving using the cap.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi Steve,
Sorry for the delay, but I’m glad you asked. A different (new) topic would have been better, and I’ll split it if I can work out how, but don’t worry.
- Almost certainly not. The Oyster implimentation at Potters Bar was a bit of a bodge so the caps are higher than the equivalent one day travelcard prices. If you use contactless then appropriate caps are in place, but you can’t apply a railcard discount to contactless PAYG, so it’s of no use to you.
- Technically yes, but this sounds like the kind of activity where you’d be spending a lot of time in the system. If you aren’t touching out and in regularly you run the risk of getting incomplete journey charges which would not be restricted by the cap. My normal advice in this situation is to get a paper travelcard. However, travelcards from Potters Bar do not include zones 7-9 which are needed by the Metropolitain line stations beyond Moor Park, so you actually need two tickets. One is a travelcard from Amersham to zones 1-6 which is also vaild in zones 7-9, and the other a return from Potters Bar to Hadley Wood (or boundary of zone 6). Your train to/from Potters Bar does not need to call at Hadley Wood.
- If you were using PAYG, make sure you don’t exceed the maximum journey time by ensuring that you regularly touch out and back in again.
You can get both tickets at the ticket office at Potters Bar, but make sure they start the travelcard at Amersham as that is one of very few stations which will give you the zone 7-9 validity. The prices for Hadley Wood or Boundary of zone 6 appear to be the same, so either will do.
Have fun ticking of the labyrinths.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterWell I received a reply from Greater Anglia. They seem to have grasped the concept now, though I’m not 100% happy with the language they used. What do others think?
To confirm, the 60+ Oyster Card is accepted for travel to Romford on Greater Anglia services, provided the train stops at this station. Additionally, the card is also valid (in a theoretical sense, as no trains currently stop there) on Greater Anglia services up to Harold Wood, but this is only the case if you purchase an extension ticket to your final destination from either Harold Wood or Boundary Zone 6. For travel on TfL or the Elizabeth Line services, the 60+ Oyster Card is valid all the way to Shenfield.
To be clear, it’s not theoretically valid, it IS VALID as long as an additional ticket is held.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi Ealinger,
You are correct in all your assumptions. The back office software will not adjust fares for a discounted Oyster card. On the return journey you should be charged as per the fare finder because the zone 1 bit hasn’t happened when you touch out at Wanstead Park.
Colin: I suspect that this fare will be changed once TfL have spotted it. The default will then assume travel via zone 1 with a cheaper option if you change at Shepherd’s Bush. For now it’s possible to take advantage of the anomaly by understanding how the system works.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi, Quite a bit I’m afraid.
The Oyster system combines legs of a journey into one journey, which in your case is Chafford Hundred to Watford Junction. Fenchurch Street to Aldgate and Euston Square to Euston are recognised out-of-station interchanges (OSI). The off-peak fares between Euston and Watford Junction only apply if the whole journey is between those two stations, or any intermediate stations on the Lioness line.
Whilst you could break the OSI at Euston by walking from Kings Cross, it probably won’t save you anything because you are curently only paying for zones 1-9 once. If it becomes two separate journeys then you’d be paying twice, albeit that the off-peak leg might be a bit cheaper.
Finally, with contactless you are benefitting from the application of the best combination of caps and extension fares. You’ll find that your journey home is charged at less than the outward journey because the system applies a cap for some zones and adds extension fares for the bits at each end. Oyster can’t do this on the fly, but will apply a credit the next day, but only if the Oyster card is undiscounted.
I would go back to using contactless for your commute, but use the Oyster at weekends when you will benefit from the discounted off-peak fares. Your railcard will obviously give you discounts on journeys further afield from London.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterThanks Dave,
I did manage to order mine 13 days before, a couple of years ago.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterOk, so a 60+ means you won’t be overcharged. I’d be inclined to write to SWR, who run Wimbledon, and ask them why you are having problems. It almost certainly is some sort of timeout. My concern would be whether invalid taps might pose problems for people with chargeable cards.
If it happens again, please do note the error code.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi Steve,
I would have thought that a timeout for that would be cleared after about 5-10 minutes. It would be helpful to know what the error code was on the gate. Do you have TfL Go? Can you see what that is saying about times?
Mike (admin)
KeymasterA further update. Just after replying to this I received the email asking me to pay for the yearly address check. This means that they are probably close to catching up as mine was due in December.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi A,
Sorry for the delay getting to this.
Option 1 would work fine, though it might not be the cheapest way. Extension fares are just the zone 1 fares for the journey, except if you use both NR and LU you won’t be charged the mixed mode premium.
Option 2 would indeed require changing trains. The best place might actually be Vauxhall because it’s dual zoned 1/2 and a smaller station than Clapham Junction. You can either get back on the next NR train for Waterloo or use the Victoria line for Victoria depending on where your eventual destination is. You also have the option of walking between Battersea Park (2) and Battersea Power Station (1) if you want the Northern line.
You might actually be better off with just PAYG. If you only travel between Streatham Common and Clapham Junction on some days then you won’t cap then. Otherwise your journeys will count towards the zone 2-3 weekly cap with extensions for zone 1. At weekends your daily journeys will cap at zone 1-2 whilst still contributing towards the zone 2-3 weekly cap. You might like to try that out for a week or so and see how you get on. Feel free to copy a weeks journey history here so I can comment on how it was worked out.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi Dave,
Thanks for reminding me about this.
To answer the original query, the 60+ Oyster is internally described as an elderly persons freedom pass. They are apparently not allowed to be added to Oyster online, so the card had been hidden from my account. The nice lady I spoke to has unhidden mine again, but said that it might get hidden again at some point in the future. Anyone else with the same issue can call the helpdesk. You need to speak to the Oyster card section, NOT the photocard section. I was batted between both until I got someone who understood.
Now about expiry dates. Yes, this is a long standing problem. My 60+ Oyster says that it expires before my 66th birthday on Oyster online (6 years after it was issued). On the photocard website it says both the correct date (15 days after my 67th birthday) and the incorrect one under the somewaht superfluous line showing no credit. I’m certain my kids zip cards all had similarly weird dates printed on the card which didn’t match the actual expiry. While potentially confusing, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The correct date will be encoded on the card itself.
Hope that helps everyone.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterWhat are my options?
Sadly there aren’t any. The fare between Gatwick Airport and East Croydon is historically very low compared to the fare between Gatwick and London. This initially allowed much cheaper commutes, but was rapidly ‘sorted’ at the behest of the Department for Transport. For more background to this, see the following post on this site shortly after the PAYG area was extended to Gatwick: Oyster and Gatwick – The Truth
Mike (admin)
KeymasterI don’t know whether the whole history is available, somehow. I haven’t used my card for over 2 years now as I use the 60+ whenever I can.
Anyway, see what Greater Anglia say. If it turns out that the gates did disable a perfectly valid ticket then I would be inclined to ask TfL for a refund. I respect your view if different, though.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi,
You do not need to touch validators at Farringdon if it’s in the middle of a PAYG journey. Those validators are intended for people using a traditional ticket on Thameslink services beyond the PAYG area. If you do touch the validators there is a possibility that you may be charged an incomplete journey.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterYes, that does appear to be a bit all over the place. Most of that will be down to SWR. The only one I’m not sure about is Grays which could be priced by C2C or SWR.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi Hugo,
No, it’s got nothing to do with where you start. Tell her to make the most of it, but expect it to be corrected at some point.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterMy apologies, I’d looked at so many different variations I missed that. I think it is an error, but it may well work. Let me know what the charge was if you can.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi,
Thank you for raising this. I’ve just logged in to my web account and I have the same issue. I will be querying this at some point. The 60+ Oyster card still appears in TfL Go, so I’m really not sure what’s happened. If I’m checking up on things at home I will usually use the web account, so I’d prefer it to be back there if possible.
And yes, the address check functionality is still suspended as far as I know. You can carry on using the card until they get round to sending an address check email, at which point you will have to pay the fee to continue using it.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi Hugo,
I’m afraid you’ve got a little confused by the options for getting from Balham to Clapham Junction. The expensive routes all use the Southern line from Balham (NR) via Wandsworth Common, whereas the cheaper ones take the Northern line from Balham (LU) to Clapham North and change onto the Windrush line at Clapham High Street. Travelling via Clapham North/High Street is solely using TfL services, even if you end up on the Southern service between Clapham Junction and West Brompton only. The decider for the fares depends on which station you use at Balham.
I hope that helps, but do come back if you’re still not sure.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterHi Meglos,
I completely agree that Epsom to Strawberry Hill is wrong. When I have time I will try and contact SWR, but in the meantime feel free to contact them yourself. The more who do, the more likely it will change.
Mike (admin)
KeymasterWhilst changing at Whitechapel avoids zone 1, it also involves NR between Clapham Junction and Richmond, so I think the fare is correct.
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This reply was modified 1 week ago by
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