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Hi Busong,
“Am I right in thinking that if I had done the rail journeys in reverse order and hit the Z1-2 cap first before travelling out to Zone 6, I will only be charged Z3-6 for that final journey?”
If you had reached the zone 1-2 cap before embarking on a zone 2-6 journey then you’d be charged for the zone 2-6 journey in full. As it happens, in your case that wouldn’t make a difference as the zone 2-6 and 3-6 off-peak fares are the same. As Alan notes above, you would need to have made the bus journeys before the rail journey to West Drayton as well.
That’s a good alternative, Chris. Obviously a zone 1-9 Anytime travelcard is required (unless the challenge is being done on an engineering free weekend. You may need to select Amersham as the origin station to ensure that you get all the zones. There is no need to start at Amersham though.
Hi Jonathan,
I would not recommend doing either Oyster or contactless. The problem is that you have to adhere to maximum journey times between touch in and touch out, and also keep track of out-of-station-interchanges joining journeys together. If this happens then you’ll be charged two maximum fares and neither will count towards the daily cap.
There is one potential compromise which is to buy a weekly zone 1-9 travelcard on your Oyster card and then cancel the Oyster card at the end of the day. This will result in the unused part of the travelcard being refunded. It will also result in the Oyster card being cancelled. A replacement will now cost £7 and is not refundable.
Good luck with the challenge though.
Hi jjcantab,
I’ll raise this as an issue. It looks like they need to add another OSI at Waterloo to cope with what you are experiencing. For now my advice is to avoid steps 3 and 4 and I’m sure the journey will be charged correctly.
Hi Anthony,
Apologies for the delay replying. Group Travelcards is not an area of my expertise. The only comment I will make is that group tickets are usually intended for a group that stays together. If the minimum group size is ten then I would expect that that applies at all times. If you had 20 people then you could get two groups of ten and each group could go separately at some point.
Hi JL,
Flexi season tickets are not an option within London because daily caps are already 1/5 of the weekly cap/travelcard. The daily cap for zones 1-6 is £14.10 and will be reached if two peak time journeys are made. It doesn’t really matter which route you take. One option you may not have considered is Kingston – Wimbledon – Farringdon – Barbican/Moorgate. This may be slower on the travel time, but cuts out long walks between trains at Waterloo and wherever else you change on the Underground. Both Wimbledon and Farringdon are simply crossing a footbridge, and on the way home it’s adjacent platforms at Farringdon.
Thanks for your input “a non”. I’d quite like to be able to contact you privately, but I strongly suspect the email you used won’t work.
Hi Jazz,
Tying it all together, if you pass through zone 1 then you will be charged a zone 1 extension fare. You can have more than one travelcard on an Oyster card, but each one has to be for at least two zones and they must join together at adjacent zones. If you just want to add zone 1 then you might be better off waiting. If your travelcard is for a long period then you could try getting an exchange which will cost £5 plus the difference in price for the remainder of the validity. As Alan says, you can add a 16-25 railcard to get discounts on off-peak fares and caps, including extension fares.
Hi Jack,
It’s complicated.
You might get a bit of a clue reading the Fares Guide page, but the anomaly you are referring to is niche. Firstly, Amersham to Finchley Road is on the standard TfL-LU scale which is usually the cheapest. Although Epsom is in zone 9 its fares are set by South Western Railway so they don’t quite match the NR scale. Brentwood is on the TfL-Ang scale which is a hybrid scale forced on TfL when they took over the Anglia services out of Liverpool Street. It used to be worse, but now the differences between TfL-LU and TfL-Ang are limited to zones 7-9 and longer distance off-peak journeys in zones 2-6.
So, initially there were three scales covering just about everything on Oyster. TfL-LU was the Underground, DLR and any NR company using TfL’s fares (obviously including Overground, but also C2C and GWR amongst others). NR was for the late adopting companies (Southeastern, Southern etc) and also applied to any wholly NR journeys using Overground, C2C etc as well as late adopting NR. Finally NR-T was any journey on late adopting NR which also included Underground or DLR. There are some variations, but that’s broadly the picture.
After some complaints around discontinuing season tickets when LO took over some of Southern’s services, The DfT imposed restrictions when they took over the Anglia routes. These hybrid fares were to apply on any TfL journey that included the Anglia routes. However, where a journey included TfL-Ang, TfL-LU and late adopting NR it became, I think, too complicated. The result is that NR overrode TfL-Ang and produces the anomaly you have discovered.
There is no point in asking TfL to reduce fares from Brentwood to Whitechapel because they can’t. If you highlight the discrepancy when you include late adopting NR routes the outcome will either be nothing, or the lower fares will get raised. I hope this helps.
Hi Andy,
You only need to touch in once. The set time is 3 days so you’ll have no problems if it’s tomorrow. And you’ll need Balham Underground station to link the railcard.
And it’s now been corrected. 7-8 and 8-9 have always been the same as 6-7 so I altered the header to reflect that and removed them from the header of the last but one line. The fares have been re-loaded for the last two years for the single zone row.
Hi Martin,
I’m not seeing any changes from Woolwich Arsenal DLR.
I will raise Abbey Wood though, if you start there and go via Whitechapel then it should be TfL only.
Hi London commuter,
Are you sure it’s a yellow reader that you touch at Richmond? There are pink interchange readers there which are intended for people changing trains in the middle of a PAYG journey. If you touch on one of those and you aren’t in the system then it will start a new journey, but it won’t end one the other way around. You need to exit through the gates and re-enter with your paper ticket so that it will end the journey correctly.
It will save a little money by switching to PAYG at Feltham. The SWR ticket is £5.20 cheaper and the PAYG peak single is £2.10 more expensive, so a saving of £1.00. You would have to get off the train to touch in/out. It might be worthwhile investigating where the gates/validators are at Feltham in case you can seat yourself in the correct part of the train to hop off, touch, and hop on again. If you do this you will also have to touch the pink reader at Richmond to ensure you are charged the avoiding zone 1 fare.
I’m not sure. If there was just one pink reader involved then I’d say yes you would be. But there are two and they are both sited in the same zone (2/3). However, if you want to be certain to be charged the correct fare then travel the wrong way first and touch the pink reader at Willesden Junction before returning.
This is classed as a temporary or limited service route so changes to the normal fare tables are unlikely to be arranged.
I’ve just started looking at the scope of this and thankfully the fares quoted are those for 7-8 and 8-9 which are the more expensive ones. I’ll need to add a new row at some point in the near future.
Hi Michael,
Cuffley and Epsom are oddities. In both cases the stations are in zone 9, and caps/travelcards including zone 9 are valid, but the price of a Cuffley/Epsom to zones 1-6 travelcard season is significantly cheaper than the zone 1-9 version. Thus the zonal status of these stations is hidden. The fares are also set by different TOCs so there is no standard fares.
Amersham, Brentwood and Chesham fares are all set by TfL and there is no X to zones 1-6 option.
Hi Michael,
That’s a good spot. They used to be the same but recently TfL have been separating fares like that. I’ll need to make some changes shortly.
So, yesterday I travelled from Crossharbour to London Bridge NR via Greenwich without touching any validators en-route. Here is the journey history:
OK, my son (who lived near Waterloo for a year) and I went up there a few days ago so I can now offer a more comprehensive answer. If you enter from Waterloo Road through the colonade then there are three ways you can go. Straight ahead on the left are escalators up to the mainline station opposite platforms 3-4. To the right of those escalators is the Jubilee line ticket hall with escalators going down after you’ve been through gates. As you look at those gates from near the NR escalators there is a set of steps up to a balcony which is signposted for the Waterloo and City line. Follow the signs after climbing the steps and you’ll get there quite quickly.
The only other street entrance to the Underground that we are aware of is in York Road where the Shell Centre is. If you use that entrance then you will have to enter through gates and exit again before getting to the Waterloo and City platforms. So instead of using that entrance we recommend going into the mainline station and using the Underground entrance next to platform 19, as previously suggested.
Thanks for the update Nick,
I’d need the error number displayed on the gate to know what might have happened, though I doubt it’s connnected to the pick up of the refund. It is possible that some touch data was delayed getting to the central system or that there was a problem running the overnight process which caused the delay. Good that you’re now up to date.
Hi Michael,
I’ve created a new thread for this so that others might be able to see and comment.
Shop terminals should be a good place to try, though it obviously helps if they have ink. That is down to the shop owner though. Station ticket machines don’t display the card number in the same way that cash machines don’t display card details; it’s so someone can’t be looking over your shoulder and maybe take a pic on their phone.
Was Liverpool Street the Underground station or the mainline station?
I’ve messaged a friend who works for LU and their advice is to go to an Underground station and say to a member of staff in the ticket hall that you want to know the number so you can register it, can they get you a printout. They will need to go to what is called the ‘POM Room’ which houses amongst other things a ticket machine that can print journey history. That will have the number on.
My advice for success is to try and go at a quieter time, and keep the conversation simple, as above. Don’t go into a rant about the troubles you’ve been having as that is likely to make them switch off. Once you know the number then I strongly suggest registering the card online. You’ll need to know details of a recent journey so they know it’s your card. You will then be able to check journey history and probably have the ability to fill in the details of the missed touch so they can arrange the refund to be added next time you touch in.
As to how you get through barriers without the card registering; it is possible. You may have tailgated through with the person in front, or the person behind you may have opened the gates with their card. When it’s busy these things do sometimes happen.
Now, there are issues with staffing across the whole network. Covid is still very much around and people generally won’t be able to come to work if they are unwell. Some quieter stations are having to be shut due to lack of staff at present. However, if a station is open then there will be staff there and they will have access to the room they need to access the printer. But if it’s really busy then they may be unable to leave their area unstaffed.
I hope this helps, and I’d be interested to know how you get on.
Hi Emmet, (and thanks Chris)
Waterloo station is a real mess with several gatelines where it is not obvious what you are doing.
The first thing I need to clarify is what the green arrow means. It doesn’t mean ‘Entry’ but rather that the gate in front of you is set in the direction you are walking. That could be either ‘Entry’ or ‘Exit’.
Next up is the fact that Waterloo LU station is actually three different stations in one. You have the Waterloo and City line station which is connected easily to all the mainline station platforms. The problem here is that there isn’t room to put a gateline on the passageway to the actual platforms, so as Chris says, there are a couple of validators which aren’t brilliantly signed. This is what you should have touched which would have cancelled your same station exit and started a new journey.
From that area you then move along to the original Underground station serving the Bakerloo and Northern lines. You will go through gates there which I think is where you exited and got the same station exit. Also from that part of the station is a travelator taking you to the Jubilee line station and the entrances at the colonade.
In summary, I think you entered at the Jubilee line through the colonade, went down and along the travelator to the Bakerloo and Northern section, exited again and then went down to the Waterloo and City without touching the validators to put you back inside the system. Then at Bank you exited when not in the system hence the maximum journey charge. Chris is right about the resolution too; just call the helpdesk and explain that you got thouroughly confused at Waterloo when travelling to Bank. They’ll quickly check your journeys and arrange to refund the maximum fare.
In future I’d go into the mainline station from the street and then use the entrance to the Underground near platforms 17 and 18. Follow the signs for the Waterloo and City line there, but look out for the validators and touch one before going down to the actual platforms.
Hi Lee,
Sadly I think they will expect you to pay the fare to Euston if you go there. They do sometimes alter the fares if a station is unexpectedly closed, but not if the alternative is in zone 1.
Hi Lee,
That’s a missing routeing, sadly. It is available for Woodgrange Park (the station before Barking) so I think it’s an error. You’ll need to use either the Camden Town/Road or Kentish Town/West changes and touch the pink reader at Stratford to get the £1.80 off-peak fare. You could also email oysterenquiries(at)tfl.gov.uk and ask them to add the missing route, but don’t try to use it until it appears on the fare finder.
