[h/t Green Party candidate Daryl853 for much of this lot]
Information is beginning to leak out [PDF of Mayoral Decision on fares] as to just how much it’ll cost to travel on Oyster PAYG on National Rail – leaving aside the apparent lunacy of something called ‘Oyster Extension Permits’, which apparently allow Travelcard users to extend out of zone but at the cost of removing the turn-up-and-swipe benefit of Oyster (i.e. the best thing about it) we have a possible PR nightmare of conflicting fares, existing PAYG fares rising sharply and massive confusion about the cheapest route between the same two points.
First the good news, it does look likely that early 2010 will see everyone running commuter trains in London signed up to Oyster with the fare structure agreed, which is a major milestone. Victoria-Balham started as a pilot on Sunday. We wait and see whether 2/1/2010 is the full running start or just the fare changes, however.
Secondly the bad news, since the TOCs don’t want Oyster’s complexities and extra passengers, the cost of this is paid by a) TfL and b) the farepayer. In particular the south London farepayer, since they have the least choice – I’m lucky in that I can walk ten minutes to the tube or four minutes to SWT, so I can decide whether the higher SWT fare is worth six minutes of my time or not which isn’t an option available in most of the south of the capital. Looking at the farescale for local journeys here such as my partner’s drive to work, using PAYG on the train comes to £3.60 per day (Z3->Z4 peak, Z4->Z3 peak). This is more expensive than the current return, and nowhere near enough to get her out of the car. A peak-time tube journey Z3-Z4 and back, even with Boris’s whopping 18.2% January increase, is £2.60 per day (for reference, a 7 day Travelcard would be £3.80 per day if used solely for the work journey – that one goes up 14.5%).
All this is subject to confirmation, of course, but it does sadly appear that Oyster on PAYG will be substantially less good and less integrated than it should be due to a politically driven timetable overriding common sense and usabilty considerations allied to the perverted incentives in the privatised rail system, a privatisation supported by the Mayor. I wonder if he’s beginning to come round to the idea of proper accountable democratic control of commuter rail yet? London Overground shows how it should be done – our Z3-Z4 peak commute is £2.60 there, just the same as the Tube.
One final thing from Mayoral Decision, the extra £125m he’s hoovering out of our pockets is split £78m from bus users and £47m on tube users. Worse, although the bus fare increases will bring in an extra £118m, £46m of that is lost through people not using the bus, with all that implies for sustaining service frequencies – turning people off the buses has never previously benefitted London, instead usually leading to a spiral of decline. Personally, I think I’ll drive, thanks. After all, the traffic lights will more likely to be green now. Poop Poop!
Bonus Joke
Nowhere in the Mayoral Decision does it say the fares are being hiked to fill a hole left by evil Cuban newt fanciers holding down the fares for political reasons. Rather:
The impact of the recession has been significant in London and this has had a major bearing on the state of Transport fro London’s (TfLs) finances. TfL has seen the biggest fall in journeys for economic reasons in over twenty years, particularly on the Tube, where demand had fallen by 6%. In total, a fall in revenues of around £3bn over the course of TfL’s Business Plan to 2017/18 is now projected. This fall in revenue is also compounded by other pressures, in particular, the fallout from the collapse of Metronet (now under LU control, but leaving a cost legacy to be addressed).
Quite how turning people away from public transport helps fill a hole caused by fewer people using public transport entirely escapes me.
Tags: 19 Comments
19 responses so far ↓
Of course, the perverted incentives in privatised rail are fully supported by both Labour and the Liberal Democrats. It’s a shared failure borne out of a lack of imagination or desire to make London’s transport system work.
I’ll give you that, Mr. Politician, only throwing the Overground thing back at you, which is the most successful attempt at making the damn thing work better and thus a crying shame no one is pushing for more of it.
I’m still trying to make head or tail of these damn fares though, Chiswick->Waterloo comes out at £1.90 single peak but Chiswick->Oxford Circus comes in at £3.70, so it looks cheaper to go to Waterloo and get the bus. There’s a massive premium as soon as you start doing cross-NR/TfL journeys which appears to negate the whole concept of integrated network ticketing.
London Overground was Ken, though. I wouldn’t confuse what Ken did with Labour policy. While Ken was cooking up London Overground for north London, Labour was re-privatising Southeastern the other side of the Thames. And Southeastern seems to be one of the companies that has held Oyster on National Rail back.
And while London Overground is definitely a good thing, its partial implementation has added to the complexity of the system by adding a third band of fares.
The Tube/TfL fare rates through Zone 1 do seem to punish people just for living on mainline rail. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have the guts to bang people’s heads together to make sure fares are broadly similar across London.
I’ve been to Waterloo and back today – £2.20 on the Tube on the way there and £4.40 on SWT on the way back (both off-peak).
But as the rail companies operate on franchises, the terms could be changed (when the franchise is renewed) to say that in London travelcard zones they have to operate under the same fairs structure.
I realise that this would take time (as franchises came up for renewal). But Oyster was introduced in 2003 and it was always the plan to roll out to rail lines as well. So was there no planning from the Office of Rail Regulation (or whatever does that job now)?
Oh, and never try and use a Oyster Extension Permit.
I got one a few months back, when I wanted to go to see friends in Surbiton (Zone 6) for the evening. I have a Z1-Z3 monthly travelcard anyway and was starting from Bank.
I went to the ticket desk to ask for an extension, which complely confused the man there. After 10 mins and asking a few collegues, he printed out a card ticket, which had almost no details on it. By this time the qeue behind me streached across the central line escalators (i was at the only open desk).
It worked in the barriers at Surbiton but only cost me slightly less than going to Waterloo and buying a off-peak return to Surbiton (which would have been so much faster).
Of course if you could buy one day travelcards on your oyster (from the machine) that might have been another way (by buying a one day Z3-Z6). I’ve never understod why if you want only one day you have to buy a paper ticket (which oyster was supposed to reduce).
So was there no planning from the Office of Rail Regulation (or whatever does that job now)?
No, quite honestly. I’m sure the development of Oyster began before the London mayoralty came in (it may even have begun in the last stages of the old Tory government), but it was applied by Ken with such a zeal that it unsettled the government and private rail companies. Which may have been what he wanted to do.
Oh, and never try and use a Oyster Extension Permit.
I got one a few months back…
An Oyster Extension Permit is something that only exists in theory at the moment – apparently, you’d need to add a specific bit of credit to an Oyster card containing a travelcard, but this is not confirmed yet.
I imagine what you’re talking about is an ordinary zone extension ticket, which as you say is an absolute pain in the arse to buy, and which Oyster PAYG on National Rail is meant to eradicate.
[...] and an indication of where Southeastern’s priorities really lie. (LATER: Boris Watch has some comment and some graphs to show how, if you live in outer London and have no Tube, this may not be a good [...]
“But as the rail companies operate on franchises, the terms could be changed (when the franchise is renewed) to say that in London travelcard zones they have to operate under the same fairs structure.”
This is sort of what happened in 2007, when the NR fare structure was aligned with the Travelcard zones. What’s difficult is aligning the fare setting mechanism for TOCs that operate inside and outside London under DfT franchises with TfL fares set independently by the Mayor according to how he thinks TfL should operate. This shows up in my analysis when looking at the way fares increase as you cross zones in outer London.
I’ve just read a google groups thread on Oyster Extension Permits. It sounds completely mad.
Think I’ll still be buying paper tickets to get to Surbiton when I have to.
Wow. No surprise that attaching a chaotic Train Fares System to TFL creates a
At least for South Londoners Boris Johnson’s regressive bus fare adjustments won’t seem so bad now as we’ll easily reach the capped Day Tickets anyway.
Wow. No surprise that attaching a chaotic Train Fares System to TFL creates a equally chaotic system.
At least for South Londoners Boris Johnson’s regressive bus fare adjustments won’t seem so bad now as we’ll easily reach the capped Day Tickets anyway.
Is this a demonstration of public efficiency over private inefficiency?
It’s supposed to be the other way around – but once again the private sector comes up short – and then expects the passenger to fill the gap.
Never mind – bike is always best. Even though I live in Wimbledon and work in the city – I will always ride the 9 miles because SWT is a rip off and the tube is actually slower than the bike!
You have got to get used to the fact that whilst it’s called ‘public transport’ – it is of no benefit to the public at all – it’s actually ‘private transport’.
Time for London Travelwatch and the the London Assembly Transport Committee to commission a study monitoring the effected system as opposed to the espoused one. This complex and arcane change to the system is tinkering with the symptoms and not the causes of the existing problem. It will prove to be for Boris “a poll tax on wheels moment” as he and TfL catch it in the neck if ATOC member’s revenue protection officers start to penalise people who have already paid up front for their Oyster cards. It would appear that the Mayor has not learnt from the SLL/ELL shambles that a supine posture with the DfT and ATOC is not sound politics. Any old agreement is not good enough – it is has to be right. There is a fundamental dichotemy between the National Rail franchising system and that which is operated by TfL and trying to bolt them together is worthy of Heath Robinson.
It will be interesting to see if Boris has any meaningful input into the next Conservative Manifesto.
For anyone keen to learn more about the details of how the scheme might operate I understand the Mayor is ‘launching’ the scheme at Balham rail station on Monday November 23rd at 9.30am.
It will be a joint event with Boris Johnson and Lord Adonis in attendance. Southern Railway’s Managing Director, Chris Burchell and ATOC’s Chairman, Tom Smith are also apparently to attend. How much opportunity this launch will give to ask detailed questions is debatable.
However The Mayor and the Chair of the London Assembly’s Transport Committee Lib Dem Caroline Pidgeon had an exchange about some of the issues raised in comments here at Mayor’s Question Time yesterday (Nov 18th) morning.
You can see a webcast of the meeting at http://www.london.gov.uk/assembly/webcast-captions.jsp and scroll to 2hrs and 16 minutes into the meeting to watch the exchange. Boris Johnson wasn’t able to elucidate much, seemingly being rather annoyed that he had to talk about the issue at the meeting yesterday rather than at the press launch on Monday.
I was so upset last time THE PRICE WENT UP that now I started a new WEBSITE called TUBEJOURNEY.COM where you can buy and sell on your journey to get the most out of your fare. GET RID OF STUFF YOU DONT NEED AND MAKE MONEY TO PAY FOR YOUR JOURNEY
CHECK OUT THE SITE EVERYONE
http://www.tubejourney.com – LETS GET OUR OWN BACK!!!
love it? Please tell everyone and the press if you can!
AJ
The Extension Permit system is an utter shambles – so much so, that it genuinely renders the system unusable for me and I expect very many others. I live in SW London, in Zone 3, and travel to work in Zone 2. However, on some occasions I travel into town for this and that and looked forward to being able to use the PAYG credit to do complete the journey into Waterloo.
But it doesn’t work. Like many suburban stations, my local one is unmanned. No ticket office means I can’t buy an extension permit without first walking ten minutes in the opposite direction to the nearest Ticket Stop newsagent. It’s the *exact opposite* of convenient, really.
[...] A reader of this blog, Sharon, comments: [...]
Oyster PAYG is horribly complex and in terms of walking up the station every day and BUYING a printed ticket turns out to be cheaper than using a more effective and less resource hungry method of tickets.
I was interested in the whole Oyster PAYG scheme from East Croydon to London Victoria everyday and according to the people on National Rail Enquiries there is absolutely no difference. So what is the point investing all this money into deploying card readers when hardly anybody will bother using them? Oyster was a way to save money not flush it down the toilet because of the greedy train companies wanting to grab more money for shareholders and giving less back to us that have to travel on the horribly overcrowed transport network we currently have!!