Great Western Coffee Shop

Flagging for a diary entry - the "annual fare rise" day.


(Amended / corrected from original posting of 6th)

It's 2nd January, surely?

Yes - posted 6th as "First Monday back" in error.  Thanks for flagging, original post corrected.

Well many passengers are seeing huge fare rises from the 15th December, as GWR are secretly tinkering with the evening peak restrictions out of Paddington to the Thames Valley.

Surely if it was secret you wouldn't know about it ;)

The Thames Valley stopping services are transferring to TfL Rail on 15th December.

Timetable changes to those stopping services have put them into the 'peak windows' used by journey planners and booking engines. However the printed timetable available from GWR shows clearly which services require 'Anytime' tickets and which don't.

https://www.gwr.com/~/media/gwr/pdfs/plan-journey/timetables/2019/december/t10-dl-web-tt.pdf

From that timetable you can see that all TfL services from Paddington in the evening peak are valid with Off Peak tickets. It's only GWR fast and semi-fast services that require an Anytime ticket.

Hopefully the electronic data will be corrected so that it doesn't continue to accidentally put the TfL stopping services into 'peak windows'.

Has anyone seen any guidance being put up in advance about the way TfL and GWR tickets and services will fit together (or not) at stations from Slough to Reading? 

There's a note on relevant timetables (T10 and TS) that:

Previously, the stations you could use Oyster/contactless at didn't have any fast or semifast GWR services. Will there now be rules saying don't get on them, even off-peak?

The peak hours restrictions are already somewhat odd, and will get odder. That web page says:

TfL has (it says) time-based morning and evening peaks both ways (but with an evening exception for entering zone 1). Current PAYG restriction codes for this line say the same thing. Only Overground Euston services have a fully tidal peak - is that going to be introduced? GWR's words suggest something that matches neither.

GWR for its own tickets (outside TFL zones) has a morning peak inwards towards Paddington. Some off-peak tickets don't restrict outward travel from Paddington, though it applies generally in most places based on time alone. For evenings, its own tickets don't implement a peak on stopping trains, even TfL's. (Have I got that right? These aren't journeys I'm familiar with.)

Note that GWR are introducing evening peak restrictions on semifast trains, which has little to do with TfL services but will add to the general confusion and annoy passengers familiar with the current rules.

I have to admire your restraint, BNM, in not putting quotes around the word "accidentally"...