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Author Topic: Fares to/from Elizabeth Line stations from outside the zonal areas  (Read 1847 times)
ChrisB
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« on: May 26, 2022, 17:58:01 »

TfL» (Transport for London - about) are making life expensive.....

Quote
If you live within the Transport for London (TfL) fare zones, it means you generally get the cheapest fare, but if you don't, the fares structure is set up with 'traps' which force you to cough up extra cash.

It's purposely designed to convince more affluent Home Counties commuters to spend more money with TfL, which needs not only to pay back millions in Crossrail-related debt, but to also fill a £1.9billion funding gap as it is not expected to be financially sustainable until April 2023. The fares policy is also inconsistent - not just in terms of what you pay, but how you pay for it, which differs depending on who you are and where you're tying to travel to. Confused? Yes and that's the point.

TfL hopes that people from the Home Counties (beyond Zone 6) will decide to take the faster, direct Elizabeth line to get across Central London, changing where necessary. It's planning that by 2031 over 60 million journeys will switch from GWR (Great Western Railway), Southeastern and SWR» (South Western Railway - about) in particular to take the new route instead.

You can't use Oyster (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services) between West Drayton and Reading
This is the first ticketing constraint. If you want to catch the Elizabeth line at Reading, Twyford, Maidenhead, Taplow, Burnham, Slough, Langley or Iver, you cannot use an Oyster card. Instead, you have to use either a paper ticket or contactless. For many people, this is fine and the capping system will still save them some money, but as you cannot link a railcard to Contactless, you have to buy a paper ticket.

Buying a paper ticket then creates extra problems for you. You cannot buy a paper ticket 'point-to-point' fare to any of the new stations on the Elizabeth line central section, meaning that if you want to travel between Twyford and Canary Wharf with a young person's railcard, you cannot - the fare does not exist. Instead you would have to either buy a paper Travelcard from Twyford or break your journey at West Drayton (the boundary of Zone 6) and then use an Oyster card. Real rail fares geeks will know that Travelcards tend not to be only around £4 more than the cost of a return ticket to Central London anyway, but Mayor Sadiq Khan is proposing to withdraw TfL services from the Travelcard Agreement, which would mean this option would cease to exist.

You can't use Travelcards at all, and must pay extra, to travel to/from Heathrow Airport on the Elizabeth Line
This isn't a surprise given that trains between Paddington and Heathrow have always had a surcharge, however given the Elizabeth line is on the Tube map just like the Piccadilly is, you may assume they have the same fares, but they do not. Paddington to Heathrow costs £10.80 off-peak/£11.50 peak single on Oyster/contactless - a hefty premium of over £7 compared with the Tube, but usually cheaper than Heathrow Express. It will catch unfamiliar passengers out as signage and announcements about this premium are not always evident over the whole line or on trains.

City Hall has presented proposals to implement a Heathrow premium on Piccadilly line journeys between the airport and Zone 1. That would reduce the attractiveness of the alternative route and again push people onto the Elizabeth line.

You can't buy a point-to-point ticket from outside the fare zones to the new Elizabeth line stations
This is the biggest trap of all for the Home Counties. Go to any National Rail station outside Zone 6 with a National Rail ticket machine and try to type in one of the following destinations: Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Canary Wharf, Custom House or Woolwich. On some you simply can't and on others you are sold a Travelcard instead - you can test it out on the National Rail website now.

That's because the new Elizabeth line stations are not available as destinations for point-to-point tickets.

This will hit commuters to Canary Wharf as they won't have the option to buy a simple return ticket there from popular commuter towns just outside of the fare zones such as Gravesend, Guildford or Gerrards Cross. As TfL is now planning to axe Travelcards anyway, all of these people will eventually have to pay twice - once for their National Rail journey into the capital and then for the Elizabeth line.

You can't use the Elizabeth line as a shortcut on many National Rail tickets even though it's a National Rail line
The traingeeks among us might say - hang on I can buy a National Rail ticket to travel to Paddington, Farringdon, Moorgate/Liverpool Street, Whitechapel and Abbey Wood anyway, so I'll just use the Elizabeth line as a shortcut. In many cases you'd be wrong. Unless your ticket has the route "Any Permitted", the asterisk/cross symbols (*/+) which allows you to cross London on TfL services anyway or a specific mention of a route "via Elizabeth line", you won't be able to use it.


Fares are in the process of being changed so that journeys such as Gravesend-Farringdon become "via City Thameslink", which will force you to use the Thameslink via City Thameslink instead of the Elizabeth line via Canary Wharf. If you wanted to use the faster Elizabeth line, you'd have to split your journey using contactless/Oyster or buy a Travelcard, both of which will cost more, with the Travelcard set to disappear anyway.

There are additional fares being added to the system which will allow for return fares between Home Counties stations and 'London Zone 1' or 'London Zones 1-4' which will allow for travel to the Elizabeth line stations, but by not simply adding them as new stations, the fares remain complicated and penalising. If you live in the Home Counties, travel to London regularly and want to save a few quid, you should stick to the original cross-London railway line as much as possible - Thameslink, which offers point-to-point fares to the cluster of its Central London stations ("London Thameslink") and has weekday and weekend 'super off peak' tickets which offer significant discounts, all of which you can use a railcard for.

An Elizabeth line single journey in Zone 1 is £2.50.

There are also a handful of bizarre anomalies even within the fares on Oyster. Take Elstree & Borehamwood, which is in Zone 6 - the single fares on Oyster to Elizabeth line stations are seemingly random:

Paddington (Zone 1): £8.90 (peak)/£6.00 (off-peak)
Bond Street (Z1): £8.90/£6.00
Tottenham Court Road (Z1): £8.90/£6.00
Farringdon (Z1): £7.30/£4.50
Liverpool Street (Z1): £7.30/£4.50

Whitechapel (Z2): £8.90/£6.00
Canary Wharf (Z2): £8.90/£6.00
Custom House (Z3): £8.90/£6.00

Woolwich (Z4): £7.30/£4.50
Abbey Wood (Z4): £7.30/£4.50

In this case, a journey all the way across London from Zone 6, through Zones 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3 and 4 is cheaper than a journey just to Zone 1.

It's also cheaper to go to Liverpool Street one station east on the Elizabeth line after changing at Farringdon than to Tottenham Court Road one station west despite being in the same zone!!

Good Luck everyone. I hope TfL make the fares clear before travelling. Being railway, rather than 'the tube', I guess the fares don't have to fit the current fare tables.

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paul7575
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« Reply #1 on: May 26, 2022, 21:28:29 »

First error I can see is that you can use travelcards to Heathrow, except on the Express.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2022, 17:20:12 by paul7575 » Logged
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« Reply #2 on: May 26, 2022, 23:47:35 »

Am I right in thinking you are quoting mylondon.news, ChrisB? Probably best to make that clear
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stuving
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« Reply #3 on: May 28, 2022, 14:04:13 »

From the BBC» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):
Quote
Elizabeth line overcharging solution sought by Transport for London

TfL» (Transport for London - about) has identified a problem at Farringdon as Thameslink passenger connect to the new Elizabeth line

Transport for London (TfL) is working on an "urgent solution" to stop Thameslink passengers being overcharged at Farringdon station when connecting to use the new Elizabeth line.

Passengers have complained they are having to leave Farringdon and touch in on re-entry to get the correct fare.

Some have been charged the maximum Zone 6 fare when changing without touching in.

TfL has said it is going to install readers.
...
A spokesman said a potential issues have been identified where "a small number of customers" changing onto the Elizabeth Line from Thameslink services.

He explained the problem originates from passengers outside the pay-as-you-go area who may have been charged a maximum fare as they have not touched in at Farringdon.

"We always want customers to pay the correct fare," the spokesman said.

"While we are urgently working on finding a more permanent solution we are encouraging customers to touch in at the ticket line or at validators on the London Underground platforms."

TfL says additional signage and TfL ambassadors are in place at Farringdon to help advise affected customers.

"Passengers who are not able to touch in can amend their journey on the TfL website or contact our customer services team to ensure they have only paid the correct fare," TfL said.

I presume, while it's not stated, that these passengers hold a national rail ticket for travel to Farringdon and want to continue their journey with PAYG (Pay as you go).

So this is another facet of the same underlying issue: the lines within the TfL charging system relate to it in several different ways. Moving between the lines, or the rules for the two overlapping charging systems, is just very complicated. I mean, even the combined experts on the Railforums thread on EL ticketing can't agree on what's going in.

EL is similar to Thameslink core and Overground - fully part of Tfl's system but also available as permitted routes on national rail (though EL is not in any Routeing Guide maps yet). That would be bad, but EL has not been made the same as any of the other bits.
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paul7575
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« Reply #4 on: May 28, 2022, 17:04:27 »


I presume, while it's not stated, that these passengers hold a national rail ticket for travel to Farringdon and want to continue their journey with PAYG (Pay as you go).

So this is another facet of the same underlying issue: the lines within the TfL» (Transport for London - about) charging system relate to it in several different ways. Moving between the lines, or the rules for the two overlapping charging systems, is just very complicated. I mean, even the combined experts on the Railforums thread on EL ticketing can't agree on what's going in.

EL is similar to Thameslink core and Overground - fully part of Tfl's system but also available as permitted routes on national rail (though EL is not in any Routeing Guide maps yet). That would be bad, but EL has not been made the same as any of the other bits.

That problem would have already been happening at Farringdon and numerous other stations if changing onto LU without touching in - it didn’t start this week.

Being able to touch in (or out) on the platform at major interchange stations has always led to issues with people being tempted to not bother with a ticket for the national rail leg - easy to do if the train has no guard and the origin or return destination has no barriers.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2022, 18:41:29 by paul7575 » Logged
Ralph Ayres
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« Reply #5 on: May 28, 2022, 20:23:04 »

So many errors in the article that it's hard to know where to start.  Some of the fares and who sets them rely on complex agreements negotiated between the train companies, the DfT» (Department for Transport - about) and TfL» (Transport for London - about), all wanting to make sure they got what they saw as their fair share. Broadly the central bit of the Elizabeth line is like the Underground for pricing, including travelling across London, using a Railcard, paying extra beyond Paddington etc. Nothing is new, and fares to Heathrow have been high for a long time.

Most National Rail ticket machines are rubbish for buying tickets to the Underground, and nothing changes for Crossrail, it just makes it even more obvious. You generally have to select some obscure text along the lines of "London Underground Zones 1-2" etc, though the text varies by machine supplier and you have to be very careful which zones you type particularly if you are already inside Zones 1-6 when you also need to include the National Rail zones used not just the LU ones!
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stuving
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« Reply #6 on: May 30, 2022, 11:06:48 »

I presume, while it's not stated, that these passengers hold a national rail ticket for travel to Farringdon and want to continue their journey with PAYG (Pay as you go).

Here's a picture tweeted by Geoff Marshall:


No mention there of "new validators will be installed near here very soon".

Now, what have they blanked out? Might it be "Farringdon or"? Looking on BRFares, there are two flows from e.g. Stevenage, one to "Farringdon" and  one to "London Thameslink" that also includes the other stations between the main line termini. As the range of tickets and fares are identical, apart from some accompanied child flat fares, I guess the ones to just Farringdon don't get issued. Or is it something more devious?
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« Reply #7 on: May 30, 2022, 11:50:41 »

I'd have a guess it might say "London Terminals". There will be scenarios where you wouldn't need to start a PAYG (Pay as you go) journey with that destination.
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paul7575
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« Reply #8 on: May 30, 2022, 16:33:08 »

I'd have a guess it might say "London Terminals". There will be scenarios where you wouldn't need to start a PAYG (Pay as you go) journey with that destination.
That’s quite likely to be the blanked text, but Farringdon never has been a part of the London Terminals group.  If it did start out including London Terminals on the poster it just shows how little knowledge there is.

In fact  “London Thameslink” itself only became a possible destination from the ECML (East Coast Main Line) and from the south of London within the last few years, in May 2018. 

(That might explain point to point fares to Farringdon still being available from some origins, as mentioned for Stevenage by stuving in post #6.)

Another pitfall in this area is that from the north, “London Terminals” fares are inter-available to Moorgate using LU from Kings Cross, but not valid for entry or exit at the intermediate stations, ie Farringdon and Barbican. 
« Last Edit: May 30, 2022, 17:51:31 by paul7575 » Logged
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« Reply #9 on: May 30, 2022, 20:28:17 »

This is not new at Farringdon, there are 'validators' at the Thameslink and Circle/Met/ 'ot n Cold interchange points, how this was missed with the Elizabeth Line and Thameslink interchange points I cannot understand.

This could also be an issue at Paddington when Elizabeth line through running commences with the interchange onto the Bakerloo Line anyone outside Zone 6 not using the PAYG (Pay as you go) could find it expensive exiting from an LUL (London Underground Ltd) station
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