Why is being 1 stop out of zone 6 so difficult?

eskimo26

mgdavid wrote: »

back to the OP (e26) - so are you talking about Sunbury to Kingston? Can you not use bus 216?

I'm trying not to give out that kind of information online, closest town is Redhill but we are closer to london on the train line.

She stays the night so she needs to pay single fares. She brings her bike and takes the train from Manor Park to Shenfield. The National Rail Anytime single fare Manor Park to Shenfield is £7. The Oyster off peak single fare is £3.20.

Alternatively she could pay £9.50 for a ticket Manor Park to Billericay, or use the Oyster to Shenfield and pay £3.30 just for the one stop from Shenfield to Billericay, combined cost £6.50.

How stupid is all that? For £19 she could have a round trip all the way with National Rail. For £6.40 she does the journey with a bit of a bike ride at each end.

I stay the night at my friends too and it's exactly as your describing, there's a very noticeable bump around zone 6 rather then a gradual price reduction...

But then in January the one day off peak travelcard (£8.90) or oyster off peak cap (£8.50) goes and the cap will be £11.70.

What? Have they said why? Surely that is the cap if its still available to buy individually? Sounds like they are changing the rules for profit.

silvercar

On capping:

Capping (all services)
Adult-rate daily caps within Zones 1-6 will be charged at 20% of the equivalent 7 Day Travelcard price at all times; there will no longer be separate off-peak caps
Additional daily caps will be introduced for Zones 1-3 and Zones 1-5
Separate peak and off-peak daily caps remain for Zones 1-9 and will increase by around 2.5%
Child-rate peak daily caps will continue to be half the adult rate
Child-rate off-peak daily caps will be frozen at £1.50 for Zones 1-9
16+ and Jobcentre Plus daily caps will continue to be half the adult rate
National Railcard off-peak daily caps will continue to be charged at a discount of 34% off the adult rate
Disabled Railcard peak and off-peak daily caps will be charged at a discount of 34% off the adult rate

On travelcards:

Travelcards
The Zones 1-2 Anytime Day Travelcard will be withdrawn
The Zones 1-4 Anytime Day Travelcard will increase from £11.40 to £12 (adult) and from £5.70 to £6 (child)
The Zones 1-6 Anytime Day Travelcard (adult and child) will be frozen
The Zones 1-9 Anytime Day Travelcard (adult and child) will increase by around 2.5%
The Zones 1-6 off-peak Day Travelcard will increase from £8.90 to £12 (adult) and from £3.60 to £6 (child)
The Zones 1-9 off-peak Day Travelcard will increase from £12.50 to £12.80 (adult) and from £4.60 to £6.40 (child)
National Railcard off-peak Day Travelcard will increase from £5.90 to £7.90 for Zones 1-6
7 Day, monthly and longer period Travelcards will increase by a maximum of 2.5%
You will no longer be able to buy Group Day tickets. A new Group Day Travelcard will be introduced; available for groups of 10 or more travelling together. This provides unlimited travel on all services after 9.30 Monday to Friday and all day Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holidays

The justification:

Flexible and part-time travel
There will be changes to capping to reduce the cost of travel for part time workers and those with flexible journey patterns. Although the caps have been restructured to better meet the needs of part time workers, the new caps will apply to everyone who uses pay as you go.

Daily capping allows you to make multiple pay as you go journeys in a single day, but limits the amount you pay for your travel. And if you do not reach a cap, pay as you go will still offer best value. From January 2nd 2015, the all-day cap for Zones 1-2 will be cut by £2.00 from £8.40 to £6.40, and for Zones 1-6 by over £4.00 from £15.80 to £11.70. Find out more about capping.

Cutting pay as you go daily caps so they are one fifth of the cost of a 7 Day Travelcard gives a much fairer cost for many part-time workers. Those with unpredictable working patterns can use pay as you go using Oyster or contactless with the guarantee that they will pay no more in a day than one fifth of the cost of a 7 Day Travelcard.

So the peak time cap zones 1-6 drops from £15.80 to £11.70, but the off-peak cap increases from £8.50 to £11.70. (of course the word off-peak becomes redundant as there will be just one cap.)

Source: https://www.tfl.gov.uk/campaign/new-fares-for-2015?intcmp=23318#on-this-page-4

eskimo26

silvercar wrote: »

The justification:

There is no justification, they would have worked it out so it's in there favour. They've moved the goalposts to help regular commuters with regular journeys but I guarantee they will make more money from the tourists and day visitors that will be looking to access all zones.

It sounds quite impractical for a busy working city like london, people will go where they need to go not restrict themselves by zones. These are just more confusing and arbitrary restrictions to remember that will ultimately benefit the travel companies income.

Merging the peak and off peak is interesting, my sister was paying £4000 a year of a miniscule foreign office salary to be packed into the carriage like an animal during peak services. So at least they've tried to address that even if it's just by robbing another group to pay for it.

As usual though its the big companies on top and the rest of us bending over and taking it up the *rse.

I appreciate you taking time out to post the information though.

silvercar

Merging the peak and off peak is interesting, my sister was paying £4000 a year of a miniscule foreign office salary to be packed into the carriage like an animal during peak services. So at least they've tried to address that even if it's just by robbing another group to pay for it.

Off peak fares were originally introduced to reduce congestion and encourage people to take off peak trains. Now this will go out of the window. The first train after 9.30am from my station is usually reasonable full, I doubt that will still be the case.

mgdavid

eskimo26 wrote: »

I'm trying not to give out that kind of information online, closest town is Redhill but we are closer to london on the train line. ......

er, so you're deliberately not giving information to accurately answer your specific question and you don't seem to like the answers you've received which explain the zone pricing policies of TfL and train companies on a general basis.
You appear to live in the Surrey stockbroker belt but make it sound like you're hard done by.
Have you considered getting a car, or living somewhere else, or if there's not a feasible alternative you could always just post here:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=82

eskimo26

mgdavid wrote: »

er, so you're deliberately not giving information to accurately answer your specific question and you don't seem to like the answers you've received which explain the zone pricing policies of TfL and train companies on a general basis.
You appear to live in the Surrey stockbroker belt but make it sound like you're hard done by.
Have you considered getting a car, or living somewhere else, or if there's not a feasible alternative you could always just post here:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=82

First of all Redhill is close enough for the purpose of the discussion.

Second of all Surrey is a big place with pockets of deprivation much like London. Yes what a revelation poor people live in areas with expensive property prices. People in this area are working class they not stockbrokers, i've never heard anything so utterly ignorant in my whole life. In some parts of Surrey you may have a point but to suggest simply living in Surrey makes me well off is pure simple mindedness. :mad:

Much like economically deprived people in London we are the ones that take the brunt of high costs and no more so then what is traditionally considered 'rich' or expensive areas like london or surrey. We are ordinary people trying to live were we were raised.

Some people might say move out if you can't afford it but if you do that to London i'd like to see who serves you your Latte or Mcdonalds or nurses you in Hospital, Surrey is no different. :T

Also get a car and go from Surrey into London? Your insane. You could get to Kingston easy enough but a lot of London by car is a nightmare.

Besides I can't afford one, i'm living at my parents, doing a full time college course and I have a serious chronic disability to boot. They cut my ESA when I started College, I get a £400 bursary and buggar all else, if i didn't have a disabled bus pass I probably couldn't afford to go to college. Your attitude stinks tbh you've really wound me up.

People don't seem to quite get how the poorest and most vulnerable groups have been hit recently, if I didn't have my Parents i'd probably be living in a bedsit on ESA and surviving off food banks. In fact the position of many vulnerable people is that they can't reach a food bank because they can't afford the transport. It's called the practicalities of being poor, something the policy makers are to rich to understand.

silvercar wrote: »

Off peak fares were originally introduced to reduce congestion and encourage people to take off peak trains. Now this will go out of the window. The first train after 9.30am from my station is usually reasonable full, I doubt that will still be the case.

I think if people here had a choice they would still catch the 9.30+ because trains are literally full to capacity during rush hour. Practically speaking you wouldn't physically get on if you tried to change your travel pattern. So it wouldn't change anything here purely by virtue of the trains having no capacity left.

martindow

eskimo26 wrote: »

First of all Redhill is close enough for the purpose of the discussion.

I'm not sure it is. If you let us know the exact station, people may be able to suggest some alternatives. I can't understand why you are so reluctant to do this. No one will be able to identify you amongst the thousands of passengers who regularly use the same station. I don't think there is much of a risk of stalkers!

surreysaver

Sounds like Merstham to me. 405 bus to Purley or Croydon will get you into the zones with an Oystercard.

Inside the zones, fares are subsidized by London taxpayers. Outside London, where tfl buses extend, sometimes they are subsidised by the County Councils, sometimes passengers are lucky. If you would like Merstham to be in the zones, contact Surrey County Council and see if they will pay for it. I think I know what their answer will be. In the meantime, you are lucky to have the 405 bus subsidised by London taxpayes to benefit you.

mgdavid

eskimo26 wrote: »

..... you've really wound me up.
......

good, now we are getting some facts. I'm sorry I had to be blunt to get them.
Are you talking about going to Kingston or going into (central) London? Or both? Or somewhere else?
You say you have a bus pass due to disability, can you make more use of that rather than use expensive trains?
There are some hugely knowledgable people on this forum but without the details of routes, times, frequencies etc it's impossible to advise you, as another poster has said.

silvercar

yorkie2 wrote: »

Epsom Downs is a relatively quiet branch line station at the end of a quiet residential street, so it makes sense to have artificially lower fares compared to Epsom.

However from next month some passengers will benefit from buying a paper Travelcard from Epsom (for use on Southern only) as that is cheaper than a Travelcard that only covers Zones 1-6!

There's a discussion about this on another forum but some members will get flustered if I link to it, so maybe I'd best not!;)

I just found this. TBH I have as much chance of designing satellite orbits as understanding most of it, but the gist is that for anyone who currently buys a zone 1-6 travelcard at £8.90 who is horrified at the 30%+ increase, [STRIKE]should now consider buying the £10.50 Southern only travelcard from Epsom. [/STRIKE]This should be available to purchase at any ticket office.