London day travelcards saved

[jbqfc]

This seems to have slipped under the radar 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67206255

 

John 

[Wickham Green too]

It was on the BBC London news a few days ago ( 24th presumably ) ..... but of far greater use to those coming into the Capital from elsewhere, of course.

[Siberian Snooper]

Hurrah, some good news  for a change !! They make travelling in London so much easier.

 

 

[Invicta Informant]

Good news indeed. If only TfL did a U-turn on a certain something else that is unpopular and is negatively affecting people in Outer London and neighbouring counties.

[Wickham Green too]

11 minutes ago, Invicta Informant said:

... unpopular and is negatively affecting people in Outer London and neighbouring counties.

Might that be clean air by any chance ?

[adb968008]

Fantastic for railcard holders and group travellers.

 

it was crazy to remove it.

 

10mn customers cant be wrong.

[phil-b259]

4 hours ago, Invicta Informant said:

Good news indeed. If only TfL did a U-turn on a certain something else that is unpopular and is negatively affecting people in Outer London and neighbouring counties.

Yup….

 

However in you haste to blame TfL you ignore it takes two to Tango…..

 

TfL have been quite clear throughout that:-

 

(1) They have NEVER wanted to ditch the product

 

(2) They are being forced to look at all methods of increasing revenue as a result of the terms of the National Governments bail out deal.

 

(3) They need the agreement of ALL participating TOCs and the people who REALLY run them in the DfT to make any changes.

 

The brutal truth in this is that once again the Tory controlled DfT has been playing politics and was quite willing to see travelcards go as it suited their agenda of demonising the Labour Mayor.

 

What the DfT hadn’t counted on though (and similar in a way to the whole ticket office debacle) is the level of opposition to the move and the resultant pressure that put on Tory Home Counties MPs - pressure which caused the DfT to soften its position and allow the TOCs to start discussing alterations to the Travel Card scheme with TfL.

 

These discussions ultimately went and increased TfLs financial take from each ticket and helped them meet the national Governments bail-out conditions - which was the ONLY reason TfL were going to axe them in the first place!

 

 

 

Edited November 8, 2023 by phil-b259

[Siberian Snooper]

We don't get to hear the half of it, down here in the shires!

 

 

[Not Jeremy]

Bloody good news either way.

 

Perhaps there is some hope for us all.....

 

Feeling slightly more cheerful in Bath.

 

Simon

[Bernard Lamb]

6 hours ago, Siberian Snooper said:

Hurrah, some good news  for a change !! They make travelling in London so much easier.

 

 

However it comes at a price.

Bernard

[phil-b259]

1 hour ago, Bernard Lamb said:

However it comes at a price.

Bernard

 

Thats a given....

 

As the whole reason they were going to be withdrawn was to plug a hole in TfL finances and there has been no change in the stance of the National Government regarding the conditions of its bail out then obviously retention of the product is going to mean said products will obviously be subject to a significant price increase.

[adb968008]

21 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Thats a given....

 

As the whole reason they were going to be withdrawn was to plug a hole in TfL finances and there has been no change in the stance of the National Government regarding the conditions of its bail out then obviously retention of the product is going to mean said products will obviously be subject to a significant price increase.

Not really…
 

Quote

The daily travelcards are currently priced at £15.20.

But from 24 March there will be 3% one-off increase on the travelcards on top of the annual fare increase.

 

Thats £15.65 + afi

those 45p increases do add up though, 12 million would add £4.8mn to tfl revenues… about the same as this consultation and negotiation cost would be my bet, by the time this is done and dusted, taking into accounts discounts etc I bet this is a net zero.

Damage to Khan.. oh yes.

restoration to Tories .. no.

 

politically this hasnt helped anyone.
so both lose.

Edited November 8, 2023 by adb968008

[DY444]

Leaving the politics out of it.  If you look at the price that was being charged for a travel card add on relative to the same rail ticket to a London Terminal then in most cases TfL were receiving a fraction of the revenue due from a typical day visitor's travel on TfL services had that visitor used Oyster/contactless.  Or put another way, TfL (and therefore London council tax payers) were subsidising every travelcard add on sold.  Even with this new agreement they still are to an extent.  

 

Now putting the politics back in.  For anyone who thinks the ULEZ expansion is about clean air then please contact me as I have a Nigerian prince trying to move billions out of a secret bank account and I need your help.  The ULEZ expansion is a scheme which allows vehicles that TfL deem to be polluting to pay to continue to pollute.  And judging by the revenue figures from the charges levied, thousands and thousands of such vehicles are paying to pollute every single day.  I have observed no discernable reduction in either traffic levels or use of non-compliant vehicles in my part of the great metropolis so the likely effect on air quality is shaping up to be negligible.  Indeed a recent study in Glasgow showed the air quality there had deteriorated since their ULEZ was introduced.  The biggest irony of all in London though is that the Mayor is encouraging people to use the tube where the air quality on the deep level sections is far, far worse than anywhere in outer London.  ULEZ expansion is a revenue stream for TfL, nothing more, nothing less.  

[62613]

10 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Not really…
 

 

Thats £15.65 + afi

those 45p increases do add up though, 12 million would add £4.8mn to tfl revenues… about the same as this consultation and negotiation cost would be my bet, by the time this is done and dusted, taking into accounts discounts etc I bet this is a net zero.

Damage to Khan.. oh yes.

restoration to Tories .. no.

 

politically this hasnt helped anyone.
so both lose.

That reads to me like inflation plus 3%, so 8 - 10%. £16.48 to £16.78 next year! Still a bargain, though.

Edited November 9, 2023 by 62613

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, DY444 said:

... thousands and thousands of such vehicles are paying to pollute every single day.  ...

POLITICS ALERT ! ................... clearly £12.50 isn't enough of a deterrent !

 

Now, what were we saying about Travelcards ?

[KingEdwardII]

The value of a Travelcard puzzles me, compared with using Oyster/Contactless card.

 

The extra cost currently for a travelcard compared with a return ticket is between £8.20 and £10.80 (from Winchester), with the extra cost falling as the price of the return increases.

 

However, these fares totally exclude the cheapest advance fares - £30.00 (or as low as £27.80 for a few trains) advance compared with £46.10 off peak return. Advance fares are pairs of singles and there is no travelcard option.

 

Oyster/Contactless have a current day limit £8.10 (Z 1-2); £11.70 (Z 1-4); £14.90 (Z 1-6).

 

So Travelcard looks a poor choice compared with Advance tickets and only really an advantage for turn-up-and-go Off-Peak returns if you're going to travel out to Zone 4 or beyond. For Anytime returns, you're already paying a fortune and the Travelcard makes sense.

 

Perhaps things are different for other rail routes.

 

Yours, Mike.

[Wickham Green too]

You'll probably find that the Advance fare is the same to Waterloo as to the boundary ( Surbiton ) so 'includes' an element of 'zones' .... it was certainly the same in the opposite direction when I last went to Winchester ................. presumably, though, that doesn't apply closer in from Woking, say.

[Siberian Snooper]

Whatever it is, I get a 1/3 off, using my rail pass.

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

What TfL wanted was for everyone to us Oyster Cards which meant they would get more revenue - simple as that.  

 

What no one should overlook is that the purpose of a London Travelcard is to make things easier for passengers and to save them from messing about paying twice while also giving a discount on travel.  That was no doubt what was upsetting Khan because the money was not going straight into his capacious coffers - where it wouldn't get a discount fare - but was transferred in from fares collected, at their expense, by other operators.   Don't forget that however it is done issuing a Travelcard costs the issuer money and TfL  have never had to pay for that part of the deal with the passenger

 

If Khan seriously wanted to raise money, apart from his ULEZ extension, he could easily do so by increasing fares in the outer TfL Zones particularly those where demand is stretching capacity.  But that of course is going to impact his chances of re-election which (unfortunately) takes us almost back to politics.

 

1 hour ago, Siberian Snooper said:

Whatever it is, I get a 1/3 off, using my rail pass.

 

 

Only a third?   Tha's bit of a change as it used to be 75% reduction for Priv tickets.  Plus presumably Staff Travel Cards can still be used on certain parts of the TfL network where other national/Regional  passes are available?  (Perhaps apart from the central section of the Liz Line which was never railway company owned athough national network 'All Stations' passes are valid to any Liz Line station).

[KingEdwardII]

18 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

the Advance fare is the same to Waterloo as to the boundary ( Surbiton )

The fares are much the same from Winchester to Surbiton as they are to Waterloo - both for Advance and for the Travelcard.

 

There is one twist - there are a set of really low priced Advance tickets that work out at £28.90 to Waterloo, which are not available to the other stations on the line, like Surbiton, Clapham Junction, etc, where the lowest fare is £30.00.

 

Yours, Mike.

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, KingEdwardII said:

The fares are much the same from Winchester to Surbiton as they are to Waterloo - both for Advance and for the Travelcard.

 

There is one twist - there are a set of really low priced Advance tickets that work out at £28.90 to Waterloo, which are not available to the other stations on the line, like Surbiton, Clapham Junction, etc, where the lowest fare is £30.00.

 

Yours, Mike.

That's a good example of the  anomalies that case such complexity in trying to work out the cheapest fare for the journeys you want to do. 

Understanding the ticketing system really shouldn't be difficult - but it's one of the things that puts the average punter off using the railways.

 

Public transport is generally seen as more environmentally friendly than private cars but indiviudals make decisions based on the personal impact of the economics of the system we live under.  At the end of the day I suppose it's a political decision whether we want to make train travel convenient, comfortable and affordable for everybody or aim to fill spare capacity in order to optimise utilisation of expensive assets and maximise revenue and profits for the benefit of the individual owning bodies.  

[Wickham Green too]

14 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

... the individual owning bodies.  

I'd guess the owning bodies' revenue is affected by number of seats while the operators revenue varies with the number of bums thereon.

[jjb1970]

Excellent news! Especially for a city like London which hosts huge numbers of tourists and visitors. I use the day card a lot as it avoids multiple overseas transaction charges to use contactless multiple times.

[KingEdwardII]

1 hour ago, Michael Hodgson said:

complexity in trying to work out the cheapest fare for the journeys you want to do.

Well, to be fair, the National Rail website and app both lay out all the fares pretty clearly. The NR website shows a list of the available trains including connections (if you wish) and you can display all the available fares for each train, including Travelcards. You can easily decide for yourself to go for the cheapest fare or the most convenient train which fits your budget.

 

The main thing to remember is that typically you need to plan ahead to get the lowest fares - and also sacrifice flexibility since Advance tickets tie you to particular services. Having said that, I have been offered an Advance fare on day of travel - presumably there were few bookings for the trains concerned - but this is a rare experience.

 

Yours, Mike.

[Wickham Green too]

35 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:

...  The NR website shows a list of the available trains including connections (if you wish) and you can display all the available fares for each train, including Travelcards. ...

What it DOESN'T do - and no ticket machine on the planet seems capable of - is detail tickets FROM the zone boundary for those of us who live within .................................. If you know the appropriate boundary station you can get fares but only times for trains that actually stop there !