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Update 3 December: the introduction of contactless ticketing, originally scheduled on 14 December, was postponed on Greater Anglia (including Stansted Express) only due to problems identified during testing. Greater Anglia mentioned that “During detailed testing, issues were identified that could have affected journeys and the price paid on Greater Anglia services and prevented the technology from working as intended.” The expansion of the system will still take place on routes of other operators as scheduled. Therefore, it has been confirmed…

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A high profile class-action lawsuit, the Boundary Fares claim, has been dismissed by the court. The class representative alleged that Southeastern, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR, trading as Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern) and SWR had an abuse of dominance position by failing to make Boundary Fares sufficiently available and/or to take reasonable steps to make customers purchasing tickets aware of Boundary Fares. The case was decided against the claimant’s favour, but it highlighted a few key points for…

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The beginning – simple, zone-based fares When the Oyster Card was rolled out in London, it was designed to always give the best value fares. Oyster cards can operate in two ways – as a holder for Travelcards, or as a holder for PAYG credits. A Travelcard is a prepaid ticket, valid on most public transport in London, including National Rail services. Without a Travelcard valid for the journey, PAYG credits are deducted for travel instead. When used in PAYG…

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In London, although National Rail and London Underground are separate transport networks, it is possible to buy a ticket for travel for single or return journeys on the other network, including tickets for journeys involving both networks. If your journey starts at a National Rail station outside the London fare zones 1-6 and ends at an Underground station (or vice versa), it is usually (but not always) cheaper to buy a ticket for the National Rail portion and use Oyster…

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In an ideal world, if you want to travel by train from A to B to C back to A, you can buy a ticket from A to B, then B to C, then C to A. However, by doing so in Great Britain, more often than not you will pay much more than people doing return journeys, A-B-A-C-A despite that the distance is much shorter. This is because of a historical artifact which effectively penalising off-peak single journeys. In…

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