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Tube pricing
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nevermodern


Posts: 653
Joined: Feb 2007
Post: #21
04-06-2008 01:56 PM

Well, the sense is that the Oyster card system moves people more efficiently round the system, which is to everyone's benefit. The more people who use the card, the quicker people are moved round the system, therefore the financial incentives exist to encourage as many people as possible to use Oyster cards.

Keep it in your wallet, jon! Or have a couple of them charged up with a fiver so you don't lose out.

Incidentally, another reason for Oyster is that it gives TfL shedloads of information about who's travelling on what journeys which allows them to plan better (although there are clearly civil liberties implications here).

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Baboonery


Posts: 581
Joined: Sep 2007
Post: #22
04-06-2008 03:07 PM

No longer? Are you sure about that? I don't think you are. It's clearly faster by Oyster. Unless you're at King's Cross, where the gates are so slow you've got time to sort out parking in SE23 while you wait for the bloody thing to open.

TfL claimed a maximum throughput of 40 people via Oyster on the standard gates, compared with 15 via paper tickets. I'm told by the tube worker I play cricket with that 15 is a bit low, but 40 is about right. At the worst, it's just under twice as fast by Oyster.

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Baboonery


Posts: 581
Joined: Sep 2007
Post: #23
04-06-2008 03:08 PM

That's people per minute, sorry.

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nevermodern


Posts: 653
Joined: Feb 2007
Post: #24
04-06-2008 03:11 PM

And Oyster has *hugely* speeded up entry onto buses.

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Applespider


Posts: 285
Joined: Feb 2006
Post: #25
04-06-2008 03:25 PM

I love my Oyster card - so much so that I gave up my Forest Hill rail discount to get one at one point.

It's so much easier to have in the bottom of a bag and just touch it rather than having to juggle a piece of card with the rest of your shopping etc. And it makes going out of zone for whatever reason quicker since you don't have to queue up for a ticket since the ticket machines rarely had extensions on them.

I'm guessing that as well as fines, it also saves costs in terms of the number of gates, ticket machines and men in ticket offices.

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jon14


Posts: 145
Joined: Sep 2007
Post: #26
04-06-2008 03:56 PM

Baboonery wrote:
No longer? Are you sure about that? I don't think you are. It's clearly faster by Oyster. Unless you're at King's Cross, where the gates are so slow you've got time to sort out parking in SE23 while you wait for the ***** thing to open.

TfL claimed a maximum throughput of 40 people via Oyster on the standard gates, compared with 15 via paper tickets. I'm told by the tube worker I play cricket with that 15 is a bit low, but 40 is about right. At the worst, it's just under twice as fast by Oyster.


TFL would claim that, wouldn't they? Your initial argument was that Oysters reduced overcrowding. But wasn't the congestion charge supposed to encourage more people to use public transport?

I've already said I don't deny it's a bit quicker - just that if you put your ticket in the right way first time it's hardly that much quicker. And certainly not the reason why paper tickets increased in price to ?4 when Oyster fare stayed the same - apparently it was 'to fund improvements' (according to Ken).

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Baboonery


Posts: 581
Joined: Sep 2007
Post: #27
04-06-2008 04:30 PM

Yes, TfL are engaged in a vast conspiracy to underestimate the time taken to get through entry gates, against all demonstrable evidence!

That wasn't my initial argument, but never mind. Price increases reduce overcrowding, and have been used as the main policy instrument against overcrowding on the tube for decades.

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jon14


Posts: 145
Joined: Sep 2007
Post: #28
04-06-2008 04:32 PM

Baboonery wrote:
Yes, TfL are engaged in a vast conspiracy to underestimate the time taken to get through entry gates, against all demonstrable evidence!

That wasn't my initial argument, but never mind. Price increases reduce overcrowding, and have been used as the main policy instrument against overcrowding on the tube for decades.


So why didn't Oyster fares for single journeys increase too?

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Baboonery


Posts: 581
Joined: Sep 2007
Post: #29
04-06-2008 04:50 PM

Because the fare system was restructured to penalise YOU for forgetting your oyster card!

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baggydave


Posts: 390
Joined: May 2004
Post: #30
04-06-2008 10:38 PM

Though you lot were educated and well read. Clearly not. Now BD is an old trot, couldn't care a fig about market economics but is a realist.

You voted out the last vaguely socialist government in 1979 and since then had more or less pro-market governments (oddly enough Mrs T did not start off than much of a free marketeer I beileve, although someone will correct me no doubt about Keynes (Sp?).)

So the cost we pay is loosely the cost it is to run, no doubt helped a little by our Council tax, central government, plus paying for some of the neglect in former decades, some of the botched initiatives and no doubt remaining inefficiencies from the good old days of state ownership.

Our Ken, who wanted control of the underground, probably never realised that it needed so much spending on it. Of course he got control of the buses which he simplified and reduced the fares, never quite down to the 40p he promised in outer London, apart from on free buses like the number 12. But go elshwhere in the UK and bus fares seem to be expensive. Older readers will remember Ken's fairs fare from 20 years ago when he hacked London Transport fares, by subsidising from the rates, until the outer boroughs revolted (oh dear I seem to be sneering at Bromley man again).

And the irony is that France, who of course were instrumental in setting up the then Common market, do their best not to follow the free market with lots of interventionist tricks, controls and subsidies.

I am echoing Baboonery but wanted a rant anyway. And if France is so good TJ why don't you join the cheese eating surrender monkeys. Now that is a for a different thread.

And if I want to get on my hobby horse it will be on the way they forced Oyster on us and the lack of proper integration of our public transport system, - go to Budapest where trolly bus (remember those Brian?), bus, tram, undergound, overground and even a funicular (sp?) all have common nodes (intersections) and one very cheap travel pass/ticker

That's told you. "Thank you BD"

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baggydave


Posts: 390
Joined: May 2004
Post: #31
04-06-2008 10:41 PM

Oh and in time Oyster card will be used to profile you - in the same way that the stores use their cards so that they can target advertising at you. Believe me.

Amazon has profiled BD as a sandal wearing bearded vegan hippy. How far from the truth can you be.

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jon14


Posts: 145
Joined: Sep 2007
Post: #32
05-06-2008 06:33 AM

Baboonery wrote:
Because the fare system was restructured to penalise YOU for forgetting your oyster card!


I rest my case.

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Baboonery


Posts: 581
Joined: Sep 2007
Post: #33
05-06-2008 08:31 AM

jon14 wrote:

Baboonery wrote:
Because the fare system was restructured to penalise YOU for forgetting your oyster card!


I rest my case.


I should point out that my last post was a joke.

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jon14


Posts: 145
Joined: Sep 2007
Post: #34
05-06-2008 09:27 AM

Baboonery wrote:
I should point out that my last post was a joke.


It wasn't as funny as the ?4 paper ticket reducing overcrowding one!

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baggydave


Posts: 390
Joined: May 2004
Post: #35
05-06-2008 09:13 PM

Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite and storm those (tube) barriers!

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Baboonery


Posts: 581
Joined: Sep 2007
Post: #36
09-06-2008 09:09 AM

jon14 wrote:

Baboonery wrote:
I should point out that my last post was a joke.


It wasn't as funny as the ?4 paper ticket reducing overcrowding one!


Nor was it as funny as your 'I've forgotten my ticket so the world should change just for me and let me off because I'm a nice person' one.

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jon14


Posts: 145
Joined: Sep 2007
Post: #37
09-06-2008 12:53 PM

[/quote]

Nor was it as funny as your 'I've forgotten my ticket so the world should change just for me and let me off because I'm a nice person' one.
[/quote]

Where did I say that? I'm not saying I should be let off, just that I don't think it's right.

My point is that there seems to be no good reason (as far as the consumer is concerned) why 'ticket' prices should be over 150% more expensive than Oyster fares.

The only reason that has been levelled is that TFL want the whole thing to be ticketless because it's quicker. I think this is justification for a moderate difference, as a moderate difference would have the same effect.

The current system discriminates disproportionately against visitors, tourists and infrequent users for no good reason.

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nevermodern


Posts: 653
Joined: Feb 2007
Post: #38
09-06-2008 01:22 PM

It doesn't descriminate. You just...buy...an Oyster card. Everyone can do it.

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PVP


Posts: 271
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #39
09-06-2008 01:32 PM

Oyster is great... when it works. I've had ?10 of pre-pay disappear off my card, and only found out when amongst the hordes getting away from the foo fighters gig on Friday. Not helpful.

Plus I needed a replacement card a few months back which did not have the replacement monthly 'card' on it. Do get this corrected at a tube station? Noooo, 1 week later, third card arrives. Happy traveller me.

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jon14


Posts: 145
Joined: Sep 2007
Post: #40
10-06-2008 10:17 AM

nevermodern wrote:
It doesn't descriminate. You just...buy...an Oyster card. Everyone can do it.


That was an easy response. We recently had two visitors to London who wanted to do a single journey on the underground to get home from zone 1. Do they pay the ?4 single fare, or do they pay ?3 for a card and go through a registration process to get a card only for it to coast 50p more? And then have ?7.00 combined on their cards that they don't want on their cards?

Or how many tourists actually remember to apply in advance of thier visit for their 15 year old's Oyster photocard?

It's very easy to think that just because you understand Oyster that everybody else does. I was speaking to people in Hampshire recently who had never heard of it. When they come to London, they just go to the machine and buy a ticket - who tells them it's 150% more expensive?

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