please empty your brain below
If I travel by train, tube or DLR and have to change it doesn't cost extra. Yet if I travel by bus it does. I wish TFL would sort this out, perhaps by making it you can touch in again on another bus for free within a certain time period of paying for a bus journey?
My own view is that an increase has been decided on, including whatever "bunce" might be available, and work has carried on in the background. Boris has said he has not decided but I find this hard to believe given the timescales involved in creating, testing and loading fares data plus all the accompanying publicity. There's no small effort involved to update websites these days. It would not be credible for there to be no TfL website update ready to go not long after the official announcement.
@ Jon C - I believe the Mayor has turned down demands for bus transfer tickets. He has also turned down demands for part time season tickets. I am not sure if he has also refused early bird season tickets. Caroline Pidgeon demands these three products every few months and always in the run up the Mayor's fares decision. In recent Mayor's Questions Boris has said "no" as the revenue loss cannot be funded. TfL has also cited the existence of PAYG daily capping as the alternative to transfer tickets. This on the basis that people usually make a return jny and if you use two buses on the outward trip you'll use two on the return thus triggering the bus and tram daily cap. I appreciate life is a bit more involved than that but that's what's been said.
Is there no equivalent revenue loss on tube or train journeys? Perhaps the revenue loss would be matched be increased journeys, as people switch to the bus?
We must face the fact that many countries just take a different view about ticketing integration and also the subsidy to pay for it. London's funding has recently been cut by tens of millions of pounds in each of the next three financial years and it is debatable whether there is enough to run services never mind fund fare cuts for people.
We are probably at the point where the various influences on grant funding (downward generally) and peoples' expectations about service levels and fares are simply incompatible. You can't cut grants *and* not put fares up *and* impose efficiency cuts *and* expect more service to be delivered. All the easy efficiency improvements were done 4-5 years ago! Under London's largely contracted model of service operation (DLR, cycle hire, buses, Overground) then more service almost always means more cost and more contract fees to the supplier.
So I've changed the fare, rejigged the table and rewritten the paragraph underneath. Thanks.
Thanks for the background, interesting reading.
Many countries do indeed take a different approach to bus ticketing - most of the places I have visited in Europe and North America understand that passenger may want to make journeys for which a direct bus isn't provided. So instead of charging people extra for the added benefit(?) of having to interrupt their journey by changing buses, they allow transfer at no extra charge.
The Oyster daily price cap does indeed offer a saving compared to four individual fares, but it is nevertheless considerably more expensive than the fare would be if a direct service were offered.
For example, Plumstead Common lies nearly 9 miles from St. Thomas's Hospital. Since there is a direct bus, a round trip costs £2.80 (£1.40 x 2). North Peckham lies a lot closer to St. Thomas's Hospital - a little over 2 miles as the crow flies. Round trip £4.40 (daily cap), because there isn't a direct bus route. So a 5-mile round trip is substantially more expensive than a 17-mile round trip to the same place.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/03/london-transport-fares-frozen-2014
It seems the captive commuter on a season ticket, and the bus traveller, gets hit with a big increase and the tourist gets the fares frozen.
No sign of the NR fares revision yet.
It doesn't make things better for those in South London who rely heavily on bus and NR services to get around - all their fares go up.
We also have a relatively poor record in this country in being able to plan sensibly over the medium to long term to allow for flexibility in our fares structures while maintaining income and getting costs down. We are also not particularly focused on "social" fares policies except for narrowly defined groups (London is something of an exception though). We tend to expect public transport to be both "cheap", comprehensive and commercially sustainable - a slight contradiction there methinks.
It would be great to have a single, unified fares structure in London that had no interchange fare penalities. I fear, though, that the system could not cope with the suppressed demand that would be unleashed from a relative lowering of people's transport costs. Perversely it might also lead to less revenue and more cost for the transport providers who are already under severe financial pressure. While fare levels are very important I think the bigger crisis is providing a lot of extra capacity and raising the quality of peoples' journeys.
Thanks for that pointer
So, someone previously using a Z12 off peak travelcard will see a 22% increase
Thanks for explaining why the rail system in London would struggle to cope with a "modally agnostic" fare structure of the type commonplace on the continent. It's a valid (and interesting) point.
My point was not about a single multi-modal tariff. I was referring specifically to buses. It's understandable that the bus network cannot reasonably be expected to provide a direct link for absolutely every passenger journey. However, where no such direct link is provided, the passenger has not only the inconvenience of having to change and wait for a second time, but is then charged extra for the "privilege"(?!) With Oyster technology, it would surely not be too difficult to recognise a second swipe within a time limit (such as an hour) then apply an hourly cap (equal to one fare) instead of penalising passengers who are required to change buses.
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