Originally Posted by
meijiem
Tangentially, if I were to have many zone 2 to zone 3 trips and a single zone 2 to zone 1 trip thrown in there during the week, would I be charged £30.50 (zone 2 to zone 3 cap, I think) + £2.80 (peak zone 1 to zone 2 fare) over the whole week? Or would the higher £40.70 cap (zone 1 to zone 2 cap, I think) apply? The latter seems like it introduces a causality problem, as the sequencing of the trips would matter.
Yes, you'd get the Z2-3 cap plus a single fare. Note there is no evening peak for Z2 to Z1 in that direction only - so it might be £2.70.
On contactless, the sequence of trips does not matter, because the system reviews all your daily travel before charging your card. From Friday to Sunday the system also reviews your travel from Monday onwards, to see if any Mon-Sun cap has been reached.
On Oyster, the sequence of trips does matter sometimes, because the ticket barriers have to work out which cap to apply instantly. I think that if you reach £30.50 without having entered Z1 it will cap there. A single subsequent Z1 trip would not necessarily cause it to start applying the Z1-3 cap. But if you take a single Z1 trip early in a Mon-Sun period followed by many Z2-3 trips it may not be so smart. However, the system does review Oyster trips retrospectively and will issue a refund if too much was charged. The refund is added to the balance when you next travel (or potentially refunded by bank transfer if you contact TfL).