stut

Well, come on, it's only the Thameslink 2000 Programme. What's a couple of decades?

NickB

On other lines, oyster outside the zonal charging area has normally been cheaper than the cheapest fare so I would expect it to be the same and also expect existing fares to survive as is for paper tickets.

rcspeirs

That should read "the Christmas 2015 phase of engineering works at London Bridge completes". Lots more work to happen at London Bridge during 2016/2017. Through Thameslink route services don't serve LB until 2018.

rcspeirs

The oyster / contactless fare to/from London Terminals (Victoria Blackfriars LBridge and a few more) will be £14 peak or £8 off peak. Travel on services branded express will cost more - presumably by different programming on the dedicated gate line at Victoria.
Note that from the new timetable (Dec 15), 50% of trains branded express will run to/from Brighton and so are NOT dedicated airport services.

Roger

Any idea whether Boundary Zone X tickets can be combined with these Oyster tickets?

In the past, helpful FTers have outlined these fares. Step forward especially stifle http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/16559984-post12.html.

We can get to Coulsdon South = Boundary Zone 6 with our Freedom Passes, then pay from Boundary Zone 6 to Gatwick Airport, similarly on the return. It seems that East Croydon performs a similar function. We have bought the add-on tickets at London Bridge, London Victoria and Gatwick Airport mainline stations.

It would be so useful if we could load the Zone 6/East Croydon to LGW and v.v. on to our Freedom Passes = Oyster cards Zones 1-6. Would that be a step too far?

UKtravelbear

Might be one for you to contact TFL and ask then come back to us with the answer!

There must be freedom card holders who want to travel before 9.30 so how do they do it? Have a separate oyster or can they load pay-go on to their freedom pass - which is basically just an oyster card?

rcspeirs

Boundary zone can't be combined as such - the oyster or contactless card (the card you use for the section of travel not covered by the freedom pass) needs both a "beep in" and "beep out" to charge the right fare. If you beep in with the freedom pass and beep out with the other card you'll pick up a penalty fare.
If you get out at E Croydon and beep in there, you'll pay £5.20 peak or £3 off peak - that off peak fare is lower than anything currently available.

UKtravelbear

But would it be a boundary fare or just a new zone?

As other stations on the line between East Croydon and Gatwick are also going to be oystered it should be relatively easy to programme the system to work out 'this person has X ticket already - whether zonal travel card, pay-go or freedom pass - so they need to pay Y amount to cover the extra out of zone 6.

When I did have both a travel card and pay-go on my oyster it managed to work out when I started a trip in my travel card zones (1-3) but ended up in zone 4 it managed to charge me just the zone 4 part of the fare - I didn't have to touch out/in at the boundary station.

:D!

You can't put a "boundary zone 6 to Gatwick" ticket onto an Oyster, it has to come as a paper ticket, or possibly on The Key.

However, if you have a travelcard, then UKtravelbear's experience is what should happen. If you have a Z1-6 travelcard, then you should be charged a Zone 7-Gatwick single, or whatever zone is going to come after Coulsdon South.

I believe Oyster can only handle 15 or 20 zones (can't remember), we already have Zone W(atford), S(henfield) and G(rays) + 9 regular zones.

It's far too difficult to actually work out what you're going to be charged nowadays, with different fares scales for TfL, NR, TfL+NR, interavailable routes, continuation exits, the associated caps and discounts, and all the special fares from former NR routes which have transferred to TfL, as well as the temporary OSIs when there is disruption.

You can have a Z2-3 travelcard, travel through Z1 and not be charged extra.

You can have a Z3-5 travelcard and travel entirely within those zones, but if you do the right thing and touch out, some of your PAYG balance gets deducted because the database defined route goes through Z2.

TfL can't even be bothered to display their fares table in HTML any more and only publishes PDFs.

Post-doctoral studies are definitely required

dddc

So this "boon" isn't really going to be a boon for anyone with a season ticket on an oystercard then? I've given up going to the ticket office to get my discount for my annual Z1-2 card when I go to London Bridget and just buy it online so I can chose the cheapest fare and then pick up from a machine.

My partner has a Freedom pass and often makes a journey outside the zonal system. He has to go to a ticket office to by the extension ticket as the ticket machines can't cope with it and you can't add pay as you go onto a Freedom pass for any sort of trip (even though the station he exits at also has card reader barriers). To top things off, he used to be able to buy his extension from the ticket office of our local tube station, but because Boris Johnson is shutting the ticket offices he has to go to a mainline station to buy it. We asked the barrier staff and they said it wasn't possible to buy from a tube station ticket machine. So much for a seamless journey.

Microwave

I would encourage people who have corner cases dealing with Oyster to check out this site. The guy who runs it knows more than anyone about this system, and unlike a lot of people around the interwebs he actually knows about the system rather than making educated guesses and putting them forward as fact. To be clear, I'm not affiliated in any way with it, I've just found it to be a very good resource for these strange corner cases.

walmon1977

I am flying from Gatwick on the 9th January.

Anyone know exactly when in January oyster cards will be accepted so that I can plan on using my card or buying a paper ticket?

Cheers

rcspeirs

The date that oyster goes live at Gatwick hasn't been announced. Presumably some last minute testing is going to the wire.....

goldencondor

If you don't mind the 80 minute journey time via coach, the £1.95 National Express journey from Gatwick to Victoria booked on the Easybus site is still the cheapest way.

:D!

Only if you want to start from 1 of 3 locations where easyBus picks up. Otherwise you need another train journey anyway, and if you're already inside the network then you might as well stay there.

If you didn't mind looking a bit dodgy, then with a group of 4 and heavy luggage, 3 people can stay on the platform at East Croydon and one person go up to the gateline and process all the cards 4 times...

The post you quoted is over a month old, but just to be pedantic, touching in with the freedom pass and out with another card doesn't get you a penalty fare, it gets you a maximum fare on the other card and a probable prosecution for ticketless travel (strict liability even if no intent) if caught.