Tube fares of doom!

[fluffymark]

Tube fares next year

£3 minimum cash for a single tube ticket? *boggle*

Oyster card fares are going down. Cash fares are going into outer space. If you travel at all in London, *especially* if you’re just visiting for daytrips - get an Oyster card NOW.

Comments

[huggyrei.livejournal.com]

That's nuts!

Sur, Oyster card is a good idea; but I fail to see why it's somehow so much better. And for people who don't live in London, it's especially silly.

At least they've stopped charging for under 18s in fll time education. Any provision at all for students, OAPs, etc?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Ken isn't elected by nonresidents of London.

[huggyrei.livejournal.com]

However, lots of non-residents need this service nontheless. Public transport should be usable wherever you wish to go, especially since he wants to discourage people from driving (which is currently working out cheaper).

I think it's excessive; I would think the same if any city I lived in tried to make it expensive to usepublic transport for non-residents. Again; I think public transport is a public service, not a club for local people, and should be treated as such.

This is, of course, my opinion. You are not obliged to agree with me. I am endevouring to explain why your reply does not move me.

He also isn't elected by under 18s; should their needs therefore be ignored?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

I actually agree with you, but I still repeat: Ken is not elected by nonresidents of London. The main thing Ken has any control of in London is TfL, since almost everything else in London is done either by Central Government or the Boroughs. So when it comes to pleasing the people voting for him, he'll use what he's got (TfL) to please the people voting for him because (love him or loathe him) Ken is a very good politico.
London's public transport should actually serve all users well. When the majority of users are still commuters and residents, who will buy (or already have bought) into Oyster except for the people with paper rail/tube season tickets, and that's also all the people who vote for Ken, occasional visitors and tourists to London will get ignored or shafted.

[fluffymark]

Ken also has control of that lovely congestion charge thing, which recently went up from £5 to £8 and is about to cover a swathe more of West London. I'm actually perversely happy about this, but then I don't have a car and never intend to ever drive in London.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Isn't the congestion charge operated by C(r)apita for TfL under the general aegis of "improving transport in London". ergo is a TfL activity as much as Oyster is?

[fluffymark]

Yes, yes it is. When will they start using Oyster Cards for the CC zone then, do you think? ;)

[ixwin.livejournal.com]

Tourism, of course, provides a lot of the jobs of the people who live in London, so it's not in Ken's interests to ignore their wants entirely.

Personally, I almost always buy some form of travelcard or carnet when I travel to foreign cities, and from the look of the above, they're not rising anything like as much as single ticket fares.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

A surprising number of people don't, though... especially if they are unfamiliar with the idea of travelcards or similar.

[fluffymark]

OAPs over 65 get free travel with a Freedom pass. Full time students get a 30% discount on weekly or longer travelcards, which was a lifesaver for me up until 2 years back, when I stopped being a student.

[adamw]

Sur, Oyster card is a good idea; but I fail to see why it's somehow so much better. And for people who don't live in London, it's especially silly.

The whole point is that London's transport is turning "cashless" - which has many benefits - such as vastly improved safety for drivers and staff who would other wise handle money, and reductions in costs for handling money too, as well as speeding up journey times by reducing the amount of time a bus has to stop (no fiddling with change etc, of course).

It is also expected to be used for "small change" purchases such as newspapers and the like in time - much as the Octopus scheme does in Hong Kong, which has been an enormous success.

And there is nothing to stop those of us outside of London from getting a pre-pay Oyster Card, as we can just use it whenever we like (as I intend to do in the next few weeks) - all the increase does is to quicken the changeover. (And after all, paying in advance for less on public transport has been the norm in Europe for years - nice of us to finally catch up).

[bfo.livejournal.com]

It's a huge help to bus drivers etc who now don't have as much cash in the bus and less chance of getting robbed.

and oyster is much quicker than feeding the ticket through the machine (at least for the majority of people)