SO there I was, all set to write an angry piece about Boris Johnson’s “massive fare rises.” (The fare changes happen tomorrow, by the way). But then I thought: you know, I’d better check the new fares, hadn’t I?
And guess what? If I use my new Oyster card, the ticket I most often buy (an off-peak single from Greenwich to London) hasn’t gone up at all. It has in fact fallen – by nearly 30 per cent, from £2.40 to £1.70. (If I travel in the peak, it will be £2.10 – still a reduction of 12.5 per cent.)
Maze Hill, Westcombe Park and Blackheath single fares fall even further, by up to 35%.
The ticket I occasionally buy (an off-peak return from Greenwich to London) hasn’t gone up either. It too has fallen, by 3 per cent, from £3.50 to £3.40. Peak returns have fallen by 2 per cent, from £4.30 to £4.20.
Maze Hill, Westcombe Park and Blackheath return fares fall by 2.5 per cent.
The ticket I always used to buy before I got a bike (a one-day Travelcard) hasn’t gone up. It is still £5.60. The tickets I would buy if I commuted to work by train – period Travelcards – haven’t gone up. They are the same price, too. All this applies almost universally across the zones, by the way.
In other words, virtually every National Rail journey in Greater London will in fact be cheaper, in real terms, this year than it was last year.
It really does serve me right for believing this recent attempt by a declared political partisan to spin the change as “London’s great train robbery” in which “voiceless commuters get screwed again.”
Of course, if you look hard enough, like he does, you can find someone who’s going to pay more. But you do have to look pretty hard (in this case, someone who decides to carry on buying off-peak returns on a paper ticket will indeed pay more).
Or you have to be deliberately misleading. Look, for instance, at that sly reference to evening peak single fares being higher than off-peak for the first time; no mention of the fact that even the evening peak fares will still be lower than they are now.
Look, to take another example, at the claim that “South London families” will “lose out in [the] Oyster upgrade.” Well, it’s true that a concession on the Tubes allowing under-10s to travel for free with an adult is not going to be extended to the National Rail network south of the river. But since we never had such a concession in the first place, it is not something that we have “lost in the Oyster upgrade,” is it?
You have, I suppose, to admire the hours which must have been spent combing through the detail in order to find examples this obscure. But the desired political effect is likely to be rather short-term. Because from tomorrow, real train passengers will start paying real fares. And when almost all of them find that, contrary to the propaganda, their prices have not gone up, it’s going to hurt the credibility of the wolf-cryers.
The benefits of Oyster are not just limited to lower fares, either. Never again will I have to allow five minutes to buy a ticket. Never again will I have time-consuming confrontations with penalty-fare Nazis at the other end.
There certainly are losers from tomorrow’s fare changes – on the buses, where the single fare rises by 20 per cent. A headline about Greenwich’s “great bus robbery” would have been honest – and might also have provided a genuine attack line about Boris’s cynicism in holding down the fares of rail commuters while hammering bus passengers, who tend to be rather poorer and less Tory-voting.
But for rail users in general and Greenwich rail users in particular, this is a boon. Just remember your little piece of blue plastic.
Rail fares (Oyster) to London from…
| Offpeak | Peak | Travelcard | ||||
| Single | Return | Single | Return | 1 Day | 7 Day | |
| Greenwich was | 2.40 | 3.50 | 2.40 | 4.30 | 5.60 | 25.80 |
| Greenwich now | 1.70 | 3.40 | 2.10 | 4.20 | 5.60 | 25.80 |
| Maze Hill was | 3.10 | 4.10 | 3.10 | 5.30 | 6.30 | 30.20 |
| Maze Hill now | 2.00 | 4.00 | 2.60 | 5.20 | 6.30 | 30.20 |
| Westcombe Park was | 3.10 | 4.10 | 3.10 | 5.30 | 6.30 | 30.20 |
| Westcombe Park now | 2.00 | 4.00 | 2.60 | 5.20 | 6.30 | 30.20 |
| Blackheath was | 3.10 | 4.10 | 3.10 | 5.30 | 6.30 | 30.20 |
| Blackheath now | 2.00 | 4.00 | 2.60 | 5.20 | 6.30 | 30.20 |
Andrew,
I take your point about the fare decreases on National Rail services in many instances, though you might’ve added the inflation formula means rail operators have been obliged to lower fares. My concern, as my own digging shows, is that whilst it will be great to use Oyster seamlessly on a journey combining National Rail and tube, it’s still much less expensive in many cases to stick to using Oyster only on the tube. Take a look at the example I give: http://paulcolemanslondon.blogspot.com/2009/12/boris-theres-fly-in-my-oyster-soup.html
So, don’t put away your scepticism about rail and tube fares just yet.
“SO there I was, all set to write an angry piece about Boris Johnson’s “massive fare rises…”
But then you wrote about National Rail fares instead.
Aren’t Travelcards, and Oyster on National Rail, Boris’s doing, then?
According to Boris himself:
“Currently fares on National Rail services in London are set by the Train Operators within the framework of the franchises they hold from the Department for Transport.
In line with this, it has been agreed with the Operators and the DfT that PAYG fares on National Rail will be set by the London Train Operators on a uniform zonal basis.”
http://londonreconnections.blogspot.com/2009/03/mayors-questions-0209-national-rail.html
Come off it. “Currently” in this context refers to March 2009. The new fare levels have “been agreed” with the operators, DfT etc by the Mayor. Are you really saying the train companies would have introduced Oyster and cut fares on their own, without continuous pressure from both this Mayor and his predecessor?
No, what I’m “really saying” is that the Mayor does not have direct control over National Rail fares in London. The fares that he does have direct control over have gone up massively. Can’t wait for that angry piece about it.
It’s a bit silly to imply that the fall in any prices of PAYG singles is anything to do with Boris. The main reasons are the effective rule that Oyster prices should always be cheaper than cash, and that the comparison walk-on single fares are regulated by government and are required to fall by -0.4% this year for all lines apart from Southeastern.
And as I understand it, the reasons for the bigger fall in single prices is to do with Osyter PAYG meaning that if you want a return journey, you now have to pay for two singles. Returns have barely fallen, and would have had to fall anyway with the regulated fall in prices. I don’t think that many people in Greenwich will benefit from this as either they would have bought returns which have barely changed, or used travelcards or season tickets which will be going up.
I’m greatly enjoying the contortions people are putting themselves through today in order to avoid having to credit Boris with anything! Actually, both he (and Ken) take all the credit for Oyster being available on National Rail in the first place, without which we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Also, Rick H, travelcards (Boris’s domain) haven’t “gone up” – and, as you are kind enough to admit, Southeastern fares outside London are going up. Greenwich is on Southeastern.
The Bus fares are in Boris gift, and he’s going after those with relish. The poorer parts of LB Greenwich will suffer badly
Mr Gilligan,
Who needs the Londoner mouthpiece, when Mr Johnson has you ?
Andrew
thanks for replying. My comment was really that I don’t think the Mayor should get credit for the small decrease in fares if you use Oyster PAYG. I accept that he gets some credit for Oyster on National Rail, but this was always inevitable, not least by being a requirement on new rail franchises.
On travelcards not going up, from speaking to TfL about the fare rises, they would have liked to increase these as well but these are bound up with agreements with train operating companies so were much harder to change. Basically on the tickets that Boris is most in charge of, he’s increased the price. On those he doesn’t control on his own, the price hasn’t gone up much if at all.
The fundamental reason for the price increases is the failure of the PPP, for which Gordon Brown is most to blame. But Boris hasn’t helped by scrapping the CO2 charge (which would have raised revenue even with changes in behaviour), wanting to remove the WEZ and wasting money on scrapping bendybuses and playing around with his new routemaster.
National Rail fares in London *have* increased as the hours between 4pm and 7pm are now considered “peak” which means that a single from my local station in zone 5 to Waterloo during this time will now cost £3.90 instead of £2.60, an increase of 50%. This is doubly galling as the vast majority of commuters are travelling in the opposite direction, out of London.
This is the only blog I know where the trolling is in the article and the mature adults are in the comments. Remarkable stuff.
Anyway, in the list of things actually affecting TfL’s bottom line this year I’d add the cycle hire and cycle superhighway schemes, which are looking a bit like a luxury from where I’m sitting. Surely postponing them for a year or two and concentrating on sorting out the Tube Lines and Metronet debacles would be a better prioritisation?
“Actually, both he (and Ken) take all the credit for Oyster being available on National Rail in the first place”
Except that the lines Oysterised under Ken are locked into a better deal than the ones under Boris, despite the latter throwing £40m at the TOCs to get them to sign up, resulting in the existence of ‘TfL’ and ‘Tfl/NR’ farescales, which anyone planning to make substantial use of PAYG on NR pretty much needs to have a grounding in. I’m amazed that someone from Greenwich who’s usually hypersensitive to perceived injustice and waste of public funds hasn’t spotted that people in Ealing or Barking or along the Overground have a far better Oyster-on-NR deal than those of us on SoL TOCs who’ve been waiting longest, nor that a sterling award winning investigative journalist with a track record on transport matters has left it to us rank amateurs and dirty left-wing hippies to try and unravel the complexities of the scheme for the last two months. Still, hey ho. If you want a hand with it, just shout.
In truth, and I’ve used it today for an NR/TfL through journey in the suburbs where it’s a definite improvement, the system works and is about 75% of what it should be, which is progress. However, the wrinkles are so irritating (for instance, I missed a train while working out how to buy a paper single for a child who’d have travelled free on bus and tube) and the information on the various anomalies and contortions you have to go through to ensure you pay the lowest fare are so hard to come by that there’s a substantial risk that the public will start to think they’ve been conned. It smacks of a scheme designed for the headline, not the user. Mind you, so do Boris’s bus policies.
Helen, I’m very surprised to hear that a single from your zone 5 station to London used to cost £2.60 when singles from our zone 3 stations to London used to cost £3.10! Are you sure you’re telling the truth?
And folks generally – yes, as I said, if you look hard enough of course you can find a few rail travellers who will lose – but the vast majority, including almost everyone travelling from the area covered by this website, will gain in either absolute or real terms. That’s why it’s so thoroughly dishonest to cherrypick the worst examples and pretend that they are representative of the whole.
Andrew, you’re perfectly right to point out about the bus fares. I’m amazed that the monthly season has increased by greater than 20% without being announced in the October press release.
So I’m confused. why a man of your clout and journalistic respect isn’t helping bang the drum? Could you not have made it the focus of your article?
No, £2.60 is the new price of an off-peak single from z 5 to z1 on National Rail. An off-peak day return (after 09:30am or any time at weekends) before 2 January was £5.30. The off-peak day return has now been withdrawn, meaning a return trip from z5-z1, leaving 6pm and returning after 10pm, now costs £6.50 instead of £5.30.
That’s not what you said before, is it? And even your hastily-revised example is proof of no more than what I said before – that, though you can of course find a few people who will lose, the vast majority will gain.
So you lose if you go against the evening peak, which is a big change, so evening workers will be affected for the first time, as well as people using trains going to sports and entertainment.
And of course the buses, where the majority get a huge slap in the face, but I await the angry piece about that next week.
I agree that the increase in bus fares is the real killer in this story and the lack of outrage in mainstream media about it is shocking.
When the bus fares increased previously to a cash fare of £2 , I was concerned that most ordinary people who don’t commute but just travel locally would lose out by not having an Oyster card. Thankfully I was wrong and most people do now use the Oyster card for cheaper bus fares. Their reward? Those who can least afford the increase in cost, particularly in a recession, have been rewarded with an unaffordable price rise. Sadly, it’s those voices we’re less likely to hear from but it is those people who will have to change their behavious to accomodate the cost.
I certainly got a shock when I found my paper ticket DLR return from Greenwich to Canary Wharf had increased from £ 3.20 to £ 7.00 this morning.
I’d like to hear the official justification for putting up the Oyster card single bus journey fare from £1 to £1.20 – 20 per cent! – I was already cutting back on bus travel and am going to have to cut down even more. It seems only yesterday that “short hop” journeys were a 50p cash fare.
Despite these apparant gains in value, speaking as an ex-Maze Hill commuter we need first of all to remember the massive (17% rise if I remember correctly) last year and probably most important of all the reduction in the service to Charing Cross.
Monthly Travelcards, Zone 2-3, on Oyster, huge fare increase. Not that hard to come across then.
One of the problems with the Oyster card pay as you go on national rail is it is not capped. Travel round London on Tube, bus and DLR for the day on PAYG and you won’t pay more than the price of a day travel card.
This is not the case on national rail, as I found out to my cost today. It cost me over £10 to go into town on the train, buzz around a bit on the Tube, and come back from Charing X. Every jounrey was charged as a single – and a return was charged when I tapped in at Waterloo East only to discover the trains weren’t running and tapped out again 30 seconds later.
When I asked the national rail guy about it, he said: ‘Nuh capped.’ Which, on second ask, meant that Oyster card on national rail is not capped.
This is so typical. A half-done job of integration. So now of course I’ll never use Oyster card pay as you go on the national rail network again. I’ll have to q to buy a paper day ticket and I’ll go through the turnstiles more slowly. Thus one of the whole points of ticketless systems around the world – faster passenger throughput – is negated.
It’s infuriating that what many people have lobbied for for years is hobbled by this lack of fare-capping.
Does anyone know why this is?
National Rail IS part of the daily capped rated, if you believe the TFL website:
“Oyster daily price capping
Daily price capping is the most you will be charged a day when you use Oyster to pay as you go on Tube, DLR, London Overground and National Rail services in London.
Adult and child tickets
Adult Peak Off-Peak
Zones 1-2 £7.20 £5.60
Zones 1-3 £8.60 £6.30
Zones 1-4 £10.00 £6.30
Zones 1-5 £12.60 £7.50
Zones 1-6 £14.80 £7.50
Zones 1-9 £16.20 £9.00
Zones 1-9 + Watford Junction/Grays# £18.00 £14.20
Zone 2 £7.20 £5.10
Zones 2-3 £8.60 £5.10
Zones 2-6 £9.00 £5.10
Zones 2-9 £10.60 £5.60
Zones 2-9 + Watford Junction/Grays# £12.60 £7.60”