TfL zone extensions

I've written a few times before about the downside of PAYG Oyster/Contactless - but one of the upsides (when it works), is that if you travel outside your normal zones, you only pay the daily cap for the zones you travel in.

So if I'm usually paying £6.60 per day to travel within Zone1-2 but on one day in the week I make journeys in Zone3, my daily cap kicks in a £7.70 - so just £1.10 extra for all my journeys in Zone3.  It gets more complicated if your journeys are on your 6th or 7th day, when the Monday to Sunday cap has already kicked in (I need to follow up with TfL on my refund request).

The downside of the Oyster Travelcard is that for extra journeys outside your Travelcard zones, you pay as if you are making a single journey from the edge of your zone.  So with my Zone1-2 Travelcard, if I want to visit a friend in Zone3, TfL will charge me £3.40 for a return during peak, or £3.00 for a return off peak.  And if you're travelling to a Zone3 National Rail station, it become £4.20 during peak and £3.80 off peak.  This seem rather a lot for what can be just a single extra station.

One way you may be able to reduce that fare a little if you're travelling off peak is by using your Network Railcard (assuming you have one) when purchasing a ticket in advance.  On Saturday I bought a ticket from the edge of Zone2 to West Norwood in Zone3 (from the ticket counter at Victoria station) and saved a whole pound sterling !

The ticket agent checked that my Oyster really did have a valid Zone1-2 Travelcard, and didn't seem overly keen, but she did eventually come up with it.

Holyhead and Dublin ferry offloading

When flight prices between London and Dublin and nearby airports (and not so nearby airports) become unreasonably expensive, I quite often revert to the old fashioned Sail Rail connection - since the standardised fares mean that (as long as they don't sell out) your fare is capped at a regulated price, even over holiday weekends.

So London to Dublin Port (you need to get a bus into Dublin city centre) fares start from 41 gbp with most tickets selling for 46 gbp.  When last minute flight prices can easily reach 300 gbp for a single during busy periods - if you have the time, taking the ferry and the train becomes an appealing option.

The Seat61.com website has a huge amount of detail on travelling this route.  One issue (which Seat61 briefly mentions) taking the ferry as a foot passenger is how quickly you can get off the ferry once you arrive into port.

Holyhead - Dublin offloading

Stena - Adventurer

I've used this ship a few times, and have always had to wait at least 20 minutes for most of the cars / trucks to off load, before Stena bring the buses on board the ship, to get you into the ferry terminal.  One time we had to queue up (in the rain) to have our passports/IDs checked as we left the buses and before they let us into the terminal building.  Seriously unimpressed !

Irish Ferries - Jonathan Swift (fast ferry)

Sometimes they give you the main berth with passenger gangway, but if the Ulysses is in berth, then the Swift gets relegated to a crappy berth around the corner, where you have to wait for the cars to disembark.  However, since the Swift isn't very big, it should only take about 15 minutes before you get to walk off.

Irish Ferries - Ulysses

The Ulysses gives you the best chance of speedy offloading - you almost always get to use a dedicated foot passenger gangway, so no waiting for the cars.  One time there was a vehicle parked on the quay wall which blocked the passenger gangway, so we had to wait for the cars to off load, and then get a bus to the terminal building - but that was highly unusual.

This is my preferred option for Holyhead - Dublin route.

Dublin - Holyhead offloading

Irish Ferries - Jonathan Swift (fast ferry)

You have to wait for the cars to off load, before you walk off the ferry, and board a bus to the terminal building.  Since the Swift isn't very big, it only takes about 15 minutes for the cars to drive off.  Just make sure you get on the first bus, as the second/last bus will wait for the old and infirm to slowly exit the boat - no point wasting good Coop/Lidl shopping time waiting for the OAPs !

Irish Ferries - Ulysses

I haven't done this routing in ages (for morning trips the Ulysses departs Dublin at 08:05 and may not connect with the 11:27 train from Holyhead, so the Swift is much more attractive) ... but considering the arrangements for loading Ulysses at Holyhead, I assume you have to board a bus on the Ulysses to transport you to the ferry terminal ... so you presumably have to wait for most of the cars and trucks to offload before Stena drive the buses onto the ship.  I suspect this may take a while.

Stena - Adventurer

I haven't done this routing in ages (for morning trips the Adventurer departs Dublin at 08:20 and is unlikely to connect with the 11:27 train from Holyhead, so the Swift is much more attractive) ... but considering the arrangements for loading Adventurer at Holyhead, I assume you have to wait for most of the cars and trucks to offload before you get to walk off the ship (possibly to the funny little staging building where you catch a bus to the ferry terminal), or Stena brings buses onto the ship.

The different disembarkation options need to be considered when working out which train you are likely to catch (or timings for friends/family pickups) and which ferry to choose.  My choice for afternoon departures from Holyhead is the Ulysses.  For morning departures from Dublin my choice is the Swift (despite the slightly higher Sail Rail fare) as it also gives you some extra sleep time!

One other thing to bear in mind is that booking tickets in Ireland doesn't allow you to reserve a seat on your trains in the UK, so if you're booking a return from Dublin to London, you might want to book two singles, so you get to reserve seats on the trains from London.

St Pancras International timings

St Pancras International station is a separate building to Kings Cross - so I never know how long to leave between my tube arriving into KX and my train departing St Pancras.  Today I had some spare time, so I decided to use my stopwatch !

Starting point - Piccadilly line eastbound - Carriage two, door three - by the exit

Speed - normal pace, not rushing it - although it was early morning, so not many backmarkers to navigate around

Escalators - sauntered up them

Luggage - smallish backpack

Routing - exited to outside up the steps as soon as passed through the tube barriers.  Probably slightly quicker than using the tunnel underneath Pancras Road (but that routing has the advantage of escalators to take you upstairs into St Pancras station)

Timings:

Exiting Piccadilly line to Platform B northbound - 5 mins 15 seconds

It would be slightly less to Platform A southbound

Exiting Piccadilly line to Platforms 1, 2 & 3 upstairs - 6 mins 35 seconds

It would be an extra 30 seconds or so if your train was the far end of the platform (as often happens)

Exiting Piccadilly line to Eurostar security - 5 mins 45 seconds

Next time I won't bother giving myself a full 15 minutes to spare !

Oyster Revolution

Last week Future Cities Catapult organised a talk by Matthew Hudson from TfL entitled The Story of Oyster: How TfL Revolutionised Urban Fare Collection.

I missed the first few minutes, but it was still a fascinating run through Oyster / Contactless ... not least a reminder that the original impetus to develop Oyster was the queues that used to build up at the ticket barriers, as the use of paper tickets (Magstripe) was incredibly slow compared to Oyster and even Contactless !

One option was to build lots more ticket barriers - but thankfully TfL developed Oyster.

Below are some random nuggets from the talk together with some of my views ...

A maximum of 15 passengers per minute can get through ticket barriers using the old Magstripe tickets

A busy commuter station like Liverpool Street (as opposed to a station with lots of tourists) can get over 25 passengers per minute through each barrier using Oyster

Contactless is a bit slower (it has to run more check processes before deciding to open the gate) but it is getting quicker with new Contactless chips, and also TfL are trying to reduce the number of check processes to speed it up.

5.5m people regularly use Oyster Pay as You Go (PAYG)

This represents 86% of users - although some/many also have a Travelcard

58% of fares come from PAYG

The TfL board have decided PAYG should be the primary product in future

The original incentive for season tickets (which was the cost of issue and congestion at the ticket office) is gone

It sounds like in future the PAYG and Travelcard fares will be equalised

Matthew talked about the original requirement for tickets being to stop the bus conductors from pocketing the fares - it wasn't to control passengers.

Oyster customer level data is kept for 2 months - to help resolve customer issues

This compares with Paris where customer data has to be binned at the end of every day

The original Oyster configuration where if you failed to "touch out" you were charged the minimum fare resulted in 15% fare evasion

No mention of what fare evasion level is on Boris buses !

Serious Oyster analysis started in the lead up to London 2012

There was up to a 7% decrease in passenger volumes following widespread warnings about congestion - some stations felt empty !

There are many requests from different parts of TfL for Oyster analysis - most of which get denied as they won't actually lead to better decision making.

TfL have licenced the intellectual property behind Oyster/Contactless to the company Cubic for 15m gbp - TfL themselves will not be directly installing Oyster around the world.

Matthew said that in future TfL will make Oyster "more like Contactless"

There will be a weekly cap on Oyster in the future - and refunds will be pushed out to all Oyster readers (including buses) ready for collection the next time the Oyster card is tapped.

Sounds to me that I will be able to stop using my Contactless once weekly Oyster capping arrives !

Contactless is 40% more expensive than Oyster

I've written before about how Contactless can be more expensive that Oyster - but I've never done the (fairly simple) calculations to work out by how much.

The important point is that with Contactless, Transport for London computers take your Monday to Sunday travel, and work out whether you have paid more than the cost of a weekly travelcard - and refund you the difference another week later.  That's fine if you arrive into London on a Monday ... but what if you don't arrive on a Monday ?

Let's take somebody arriving into London on a Wednesday and departs the following Tuesday (7 days in London) - and assume a few tube trips around Zone 1-2 each day - enough to reach the daily 6.60 gbp cap

With Contactless it looks like this:

Wednesday £6.60
Thursday £6.60

Friday £6.60

Saturday £6.60

Sunday £6.60

Total £33.00

Monday to Sunday cap of £33.00 - so no refund

Monday £6.60

Tuesday £6.60

Total £13.20

Grand Total £46.20

But if you'd bought a 7 day travelcard on your Oystercard on the Wednesday morning - it would have been a straightforward £33.00 - a saving of £13.20

So if you start your 7 days using Contactless on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday it is a whopping 40% more expensive than Oyster.

So much for all those adverts that "Contactless is the same price as Oyster".

If you start your 7 days using Contactless on a Tuesday or a Sunday it is still an unpleasant 20% more expensive than Oyster.

If you're staying in London for five days or less, then Contactless is the same price as Oyster Pay as you Go.
If you're staying in London for more than 7 days (and not arriving on a Monday) then Contactless will almost always be more expensive than Oyster.

The moral of the story is don't believe the TfL propaganda - Contact is NOT the same price as Oyster.

Transport for London fare increases

One of my complaints about how companies increase their prices is that they don't normally tell you what percentage they are going up by - so you can't get a feel for whether it's reasonable or how it compares to inflation over the last year.

TfL seem to suffer the same failing - with just a general comment about travelcards going up by less than 2%.  So I thought that it might be useful to start saving the annual list of prices - they delete the old prices from their website when they announce the new ones !

After some time googling for the 2016 list - I finally managed to find the pdf:

And of course the the 2017 pdf that is currently available on the TfL website - which I've saved for posterity:

I also came across a london.gov webpage (which will presumably be removed at the end of the year as well) which handily breaks down the increases - and of course blames the Train Operating Companies (TOCs) !

EI avios redemptions available online

You can now search for availability and book Aer Lingus flights using Avios on the Avios.com website ... although you probably won't want to actually book them there !

I've written previously about the high "carrier surcharges" that BA impose on european EI flights - and booking through Avios.com - they are even slightly higher !

Here's a few examples:

LHR - DUB  76 gbp

DUB - LHR  41 gbp

return 117 gbp

For context - if you chose a BA flight and had flown or earned miles in the last year (so were eligible for their lower fees reward flight) a single ex LHR would be 17.5 gbp and a single ex DUB would be 10.3 gbp (book through BA no Avios.com who charge everything at 17.5 gbp)

LGW - NOC  57 gbp

NOC - LGW  36 gbp (plus airport 10 eur "development" fee)

ex NOC return 94 gbp

ex LGW return 92 gbp

when I phoned up BA in June 2015 the NOC - LGW fee was 27 gbp

when I phoned up BA in August 2015 the LGW - NOC fee was 54 gbp

The longhaul prices are a bit more reasonable - but you still shouldn't book them through Avios.com

In the 13,000 avios category (for an off-peak economy single)

DUB - Hartford  100gbp

DUB - Boston  100 gbp

DUB - Chicago  109 gbp

DUB - JFK  100 gbp

In the 16,250 avios category (for an off-peak economy single)

DUB - Orlando  109 gbp

DUB - LAX  117 gbp

For a return flight the taxes and fees come to around 180 gbp - but a commenter over on HeadForPoints rang up BA and for the same flights the taxes and fees are 90 gbp

So ring up BA before booking EI flights on Avios.com

Another attempt to get to LYR

I've written a few times over the last year about planning a trip to Svalbard - but I still haven't managed to execute it !

This winter it looks like Norwegian are flying just twice a week - on a Monday (departing at 09:50) and a Friday (departing at 08:45) - with return flights at 12:30 or 13:35

SAS has more options - with flights from TrOmSo on Mondays (depart 12:20), Tuesdays (depart 12:20,  Thursday (depart 00:20 and 12:20), Friday (depart 12:20) and Sunday (depart 12:20).

All these flights (apart from Thursday's midnight flight) originate in OSLo - stopping for 35 mins in TOS.

Norwegian have three direct flights a week from LGW - TOS on Mondays (depart 14:20), Wednesdays (depart 05:50) and Fridays (depart 14:20) - but these can cost anything from 31.50 gbp to 202 gbp plus each way.

It looks like SAS don't fly London - TOS direct.

FlyBe check-in options - or lack of

The email from FlyBe confirming my NOC - BHX flight encouraged me to check-in online, saying that it opened 36 hours before departure ...

So of course I attempted to check-in ... but it wouldn't work.  Assuming that I was making a mistake, I kept trying and trying ... and failing, and failing.

Eventually I discovered a page on their website that listed check-in options by airport - including this nugget:

Airport	code	Airport Check-in	Self Service Check-in	Web Check-in	Automatic Check-in (email)	Automatic Check-in (mobile)
Knock	NOC	Yes	No	No	No	No

So why the hell did they send me an email telling me to check-in online !

short trip to Åre

I wrote a while ago about trying to arrange a trip to Sweden to ski ... without any direct flights, it wasn't easy to arrange, and so I never went !

Now that Easyjet have announced a weekly flight on a Sunday from LGW to OSD (which is about 80km from the ski area), it should make the trip more feasible.

The EZY flight departs LGW at 07:00, arriving OSD at 10:50 - and then departing at 11:10, arriving back into LGW at 12:55

The LGW-OSD price during March is between 42 gpb and 75 gbp for a single.

The OSD-LGW price during March is 27.50 gbp (26th), 33.50 gbp (19th) or 55 gbp (12th)

Getting to OSD on connecting flights from London takes a while - using SAS flights connecting in Stockholm, you could depart LHR at 10:35 and arrive OSD at 16:35 with a very safe 4 hour margin in ARN.  Prices in March are about 88 gbp single.

It would be possible to get a shared transfer for these flights for 295 SEK each way per person (approx 27 gbp each way).

The same company also does shared transfers from Trondheim - at 13:15 and 17:15 on a Thursday (and further times on a Sunday) - but sadly the only direct flight from London to TRD arrives into TRD at 23:35 on a Thursday.  The cost is 390 SEK per person each way.

However, there's a direct flight from TRD to LGW departing at 18:00 which would require getting the 13:30 bus from the ski resort (arriving at the airport around 16:00) - but it would be another option.

Another option would be to fly from London to Stockholm on Wednesday evening - so able to do a full day's work, and then travel up to Åre on Thursday morning.  This might work better, as it appears the standard "handover" days in Åre are Thursday and Sunday.  Flights are generally available for 52 gbp from LGW to ARN with Norwegian.

Flights from ARN to OSD are generally available for 54 gbp - with 5 flights a day from SAS and more from BRA (which are slightly more expensive).

Another option is the overnight train from Stockholm - a seat would cost 595 SEK and a berth would cost 746 SEK (68 gbp).  The day time train takes about 7 hours and costs anything from 195 SEK, with a more typical price being 365 SEK (33 gbp).  Prices are only currently available on the Swedish Rail website until 19th March - presumably because it's too far in advance.

As far as accommodation - it looks like there are basic self catering apartment/studios available near the main town for 268 eur for Thu-Sun - which sleep 2 or 3 people.

in summary

Wed 22nd eve LGW-ARN  52 gbp

Wed 22nd overnight train to Åre with cabin 68 gbp

Thu 23rd train to ski area 10 gbp

3 nights accomm 120 gbp (two people sharing the cheap accommodation)

3 days ski pass 114 gbp

3 days ski / boot hire 85 gbp

Sun 26th transfer to OSD airport 27 gbp

Sun 26th OSD-LGW  17.50 gbp

Total 493.50 plus transfer to and from LGW