Ticketing and Concessionary Travel on Public Transport - United ...

Transport Committee: Evidence Ev 45
12 December 2007 Mr Stephen Joseph, Mr Anthony Smith, Mr Rufus Barnes <strong>and</strong> Mr Gordon Edwards
Mr Barnes: I think when you start from the position
that prior to the introduction of zonalisation you
had vastly more fares options, anything that brings
about a simplification of that helps people’s
underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the fares they are likely to have to
pay for the journey they make. That must be a good
thing. Zonalisation is also a vital prerequisite to the
acceptance of Oyster on the national railways in the
London area—Oyster pay as you go—otherwise you
would not have been able to introduce Oyster pay as
you go on the national railways because the system
could not cope with such a large number of
individual fares. Yes, it was a good thing; yes, it goes
towards simplification <strong>and</strong> it is a prerequisite before
we see Oyster pay as you go extended to the national
railways.
Mr Smith: I agree with my colleague’s comments
that overall it is a good thing but it has been painful
in its implementation because some of the fare rises
which have been implemented following the
introduction of the zones have been quite significant.
Individual passengers I think got quite a nasty shock
in terms of what might happen. We saw I think rises
in the order of 30% which were relatively small
monetary amounts but still quite a big jump <strong>and</strong>
what we have yet to see is what the overall impact
will be of turning London into a complete zoned
area on travel from outside of London. There are
many forces at play here, including the government
regulation of certain types of rail fare which apply to
the whole of a train company’s activities. Now you
get a sort of ring in London which sets certain things
happening in terms of price which we thing has a
potential consequence of reducing the train
company’s room for manoeuvre with prices outside
of that area so what could be good news for London
might not be quite such good news for Kent.
Q386 Clive EVord: It is not good news for south east
London. How satisfactory is the Oyster card from
the passengers’ perspective.
Mr Barnes: Oyster has been a massively beneficial
product for London but there are some uncertainties
about the future. I think everybody needs to be very
clear about those uncertainties. One of the reasons
that Oyster has been so beneficial with the pay as you
element of Oyster has been the fact that on
Transport for London services you get a discount in
the fare that you would pay compared with the fare
that you pay if you pay by cash. I think that there has
been an expectation that when Oyster pay as you go
is extended to the national railways that discount
will automatically be applied to national rail fares
where pay as you go is accepted. There is no
guarantee of that at all. In fact, some train operating
companies have said that they do not intend to give
that discount. Whereas we have seen some
companies in the recent pass actually accepting
them, others have said they positively will not. This
will cause confusion <strong>and</strong> cause massive
disappointment I suspect potentially to your
constituents if South Eastern were to decide not to
give the discount that currently applies to travel on
TfL services.
Q387 Clive EVord: How will that work? If you have a
smartcard <strong>and</strong> you are travelling around the system,
you could go from one section of the network that
oVers the discount <strong>and</strong> one that does not. How will
you know?
Mr Barnes: Because you have to click in <strong>and</strong> click
out of each section.
Q388 Clive EVord: Does it tell you? Until you have
clicked in or out, supposing there is a display screen
there to tell you what has just been taken oV your
smartcard, how do you know?
Mr Barnes: The current situation with Oyster on
Transport for London services is that there is a daily
cap; it cannot take more than the daily cap oV the
service. The detail of how it is going to work on the
national railways has not yet been worked out, but I
can foresee some very real problems. Southern
recently decided to accept Oyster pay as you go on
their service from Clapham Junction up to Watford
Junction; that parallels the service operated by the
London Overground. That is good news for
passengers. However, as I say, South West Trains
have made it clear to us that they believe in their
franchise bid there was no provision at all in the
financial bid that they put together for them to give
a discount.
Q389 Clive EVord: This is disastrous, is it not? If, for
instance, South Eastern were to say that they are not
going to oVer the discount on pay as you go Oyster
cards that means that the Oyster is irrelevant for
commuters in a quarter of London, is it not?
Mr Barnes: It is not necessarily irrelevant because it
does speed up the passage, for example, through the
ticket gates <strong>and</strong> it does enable people to travel more
easily if not more cheaply. However, I would agree
with you that the confusion that could result from
diVerent train operating companies in the London
area applying a diVerent policy could be very
unacceptable, confusing <strong>and</strong> in many respects it
could result in passengers believing that Oyster pay
as you go is going to deliver one thing <strong>and</strong> it delivers
something else.
Mr Smith: From our research the Oyster card has
been a tremendous success. The only downside that
we can pick up from our research is the inability of
passengers to be able to see what they have got on it
or what they have got left. It is a relatively dumb
piece of plastic in that respect unless you actually
have some sort of contact with the system. I think
Oyster’s success has been built on the fact that we
have had one organisation specifying the
introduction of it—Transport for London—<strong>and</strong> one
contractor delivering it <strong>and</strong> they meet exactly
together. Once you get 23 train companies or
however many trying to do this there has got to be a
common agreement otherwise the chaos that you are
predicting will come about.
Mr Joseph: Going back to Mrs Ellman’s earlier
question about whether there is a strategy, there is
no strategy. The Department for Transport needs to
specify <strong>and</strong> be an intelligent client that creates an
Oyster style product across the country.