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Post by norbitonflyer on Jan 28, 2014 18:03:09 GMT
I frequently absent-mindedly try to use my point-to-point "London Terminals" season ticket in LU gatelines instead of my Oyster. Invariably I get it rejected: until yesterday when I did it at Baker Street and discovered it worked! (Being a good boy - and being fairly sure the ticket wouldn't let me out at St Pauls, although it now occurs to me I could have gone to City TL instead! - I went out again and touched in properly with my Oyster) But I wondered: why did it work at all? I can imagine that Baker Street may allow "London Terminals" tickets for passengers coming from the Aylesbury direction, but I have always understood that "London terminals" is restricted to "any reasonable route" so from the SWT network where my ticket was issued Waterloo, Victoria, Charing Cross, London Bridge, and even Cannon Street, Blackfriars and CityTL are all possible, but by no stretch of the imagination is either Marylebone or Baker Street a plausible destination. Any suggestions as to why it worked?
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Post by suncloud on Jan 28, 2014 18:25:17 GMT
suspect ticket gates are not clever to work out what your origin and therefore routing is. nr ticket routing is a complicated affair with frequent easements for disrupted services. All the gate is probably looking for is the valid London terminals destination. of course a person should notice...
i remember when using Watford junction using a particular ticket, the gates would always reject it as the kind of ticket i had wasn't valid on London midland in the peak, but was on southern...
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Post by norbitonflyer on Jan 28, 2014 19:41:41 GMT
suspect ticket gates are not clever to work out what your origin and therefore routing is. nr ticket routing is a complicated affair with frequent easements for disrupted services. All the gate is probably looking for is the valid London terminals destination. ... of course from far enough out SWT seasons are valid to Paddington as well as Waterloo. And Chiltern tickets from the Wycombe line are also valid at both Paddington and Marylebone. And from the Aylesbury Line Marylebone and Baker Street are both valid. So if Waterloo=Paddington=Marylebone=Baker Street I can see how it might have happened. I am nevertheless surprised, as I know the ticket doesn't work the gates at most LU stations - even at London terminals like Waterloo.
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Post by metrailway on Jan 28, 2014 23:35:22 GMT
National Rail tickets which allow travel between Marylebone and stations on the ex-Met/GC line are valid to/from Baker Street. Although at first glance, one would think this would just include stations on that line. However, due to an easement which allows any journey to Marylebone via High Wycombe being valid via Aylesbury, a huge array of NR tickets are valid to/from Baker Street. This includes tickets such as Birmingham Stations - London Terminals, Holyhead - London Terminals, Inverness - London Terminals etc. I suspect LU staff at Baker Street have no/little idea of this and would prevent you from travelling if they spotted you with such tickets.
Without knowing your exact ticket, it is impossible to confirm whether it is valid to/from Baker Street. However, as suncloud has stated, I suspect the barriers at Baker St are just programmed to accept London Terminals tickets.
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Post by norbitonflyer on Jan 29, 2014 8:06:38 GMT
Without knowing your exact ticket, it is impossible to confirm whether it is valid to/from Baker Street. The clue is in my username: it was issued by SWT and, as far as I am aware, is not valid via Amersham!
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Post by suncloud on Jan 29, 2014 9:46:07 GMT
baker street (lu) is in nr ticketing terms a London terminal, whereas Waterloo for example the only way you can arrive from a nr origin with a London terminals ticket is on a nr service. as a London terminals ticket is never valid on lu services at Waterloo, of course the gates will reject it...
i think lu gates that might take London terminals tickets will be limited, guessing farringdon, moorgate, (maybe barbican for historical reasons), maybe Paddington, but that's likely to be it... (of course just because your ticket works a gate, does of course not necessarily mean it is valid for the journey you're making)
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Post by Chris M on Jan 29, 2014 10:01:52 GMT
And as I found out a couple of years ago at Victoria, just because your ticket is valid for the journey you are making doesn't mean it will open the gates. If this causes you to miss your train then it is your fault.
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Post by compsci on Jan 29, 2014 11:23:29 GMT
The barriers at King's Cross St Pancras will also accept London Terminals tickets owing to an easement that makes tickets from NR points north valid to Old Street and Moorgate, but not intermediately at Farringdon, Barbican or Angel. This is to cover there being no NR service to Moorgate at weekends, but is valid at all times. I found it useful for a couple of years when I often had to go to Hackney in the evenings (in the days before the ELL extension), and so it saved me the extra fare from Old Street to KX when using a Cambridge - London Terminals season. Though I did often pray that my ticket wouldn't demagnetise in case this resulted in an argument with staff.
Since I also had a King's Cross Thameslink - City Thameslink season to get me to work, which was valid at Farringdon for NR services, this had the potential to lead to a situation where I had a ticket that would open the barriers at Farringdon and also a ticket that was valid on board LU services (from Moorgate), but would have no valid ticket with one leg on the platform and one on a train.
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Post by norbitonflyer on Jan 29, 2014 17:31:24 GMT
baker street (lu) is in nr ticketing terms a London terminal, i think lu gates that might take London terminals tickets will be limited, guessing farringdon, moorgate, (maybe barbican for historical reasons), maybe Paddington, but that's likely to be it... (of course just because your ticket works a gate, does of course not necessarily mean it is valid for the journey you're making) Quite - but I had always understood that "London terminals" was limited in scope to reasonable journeys, and in particular that on Thameslink from the south they are only valid as far as City TL and from the north as far as Farringdon (and Moorgate). Hence my surprise that my absent-minded use of a "Southern" ticket at a "northern" terminal actually worked. It seems that the barriers are not clever enough to operate all the nuances of the rules.
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Post by snoggle on Feb 6, 2014 23:53:30 GMT
baker street (lu) is in nr ticketing terms a London terminal, i think lu gates that might take London terminals tickets will be limited, guessing farringdon, moorgate, (maybe barbican for historical reasons), maybe Paddington, but that's likely to be it... (of course just because your ticket works a gate, does of course not necessarily mean it is valid for the journey you're making) Quite - but I had always understood that "London terminals" was limited in scope to reasonable journeys, and in particular that on Thameslink from the south they are only valid as far as City TL and from the north as far as Farringdon (and Moorgate). Hence my surprise that my absent-minded use of a "Southern" ticket at a "northern" terminal actually worked. It seems that the barriers are not clever enough to operate all the nuances of the rules. Casting my memory back decades when I first created the base data then yes certain LU stations which have the ability to act as a "London Terminal" because of ticket interavailability. Only one code is used with the gate data so any ticket encoded with that NLC will be accepted (all other things being valid like dates etc). The relevant NLC might be the origin or destination or possibly intermediate availability - this applies at King Cross given the weird arrangements when the Great Northern City service runs to KX and not Moorgate. Tickets are valid at certain intermediate stations between KX and Moorgate but not all of them. I would imagine your ticket would work at Moorgate and Old Street too. I think you need to consider whether the fraud exposure from such tickets would ever be big enough to create vastly more complex data and checks when making the observation about the ticket gates "are not clever enough". The complexity issue was not just confined to LU as obviously British Rail and their APTIS system had to be able to cope with issuing tickets that would be compatible with UTS. Life has moved on a long way since then but the fundamentals have proved to be long lived despite ticket gates on NR, the death of APTIS, more open ticket issuing technology on NR plus smart ticketing too.
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Post by rincew1nd on Mar 16, 2014 14:34:32 GMT
So, does this mean that a Rover ticket valid from Marylebone are also valid from Baker Street?
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Post by metrailway on Mar 16, 2014 15:21:50 GMT
So, does this mean that a Rover ticket valid from Marylebone are also valid from Baker Street? Yes but as I stated before LU staff at Baker Street would probably prevent you from travelling if they spotted you with a rover. LU staff training regarding National Rail tickets is atrocious. Another problem for passengers is that neither LU or NR publish a public official list of inter-available routes.
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Post by rincew1nd on Mar 16, 2014 19:28:07 GMT
Thanks for that. I'm travelling the UK next week on an all lines Rover, I was worried that it would be an airline style ticket, but it turns out to just be a standard single APTIS style card, so it should go through the barriers fine.
Any issues I've always got my Oyster as backup.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 17, 2014 10:08:59 GMT
Thanks for that. I'm travelling the UK next week on an all lines Rover, I was worried that it would be an airline style ticket, but it turns out to just be a standard single APTIS style card, so it should go through the barriers fine. Any issues I've always got my Oyster as backup. Good luck with that In my experience of using them All Line Rovers never work NR barriers anywhere and you always have to go via the manual barrier. Then your only problem is the substantial number of barrier staff who don't know what they are and the inevitable lengthy conversation that ensues. I would imagine the chances of an ALR working the barriers at Baker St are minus zero
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