Hi everyone, just reading the latest 'Barnet & Potters Bar Times' and have come to realize that Potters Bar Station isn't going to be included for the oyster card upgrade in January!

Is it me or does anyone think this is an utter joke??? New Barnet is being included, so why cant PB, even if we had to be in a 7th zone? Just like the zones of the metropolitan line that extends to zone 9! We use oyster all the time for the buses, and it would have made sense that oyster was available on the train too. Seems to me totally unfair. FCC obviously have a good thing going at PB station & enjoy this little cash cow! Whilst we get a good fleecing! nice.

Anyone have any ideas on this?

It is a bit of a joke but it was always destined to be this way. The government are (supposed to be) rolling out an ITSO smartcard system for rail travel outside the Oyster area. Last mayor wanted to take control of all rail ticketing and pricing south of Stevenage but that idea's been dropped by this mayor.

It's made all the worse because you could buy a ticket from here to Hadley Wood then use Oyster for the rest of your journey but you'd have to get off and on again to touch in, and similarly coming back touch out at Hadley Wood!

Whenever we go in we either drive to Cockfosters and use the tube or get the bus down there. The train fares are far too expensive and you always end up just missing one on the way home, half hour delay At least on the tube it's only a few minutes between trains!

Sadly the rails will never change while in private ownership, while the shareholders are dipping into the profits which could be used to improve service

I dont quite understand the level of outrage here. The Oyster card has to have a boundary somewhere unless it is countrywide, so the first station outside the TFL area seems obvious, albeit inconvenient to the people who travel from Potters Bar. Oyster was introduced by the Greater London Authority of which we're not part. So where should the boundary be? Any station that has trains that go to a station inside the GLA area? Yes I know the Metropolitan line is inside the oyster area, but I expect that whole underground system is run by TFL.

Problem is the whole system doesn't run to the same rules and therefore some gain the advantage but others cannot.

Chiltern accept Oyster pre-pay out to Amersham (on rail, not just met line) and from next year C2C will also accept it on some stations outside zone 6. You can also use pre-pay and/or zone 6 season tickets on the bus out as far as South Mimms which is a lot further outside zone 6 than the station is.

In the case of Potters Bar though, we're only just outside zone 6, which just makes it that little bit more annoying!

We seem to be waiting forever for the ITSO system, and it's taken years of meetings to get national rail to accept Oyster in London - and that was even with the mayors office agreeing to pay for equipement to be fitted too.

Exactly! Why cant there be parity across the system?

Just have a look at Ed Davey's campaign for Kingston & Surbiton regarding re-zoning, http://www.edwarddavey.co.uk/web/?q=rezoning.

As he says, quote,

'Both stations are only 12 miles from London, much closer to the average distance from London for zone 5 stations.

In fact, 23 zone 5 stations are further away from their London terminus than Kingston and Surbiton.

All we are asking for is equal treatment.'

PB is roughly 11.71 miles (as the crow flies) from Kings Cross and is designated OUTSIDE zone 6.

If 25 stations are further away from London Terminus than PB to KC AND are situated in zone 5 then I think the least we should expect is the oyster upgrade! What about all the zone 6 stations that are even further away?

Borehamwood & Elstreet designated as zone 6 will have the upgrade even though its roughly the same distance away from Kings Cross as PB AND is located in Hertsmere NOT London.

Am I missing something here? Is this equal treatment across the board? There is something really wrong, if you ask me. The facts speak for themselves for both the oyster upgrade and a future rezoning of PB.

Oh dear. Seems to me the logic of the argument is that we are closer to Kings Cross than some areas of the GLA, so we should be a London Borough then we'd get a Freedom Pass, better council services, and oh yes, higher rates.
So I dont know why the emphasis is on the distance to Kings Cross rather than the centre of London, or the distance to the GLA boundary or even to Moorgate. So what is the London Terminus of Elstree? Farringdon? That's convenient, that means Elstree has less reason to be in the Oyster zone than Potters Bar!

I agree there are anomolies in the system:
- like we can use Oyster on some local buses and they are considered within zone 6 - this anomoly surprises me - perhaps there are some folk living nearer to London complaining that they dont have this benefit.
- like there are some places like Elstree that are in zone 6 but outside GLA.
- like we dont have a tube station as Amersham has.

At the end of the day, we have a transport system that has to be paid for, and if the transport system loses revenue from Potters Bar passengers, someone else will probably have to make it up.

As a socialist, I dont like privatisation of the railways, the huge salaries of the boses etc etc, but that is where we are, and tampering with Oyster zones wont change that.

Also as a 98% believer in global warming, I believe we should be making transport less attractive to use etc. I believe most fossil fuelled transport needs to be more expensive.

The central questions of this argument are, as caveman points out, about how there appear to be disparities in how Potters Bar was not included in the Oyster Card mainline roll out and in a wider sense whether Potters Bar should be included in the TFL zonal pricing scheme. These measures would reduce the complexity and cost of travelling from PB to London, as many residents do on a daily basis, and is therefore likely to be a contentious issue.

With respect to zonal pricing, it’s my understanding that Zone 6 extends between 12 to 16 miles from Piccadilly Circus. A quick trip to Google Maps indicates that driving from there to PB is 12.7 miles and I’d imagine ‘as the bird flies’ this would be somewhat less. On this basis the argument for PB to be included in the zonal scheme is strong. With respect to the deployment of Oyster at PB it certainly seems strange that one can catch the 84 (an HCC service) from the station towards London and use an Oyster card. The net effect of this does make it very easy to become sceptical about why PB wasn’t included in the upgrade.

I don’t have much of an understanding of this issue, but if the decision not to deploy Oyster at PB station was down to FCC then it does seem they have done so whilst other train companies have deployed it at stations further from both their London terminus and further from Piccadilly Circus, from which the zonal system is measured.

Of course the transport system has to be paid for, but it should be funded in a non-arbitrary fashion. It’s little comfort for commuters from PB to believe they are essentially subsidizing commuters at some other station that has less of a case included in the Oyster scheme than we do.

Asking questions about the manner in which stations were selected for inclusion in the Oyster Card system, and questioning the basis on which Potters Bar was excluded from this scheme, engages in attempting to uphold fair and non-arbitrary decision making process no matter what political ideology one subscribes to.

A long way off - but at least someone is looking into it

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/a...network.do