Contactless fares from St Albans City to Gatwick Airport with Sunday engineering works?

[trevmonk]

I want to travel St Albans City to Gatwick tomorrow (Sunday). Even though there is a Thameslink Super Off Peak paper ticket at £22.30 it is beaten hands down by the TFL priced contactless fare at £15.20 for the same journey, as long as you avoid London Underground.

However, there are no trains running through the Thameslink core between St Pancras and London Bridge tomorrow. The journey planner recommended alternative route is London Underground from St Pancras to Victoria and then Gatwick Express. There should be ticket acceptance on London Underground in place and a suspension of that controversial rule regarding non-validity of Thameslink tickets on Gatwick Express.

But what happens with passengers who have tapped in with contactless at St Albans? Will they have problems at the Gatwick Express barriers? And will they be penalised by having to pay the higher contactless fare of £17.90 which is normally levied if you decide to transfer by London Underground from St Pancras to Victoria or London Bridge when making your journey? Or worse still, be charged an additional £22.90 for the Gatwick Express fare?

 

[Hadders]

With contactless you normally get charged for the journey you actually made, so you would be charged £17.90

 

[MikeWh]

If you have to touch in on the gates on platforms 13/14 at Victoria then I think you'll be charged the Gatwick Express fare.

 

[JonathanH]

If you have to touch in on the gates on platforms 13/14 at Victoria then I think you'll be charged the Gatwick Express fare.

My experience, admittedly some time ago, was that there was no out of station interchange on the platform 13/14 barriers at Victoria so the fare charged for St Albans to Gatwick using platform 13/14 barriers would be £12.20 for St Albans to Victoria including the underground, and £22.90 for Victoria to Gatwick, ie £35.10 in total.

There should be ticket acceptance on London Underground in place and a suspension of that controversial rule regarding non-validity of Thameslink tickets on Gatwick Express.

Apart from advances, and season ticket fares routed via City Thameslink, there isn't a 'not Gatwick Express' restriction from St Albans to Gatwick. The 'walk-up" paper fares are routed '+ Any Permitted" so are unambiguously valid on the underground and Gatwick Express.

 

[John Webb]

As I understood it there are NO trains running between Bedford and St Pancras today, let alone from St Albans?

EDIT:
Apologies - getting confused with next weekend.

 

[jfollows]

As I understood it there are NO trains running between Bedford and St Pancras today, let alone from St Albans?

Trains running Luton to London.

Engineering works: Flitwick 21 Sep | National Rail

Buses replace trains between Luton and Bedford on Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 September. See details of routes affected by planned engineering works, including when they take effect, alternative timetables, advice for alternative travel, including info about engineering work and why it is necessary.

www.nationalrail.co.uk

East Midlands Railway:

A reduced timetable will operate and trains will run between London St Pancras International and Luton with a connecting bus service between Luton and Bedford, for continued train service at Bedford.

Thameslink:

Buses will replace trains between Luton and Bedford.

Realtime Trains | Departures from St Albans all day on 22/09/2024

Train information at St Albans all day on 22/09/2024. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

 

[trevmonk]

Following the views above about Gatwick Express I think I will still use contactless but go via Northern Line to London Bridge and then pick up the Thameslink again to go on to Gatwick. It will still make the contactless fare £2.70 more but avoid any hassle and still be cheaper than a paper ticket.

If I was travelling alone I might be up for going to Victoria and having an argument at the barriers but I wil be accompanying two foreign visitors to catch their flight. When they arrived during the week I forewarned them to use contactless to get from Gatwick to St Albans for £15.20, versus the Thameslink paper single for £27.60. Hopefully they won't mind too much if it costs an extra £2.70 more going back the other way.

I'm unclear who my contract is with when I use contactless from a Thameslink station. Is it Thameslink, whose service I may use for the entirety of my journey, or TFL who set the fare and operate the charging process? I can understand that TFL can't amend their charging systems everytime Thameslink have engineering works but it does look very odd to outsiders to having a two tier ticketing system with different fares, let alone the different peak periods.

 

[John Webb]

Trains running Luton to London.

Engineering works: Flitwick 21 Sep | National Rail

Buses replace trains between Luton and Bedford on Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 September. See details of routes affected by planned engineering works, including when they take effect, alternative timetables, advice for alternative travel, including info about engineering work and why it is necessary.

www.nationalrail.co.uk

Apologies - I had got today's date confused with next weekend....

 

[yorkie]

Following the views above about Gatwick Express I think I will still use contactless but go via Northern Line to London Bridge and then pick up the Thameslink again to go on to Gatwick. It will still make the contactless fare £2.70 more but avoid any hassle and still be cheaper than a paper ticket.

On the contrary; please do use GX, and if you get charged a premium fare, let us know!

 

[MikeWh]

On the contrary; please do use GX, and if you get charged a premium fare, let us know!

I think this is poor advice if contactless is being used. The fares charged will be St Albans to Victoria LU and Victoria GX to Gatwick. With the current security incident affecting TfL it will not be possible to request, let alone get, a refund for goodness knows how long.

 

[yorkie]

I think this is poor advice if contactless is being used. The fares charged will be St Albans to Victoria LU and Victoria GX to Gatwick. With the current security incident affecting TfL it will not be possible to request, let alone get, a refund for goodness knows how long.

GTR will be liable to refund any additional amount charged.

If there is any suggestion that a TfL outage gets GTR out of itz that wouldn't be correct.

If the original poster makes every effort to document the incident, recover the monies and complain to GTR, and escalate as appropriate, I would absolutely be personally prepared to reimburse the OP the amount they are out of pocket myself.

 

[Starmill]

Following the views above about Gatwick Express I think I will still use contactless but go via Northern Line to London Bridge and then pick up the Thameslink again to go on to Gatwick. It will still make the contactless fare £2.70 more but avoid any hassle and still be cheaper than a paper ticket.

If I was travelling alone I might be up for going to Victoria and having an argument at the barriers but I wil be accompanying two foreign visitors to catch their flight. When they arrived during the week I forewarned them to use contactless to get from Gatwick to St Albans for £15.20, versus the Thameslink paper single for £27.60. Hopefully they won't mind too much if it costs an extra £2.70 more going back the other way.

I'm unclear who my contract is with when I use contactless from a Thameslink station. Is it Thameslink, whose service I may use for the entirety of my journey, or TFL who set the fare and operate the charging process? I can understand that TFL can't amend their charging systems everytime Thameslink have engineering works but it does look very odd to outsiders to having a two tier ticketing system with different fares, let alone the different peak periods.

Your contract under the NRCoT is always with the relevant train operator. TfL is merely a supplier to the train operators.

Unfortunately, the customer service department at TfL handling all contactless pay as you go enquires is quite confusing in this regard. This is going to be the case for plenty of journeys which do not pass even vaguely near Greater London quite soon. Quite a lot of money has had to be spent making sure the customer service departments of many TOCs correctly refer cases to TfL or not. It remains to be seen if they'll be able to get people the right help...

GTR will be liable to refund any additional amount charged. It's not correct that a TfL outage gets GTR out of it.

If the original poster makes every effort to document the incident, recover the monies and complain to GTR, and escalate as appropriate, I would absolutely be prepared to reimburse the OP the amount they are out of pocket.

This is of course totally fair enough - I think mikewh was trying to clarify that the hassle factor involved could be very significant here. If someone is prepared to spend potentially several hours of their own time dealing with it, then of that's fine, as long as they know in advance the risk of it being a hassle.

 

[yorkie]

It may well be hassle, but I would absolutely be prepared to help anyone in this position (including assisting in writing letters), and it would be for the greater good for such overcharging to be robustly challenged.

 

[MikeWh]

I think mikewh was trying to clarify that the hassle factor involved could be very significant here.

Yes, that's right. GTR have as much access (ie none) to the contactless journey history as anyone else, so proving the problem is going to be problematic. Yes, a bank statement showing a total which matches the journeys made could be proof, but it could also co-incidentally be any other combination of journeys with the odd incomplete journey thrown in. If @yorkie is prepared to take the financial risk, including potentially re-imbursing the OP for other costs (phone calls etc) then that's fine. There will be quite a time commitment involved too. When the systems finally come back online there is going to be a huge surge in requests for refunds so it is not going to be a quick process even when fixed. TfL were asked today whether the issue will be fixed by Christmas and they wouldn't commit. Take from that what you will.

Edit: All this is pointless now as the OP in post 1 said that the journey was last Sunday.

 

[trevmonk]

In the end my original query proved to be academic. It was agreed with my foreign visitors that if I escorted them via the Northern Line to London Bridge and saw them on to the Gatwick train they would be fine. So I bought a cheap paper return to London Thameslink. They, however, did use contactless all the way and would have been charged the higher St Albans - Gatwick contactless fare for an extra £2.70, purely because of engineering works.

Unfortunately it's not just contactless fares that are mischarged during engineering works. Different works this weekend mean that Thameslink trains aren't calling at London Bridge.

From St Albans the rail planners tell you to take the Northern Line from St Pancras to complete your journey. I would have expected ticket acceptance to be in place on the underground but you are directed to buy a Travelcard at extra cost to cover the tube element. That also ignores the fact that due to the interavailability rules Thameslink tickets are ALWAYS valid on the tube to travel that way.

 

[Joe Paxton]

[...]
From St Albans the rail planners tell you to take the Northern Line from St Pancras to complete your journey. I would have expected ticket acceptance to be in place on the underground but you are directed to buy a Travelcard at extra cost to cover the tube element. That also ignores the fact that due to the interavailability rules Thameslink tickets are ALWAYS valid on the tube to travel that way.

If I understand you correctly, you are mistaken here - rail tickets routed through the Thameslink core are not inherently 'interavailable' / also valid on the Tube.

What you may be thinking about was that, if I recall correctly, it was the case many years ago in Thameslink's early days that its central core section was - for ticketing purposes - principally treated as a Tube line, meaning cross-London journeys on Thameslink needed the ✠ Maltese cross (or † dagger) symbol on the ticket for a cross-London transfer.

 

[yorkie]

If I understand you correctly, you are mistaken here - rail tickets routed through the Thameslink core are not inherently 'interavailable' / also valid on the Tube.

What you may be thinking about was that, if I recall correctly, it was the case many years ago in Thameslink's early days that its central core section was - for ticketing purposes - principally treated as a Tube line, meaning cross-London journeys on Thameslink needed the ✠ Maltese cross (or † dagger) symbol on the ticket for a cross-London transfer.

Along with various other flows not relevant to this particular query, LU/NR interavailability applies between West Hampstead / Kentish Town and King's Cross St Pancras / Farringdon / Blackfriars / London Bridge / Elephant & Castle, except where explicitly stated otherwise, i.e. routed 'Not Underground', 'Ldn not Underground, "via City Thameslink" or "Not Underground".

No maltese cross is required, which would otherwise be the case, if interavailability didn't apply.

 

[trevmonk]

What you may be thinking about was that, if I recall correctly, it was the case many years ago in Thameslink's early days that its central core section was - for ticketing purposes - principally treated as a Tube line, meaning cross-London journeys on Thameslink needed the ✠ Maltese cross (or † dagger) symbol on the ticket for a cross-London transfer.

I know years ago there were times when Thameslink tickets were accepted on the tube for particular reasons (like the years during the rebuilding of Blackfriars and London Bridge when the line was often closed)

I'm thinking though about the interavailabilty rule where you can take either National Rail or tube where there are routes that mirror each other closely. Like Liverpool St to Stratford, Finsbury Park to Kings Cross and Thameslink from West Hampstead to Elephant and Castle, London Bridge or intermediate Stations. It's an eminently sensible idea in times of disruption or delays on either mode.

I believe info on this is listed somewhere but not sure how to find it. National Rail have a useful page on travelling in London which includes a lot of detail on London Terminal validity and stations that can be used with Maltese cross tickets but nothing on interavailabilty. In fact it's so secret many gateline staff have never heard of it!

I expect someone will be along in a minute to point us to it.

 

[paul1609]

Along with various other flows not relevant to this particular query, LU/NR interavailability applies between West Hampstead / Kentish Town and King's Cross St Pancras / Farringdon / Blackfriars / London Bridge / Elephant & Castle, except where explicitly stated otherwise, i.e. routed 'Not Underground', 'Ldn not Underground, "via City Thameslink" or "Not Underground".

No maltese cross is required, which would otherwise be the case, if interavailability didn't apply.

I believe that the Thameslink "interavailability" was special in that national rail tickets to those stations had to be issued to zone u1 and were charged at a premium. Tickets to London Thameslink were introduced to avoid paying a fee to TfL for underground usage and didnt inherently have interavailability. This appears to have changed sometime in the past.

 

[Haywain]

I believe that the Thameslink "interavailability" was special in that national rail tickets to those stations had to be issued to zone u1 and were charged at a premium. Tickets to London Thameslink were introduced to avoid paying a fee to TfL for underground usage and didnt inherently have interavailability. This appears to have changed sometime in the past.

That was for Barbican and Moorgate. And possibly for Farringdon.