16 Apr 2019, 3:55 pm
#128
(16 Apr 2019, 8:09 am)Tyne_Traveller Certainly the way the boundaries are coloured can cause confusion. Take for example the orange zone encompassing Ashington/Blyth and Alston and Allenheads. On the face of it that may not sound too bad as there are no direct buses without having to change and travel via 2 other zones. However, as I witnessed last week, a couple with Blue and Orange attempted to travel to Corbridge without the intermediate zone (cherry) The driver politely explained they required a 3 zone plus and showed the couple a map when they became argumentative. On the south side of the Tyne Valley the cherry zone will only take you 5 miles from Stanley Burn to Stocksfield Rail station, but an orange zone will cover you from there to Hexham and onwards to Alston/Allenheads/Bellingham/Haltwhisitle and Birdsoswald. Maybe the West Northumberland and Cumbria zone needs a look at with a different colour.
There used to be a problem with people riding the length of the X84/85 and having a blue and orange only pass - because the app allows them to check in either end - it was and still is down to the driver to see what's being presented on the ticket machines when the pass is presented. More often than not it was a mistake - either by the passenger, or by the corporate scheme not putting the correct zones for the entire journey. It's frustrating because there is no route between the two zones - so the combination in effect is invalid.
It used to be easier to justify when the timetable had the colour zone required along the line map on the timetable and actually used to state a 3 zone ticket was required to travel through - however this stopped some time ago, a few iterations before the paper timetables were axed in fact.
I'm sure the Ticketer system is intelligent enough to do 'bounds checking' by one means or another, either by prompting the driver to select a destination stop when a ticket which doesn't cover the entire route of the service is presented, or otherwise. This is not currently implemented so it is down to the driver to manually check this. This is disappointing as it leaves the system open to abuse, intentional or unintentionally.
