Travel-time related fares

Under this fare structure, the fare authorizes a total journey travel time within the network irrespective of the number of trip segments required or of the routing taken or breaks made. It is also usual for this fare structure to be graduated, with longer time bands having increasing fares charged.

As such, this fare structure can provide continuing authority to travel after an interchange, though the time delay arising in the interchange is lost to the passenger. The weakness of the system, apart from this partial penalization of interchange, is that passengers pay a higher fare for a slower (to them, a lower quality) service subject to congestion.
Practicalities of enforcement also lead to wide fare time bands, and these present an incentive for over-riding through delayed validation of the travel authority where such a system is in application. Typically, though, should a service be delayed beyond its scheduled running time, passengers are not then penalized for that extent of over-riding.