On Jul 3, 9:15 am, Arthur Figgis wrote:

On 03/07/2010 07:40, Mizter T wrote:

On Jul 2, 10:15 pm, "Paul
There are a fair number of ITSO smartcard gatelines already operational on
SWT's main routes (although outside London), so St Pancras is not the
first...

You mean (I think) ITSO *and* Oyster compatible gates - all SWT
gatelines within the London zones (e.g. the massive array at Waterloo,
Surbiton, Earlsfield etc etc).

There are are readers (though not gates) at least as far away at
Brockenhurst and Sherbourne, and I don't [think] those non-London
ones take Oyster?

I can only assume that these standalone smartcard readers don't read
Oyster - because they have no need to read Oyster, given that Oyster
ticketing is not valid outside of London (ok - a Travelcard loaded on
Oyster in conjunction with a Boundary Zone extension ticket is valid,
but you know what I mean!).

So we have gatelines with smartcard readers that have dual-capability
- Oyster *and* ITSO (for the forthcoming SWT smartcard) - the question
in my mind is whether they'll manage to sort out standalone smartcard
readers that also have this dual-capability, for installation at non-
gated stations within the London zones.

Example - North Sheen is an SWT station within the London zones that's
unlikely to ever be gated. At present it has a standalone Oyster
reader - what needs to happen is for that reader to be capable of
reading ITSO-standard railway smartcard (e.g. the forthcoming SWT
smartcard). The situation that absolutely needs to be avoided is for
there to be two separate smartcard readers side-by-side - an Oyster
reader and an ITSO card reader - because this would just cause maximum
passenger confusion. The worry, of course, is that it's all to easy to
see something utterly daft like this happening!

I *think* part of the reason SWT were so difficult about coming round
to the idea of accepting Oyster PAYG within London was that they were
in some dispute with the DfT as to how their ITSO smartcard scheme
would function alongside Oyster - I speculate that one of the problems
may have been the details as to how to get these two systems to mesh -
with DfT perhaps attempting to wash their hands of the details, and
TfL only really being interested in deploying the Oyster system (what
with the ITSO smartcard system being an SWT franchise commitment,
rather than something that directly involves TfL).