"Mizter T" wrote in message
...

On Nov 18, 12:00 am, "Q" ..@.. wrote:

"Mizter T" wrote:

On Nov 17, 8:55 pm, "Q" ..@.. wrote:

"Paul Corfield" wrote:

No it wasn't a waste of money. If you think about the operating
concept
then it is absolutely essential that passengers who do not have an
Oyster card, one day travelcard or saver ticket have the ability to
buy
the ticket to use the service. Otherwise you leave people in limbo
which is not acceptable when you have a penalty fares scheme.

What would of been good was to retain the machines at busy places and
fit
oyster pads to them to allow topup/balance check

That would be useful and of course it's hardly the first time it's
been suggested, but one should bear in mind the current machines are
little more than basic parking ticket machines.

(p.s. I didn't mean for the first half of that sentence to come across
in a dismissive way!)

That's OK - I know what you mean though.


This is very true - maybe it's time to put buses 'online' then. They
already
have the machines, the reader/writer pads etc.

There is already GPRS/3G and MPT1327 - any of those could provide a data
barer.

I wouldn't back that at all - the massive benefit of Oyster w.r.t.
buses is quicker boarding (and it really is a benefit), so introducing
such transactions would negate that benefit, indeed it could really
slow things down.

Maybe I gave the wrong impression - I'm not talking about top ups or
anything silly like that - I agree it would cause chaos and slow things down
to out of London cash speeds.

I was more thinking season ticket collection etc from the main machine - and
using the small reader pads ex bendy for things like credit checking in a
stand alone environment (as in the original thought with the machines above.

It would also save the entire driver code thing when there's a tube/DLR/tram
problem and people are pushed onto buses and get double charged etc.

You could install a proper TVM in a bus 'station' (Edmonton Green, Walthem
Cross type setup's) with out much overhead. There is already power, security
and data connections to those sites and a couple of machines would be very
very useful.

cynical mode
And just think - if buses went online TfL and anyone they 'sell' the data
too could have a whole set of new real-time metrics to report
against/use/abuse.
/cynical mode

Also my news reader is having a fit and not indenting past posts sometimes -
hopefully it wont get too messy.