London Banter - View Single Post - TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk

Mizter T · June 26th 14, 04:04 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On 26/06/2014 15:52, wrote:
[...]
The big gain is not having to visit a ticket office or ticket machine.
e-Tickets and Print-at-Home do that too. If you've seen the ticket
office/machine queues at Cambridge at times (Saturday morning is often
worst) you'd see why such options are needed.

For the avoidance of talking at cross purposes, you're referring to
being able to use a CPC to directly pay for your journey (i.e. using it
to touch-in at the start, and touch-out at the end) - the Merseyrail
scheme is just about using contactless for the retail transaction of
buying a conventional paper ticket.

And yes, I'm very well aware of that big gain - Oyster offers it, to a
significant extent. You need to have credit on your Oyster card (which
can be guaranteed if one opts-in to auto-topup), but being able to
arrive at the station a minute or so before a train and just being able
to touch-in without faffing around buying a ticket has been nigh-on
revolutionary for many travellers in London.

(For the Cambridge example and similar, this is where being able to buy
a ticket for loading onto an ITSO smartcard online - via a smartphone
whilst on the go, for example - and so being able to sidestep the queues
and just swipe-in at the station should prove very useful.)