On Sun, 03 Aug 2014 15:25:39 -0500, Recliner
wrote:

Charles Ellson wrote:
On Sun, 03 Aug 2014 11:17:23 -0500, Recliner
wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Sun, 3 Aug 2014 07:56:16 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 06:17:35 on
Sun, 3 Aug 2014, Charles Ellson remarked:
Can you use your Oyster card for Pay-as-You-Go from London Bridge to
Tundbridge Wells?

Definitely not.

Not according to anything I can see on the NR website (assuming it is
up to date). There doesn't seem to be anything definite announced
since e.g. "A spokesman for Southeastern confirmed: ?We?re in
discussions with Transport for London to extend Oyster into Dartford."
[Kent Online 21 Feb 2014]

Tunbridge Wells being even further away from Greater London and AFAIAA
with a lower thicko count (Dartford seems to have a particular problem
with people unaware that Oyster has geographical limits) might not be
so far up the list for providing Oyster.

The problem with extending Oyster is that it has a very finite number of
price-zones and it's possible these were exhausted when extended to
Shenfield.

I asked TfL's ticketing people, via a Twitter "chat" session, if they
would technically cope with the indicated TSGN franchise plans to
extent Oyster beyond the zones. They said they could. Unfortunately I
can't send you a technical specification to prove this so I imagine my
statement will go on your vapourware list of probably untrue nonsense
;-)

This suggests there is some system capacity left but I imagine there
may also be assumptions about pricing and keeping stations priced on a
consistent basis outside the zones.

If Oyster PAYG is to extend to Dartford that will solve a great many
problems although it might reduce South Eastern's penalty fare income.
It's hardly likely to be a huge problem given Oyster based Freedom
Passes *are* valid to Dartford so there must be some ticketing logic
in the system that allows those cards to be read (I assuming the gates
at Dartford *do* read them - happy to be corrected if actual practice
is different).

I don't think the gates at Dartford do read Freedom passes. After the gate
wouldn't read it, I had to show mine to a person, who let me through.

Roughly comparable to 65+ bus passes used away from their home area ?
I see that 60+ Oyster cards are also valid to/via Dartford.

I think that the 60+ cards have exactly the same benefits as Freedom passes
in the London area, including to places like Dartford just outside the
zones.

They won't inevitably be valid on all non-TfL local buses running in
to Greater London. TfL seem to have lost the "exceptions" list from
their website but as well as non-TfL contracted routes within GL which
accepted Oyster and/or Travelcards there were a few (no more than a
couple of dozen IIRC) others specifically listed as unavailable
(presumably those paralleled by a TfL service). You could have a
section of a bus route where a 60+ card is invalid but a Freedom Pass
is because it provides ENCTS entitlement.

What they don't get is the buses away from London. And, of course,
you don't (yet) have to be 65 to get a national bus pass.