Recliner wrote:

Roland Perry wrote:
"Thousands of rail, bus and Tube passengers enjoyed free
transport on Saturday after London’s Oyster card network
collapsed.

Barriers are rail and tube stations were opened by staff
after Oyster card 'reader' machines used to register the
start and end of each journey failed to work throughout the
network."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-
transport/12077955/Londons-Oyster-card-system-crashes-giving-thousan
ds- free-travel.html

I wonder if this is a random fault, or a "Y2K" type of problem.

I remember when the Nottingham City Transport smartcard had one of
the latter at New Year in around 2006.

I notice that the handwritten sign says that contactless cards should
be used as normal, so the fault was specifically with the Oyster
system. Apart from the change of year, there was also the normal New
Year's free travel -- I wonder if the attempt to re-set to normal
chargeable travel failed?

The free travel ended at 0430 1st Jan and there weren't any reports of
problems yesterday. I'm guessing it is relating to the annual fares
increase which takes effect today, there was probably some sort of
update being pushed out to the gates overnight which has failed.

Peter Smyth