On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:48:25 +0100, Annabel Smyth
wrote:

On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 at 13:01:57, SJCWHUK
wrote:

They
could not allow 1 day travelcards because the train operators haven't all
come over to Oyster card.

Um - I don't quite see why not, since you can use period Travelcards on
national rail, within the relevant zones. What am I missing?

this is a complex issue but I'll try to explain.

If you had one day travelcards stored on the Oyster card you need to
tell a machine to activate it on the card as there could be several
cards of different zone combinations stored on the card and a dumb
device like a reader cannot know which one you want to activate. This
means you have to queue at a machine or ask a bus driver to activate
your card which slows down the bus - not what Oyster is about.

With period Travelcards the validity is simply there because you bought
it at the station or wherever. Therefore you can happily travel about
and if you encounter a gate it can typically be read or if you encounter
an inspector or conductor they have a device to read it. I don't know if
people still get the paper inspection ticket still or not.

With pre-pay and capping there is a very real issue about people
starting from NR stations which do not have any Oyster validation
equipment. If you start from Penge West (I'm assuming it hasn't got
gates) how do you start a daily balance to create a running total of
journeys which can then get capped depending on what time you start your
first trip, what day and what zone. AIUI the Oyster Card maintains a
tally of the start time, day, zones travelled through and obviously
values deducted.

If you start at 09.35 in Zone 2 and go to Zone 1 then the cap would be a
ODTC for Z12. If you then toddle along to Zone 3 by Tube the cap rises
to the price of ODTC for Z14. If you went by bus the cap stays at Z12
price because a travelcard for any zone is valid all over London. If you
remain within zones 1-4 for Tube or Rail or DLR travel for the rest of
the day then the cap stays at Z14 ODTC.

If you made all the trips by bus then you should be capped at the price
of a One Day Bus Pass.

If you start in the peak but don't use NR then you would get capped to
the LT Card price for the zones and so one. The lack of NR validation
and non participation in Pre-Pay presents a very real issue about how
you allow capping to work in the context of ODTC validity. There are
fraud risks which I won't go into here but the use of the maximum fare
being deducted on entry in order to incentivise validation of the card
for each trip does have a real purpose.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!