Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:
Alan OBrien wrote:

Do you have to touch in if you are using a travelcard, rather than
PrePay ? I thought it was only PP users who had to touch all over the
place ?

Only PAYG users need to touch in.

The Conditions of Carriage state that "When you use London Underground and
National Rail services, you must touch your Oyster card on the reader at
both the start and the end of your journey. Where the ticket gates at
stations are open you must continue to touch your Oyster card on the
reader."

That goes for all Oyster cards, prepay and season tickets.

Yes but as discussed before not all passengers can touch in at some starts
and ends, due to lack of readers. I'm also left completely unclear as to
whether readers at National Rail stations with barriers (e.g. Ilford) are
sufficient or whether one has to again touch on to a reader when switching
to the tube.

On a daily basis I don't touch in when interchanging at Stratford, not least
because the readers on the platform are badly positioned given the crowds
the station has to cope with, and I've never had a problem when exiting the
system at a barrier.

Woah - let's correct some things here.

The NCoC, whilst trying to be helpful, is wrong. As you've observed,
there aren't Oyster readers at most National Rail (NR) stations,
because Oyster Pre-Pay is not accepted as a way for paying for your NR
journey (this will change, but not a few years).

I'm going to make up a fantasy journey in your neck of the woods Tim to
illustrate a few things. Let's say you travel from Forest Gate (zone
3), a station *without* gates, into central London - say Oxford Circus
(zone 1), changing at Stratford onto the Central Line. In this case
you'll have a zones 1-3 Travelcard loaded onto your Oyster card (i.e.
you're not using Oyster Pre-Pay to pay for your journey at all).

You wouldn't need to touch-in at the beginning of your journey, not
simply because there aren't any readers at Forest Gate but because it's
not required (the NCoC is wrong here). Nor would you need to touch-in
your Oyster at a reader at Stratford when changing onto the Central
Line.

*If* you were to decide to go to West Ruislip (zone 6) at the end of
the Central Line in the west, then you *would* need to touch-in on an
Oyster reader on the Central Line platform at Stratford. This would
provide a start point for your journey on the Tube, and the gates at
West Ruislip would deduct the appropriate amount for the journey from
the edge of zone 3 to West Ruislip/zone 6.


In real life you start your journey from Ilford - but the gates you go
through are currently dumb, they don't mark an entry point onto the
transport system on your card (you are not touching-in here), they just
let you through as they can see you have the right zone on your card*.
Presuming you travel into central London, on the Central Line like the
fantasy journey above, you don't need to touch in at Straford, the
zones on your Travelcard have you covered. If you fancy seeing the
delights of West Ruislip then you need to touch-in at Stratford on the
Central Line platform.

I guess that's as clear as mud then, but it is right.