London Banter - View Single Post - The oyster-only tube

Peter Frimberley · September 15th 06, 09:15 AM posted to uk.transport.london

On Fri, 15 Sep 2006 00:57 +0100 (BST), (Colin
Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article ,
(tkd) wrote:

Ran out of credit on my prepay oyster this morning, so I was
faced with a 10 minute queue to one of 2 machines that can do topups
at Oxford Circus. Almost everyone else in the queue was topping up.

There were 8 unused cash ticket machines. What a waste of space,
why haven't the majority (or all) of these been converted to
card/oyster machines? Is it a deliberate decision to raise more
money from those in a rush?

Or is it a deliberate decision to encourage you to sign up for auto
top up?

For those of us living outside London auto-top-up is impossible. I don't
know which tube station I will use next for the rare occasions I use my
Oyster card. Since I have no desire to lend TfL any more money at no
interest than absolutely necessary I buy top-up as I use it only,
keeping a minimum £1.50 balance so I can always start a journey if I
can't get top-up at the station I do arrive at.

Why auto or web top-up can't just work at the tube gate that next sees
the card (I realise it might be asking too much for buses to do this) I
don't know.

It does work at any tube gate, and buses now too. I think it is just
the very first auto topup instruction that needs to be done at a
nominated station, presumably because there is more data to be
transmitted to the card, and if they had all oyster readers
network-wide looking out for all cards needing this special data
transfer, the whole system would be that much slower, perhaps
unworkable. By keeping a more manageable list of cards needing any
rare "special update" operations at individual stations, the whole
system can run more efficiently.

I don't think it's particularly onerous to have to collect the first
auto-top up instruction from a particular nominated station.