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

Colin Rosenstiel · September 15th 06, 06:15 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Peter Frimberley) wrote:

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.

I don't want auto-top-up unless they pay me interest for all the money
spent that I won't use for months. But internet top-up might be useful
if I knew where I was going next. What you can't do AIUI is top up a
card without using it at the same time.

--
Colin Rosenstiel