Matthew wrote:
In London. Presuambly the names of other cards will also be used in
their own areas (Yorcard in south Yorkshire, etc). While the
compatibility issues does seem to get portrayed as evil TOCs conspiring
against cuddly Oysters out of pure malice, the desire of DfT and the
TOCs to have a national set of open standards rather than lots of
individual incompatible proprietary systems does strike me a good idea.
An awful lot of UK transport technology and planning seems to be a case
of "I wouldn't start from here", and getting a standardised system might
avoid another set of problems in the future.



Oystercards are now included in the ITSO spec, at page 88 of
http://itso.org.uk/content/Specifica..._1_2006-10.pdf

According to today's London Lite, Chiltern are to accept PAYG from June
at the rest of its Greater London stations (Northolt Park to Wembley
Stadium) .

They are also to retail cards outside London.

"We are also happy to announce that we are working very hard with
Transport for London on being the first train company to sell Oyster
Smartcards outside London. We will be launching this to our passengers
in 2007"

C2C are also reported to be enabling PAYG acceptance at Dagenham Dock
and Rainham.

That's good news - with two TOCs fully on-board within London, pressure
will mount on others to follow suit. Of course, Chiltern and c2c are the
easiest...

I imagine a system update of Oyster will be necessary so that it can
handle NR zonal fares. Passengers using this new PAYG territory will
have be especially careful to touch in and touch out correctly, because
cross-London fares calculated incorrectly could be quite expensive!

--
Dave Arquati
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London