On Sat, 4 Aug 2007, Roland Perry wrote:

In message om, at 09:45:33
on Sat, 4 Aug 2007, W14_Fishbourne remarked:
On Aug 4, 4:51 pm, Roland Perry wrote:

Sounds great; so it's "Bank of ATOC" and not "Bank of ToC" that my
money gets debited from by whatever ToC I finish my journey at and who
does the sums about how much it should have cost to get there from
where I started. Presumably grippers on the train will do stuff like
alerting the card as one that's been used on a "savers banned" train,
so I'm charged a full open fare rather than a saver when I wave out?

As things stand at present, your money won't be debited by anyone. No-
one has yet discussed having a Pay As You Go facility on National Rail
AFAIK and that's certainly not included in the recent franchise
commitments. How many people do you think will keep their cards topped
up with a couple of hundred quid on the off-chance that they're going
to have to buy an SOR from London to Leeds?

While I agree that using one of these cards for a big purchase will
require it to be linked to a Direct Debit facility, you can get the
train from Nottingham to Derby (a typical commute in the Midlands for a
fiver - which is no more than an Oyster fare).

I had a thought about this. Perhaps a nationwide PAYG system is
impractical, but you could set up regional PAYG zones, and have a
capability to use them as one of the 'products' on the card - each one
would work just like Oyster PAYG does at the moment in London. The
necessary deposit/penalty fare/whatever would be low enough to be
practical, but it would deliver 80% of the benefit of a national system,
as it would cover commuting and local travel.

tom

--
Love as a principle and order as the basis; progress as the goal.