On 5 Jan, 12:56, MIG wrote:

On 5 Jan, 10:12, Patrick Osborne wrote:

Every year it's the same, and this year was no exception. The queues
at Lewisham this morning had to be seen to be believed; they were so
long that they were seriously affecting the ability to enter the
station itself. Presumably this scene was re-enacted across the
network.

I went there today, intending to use the card-only Oyster topup
machine, but there was a huge queue for that as well.

However, people didn't seem to have noticed that the DLR now has an
Oyster-compatible ticket machine, for which there was a one-person
queue.*

Incidentally, although it worked OK, it was disconcertingly slow in
responding.

The one at the NR ticket office is very different. For example, when
it asks you to touch your Oyster at the end of the transaction, it is
so quick to tell you that your card has been updated, it almost seems
to have anticipated the touch.

The new DLR machine seemed to be very slow to respond. I wasn't sure
if it had done anything or not and had taken my card away for a few
seconds before it gave me the message that it had been updated.


That doesn't sound great. Perhaps it can be tweaked.


Also ... for this transaction it required a PIN. The old DLR machines
take cards, but don't require a PIN, presumably because the maximum
you can spend is quite low. I wonder if the new machines require a
PIN for every transaction?


Almost certainly yes. AIUI making use of chip and PIN results in the
retailer (in this case the DLR) being less exposed to card fraud. DLR
obviously made the decision that the benefit of upgrading their older
ticket machines wasn't worth it, presumably because they are to be
replaced with this new type (though I don't know anything specifically
about a DLR replacement programme for TVMs).


*This might support a hypothesis that the main demand for the older
machine is for travelcards for people using NR, unless DLR users are
walking straight past the DLR machine, unaware of its existence.


You've overlooked a great contingent of people, those using both NR
and DLR who are interchanging between the two at Lewisham (most likely
off NR onto the DLR), and who may either want Travelcards on Oyster or
are using a rail-only season ticket plus Oyster PAYG for the DLR
because it works out cheaper for them.

I think it most likely that these people simply weren't aware of the
new machine at the Loampit Vale end of the station, not least because
that's not somewhere where interchanging passengers would normally end
up going.

Still a bit daft to want to do these things on the first Monday back
after the break - though perhaps more understandable for those coming
from out in the sticks where there are no Oyster Stop newsagents,
though such people could still make use of the online system and
collect their topup (or indeed Travelcard) when they touch-in to start
travelling from Lewisham on the DLR.

(You have reminded me that I still had a few things to say in that old
thread about this issue - I will try and revisit said thread and post
my comments soon.)