On 3 Feb, 22:11, MIG wrote:

On Feb 3, 10:01*pm, Mizter T wrote:

On 3 Feb, 21:28, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:51:52 +0000, martyn dawe
wrote:
If I get on a bus & the route is terminates before I get to my
destination, should I have to pass my card against the oyster card on
the 2nd bus to complete my journey ?

If the bus was always going to a destination short of where you were
going [1] then yes you do pay / swipe a second time. This is because it
was your decision to board a bus that was not going as far as you wanted
it to go.

If the bus is turned short while you are on it and you boarded with the
intention of just making one through trip then either you should be
transferred over to the following bus or be given a transfer note for
the driver on the next bus.

[1] i.e. it was clearly shown on the destination blind

The definitive answer, rather better than my verbose and inerudite
attempt upthread!

A follow on question - is the transfer ticket solely for use on that
specific route, or is there any chance of flexibility or driver
discretion coming into play?

A example - I was on a northbound 68 that terminated at the bottom of
Southampton Row (just past Holborn station). I was in a bit of a rush
to get to Euston, the normal end point of the 68 and this was indeed
shown on the destination blind. It got turned short at Southampton
Row, whereupon I got off after failing to go and ask for a transfer
ticket. I then tried getting on the next bus, a 168 I think, by
explaining the situation to the driver (the dead 68 was still sat at
the bus stop) - they seemed perfectly willing to take me *if* I'd had
a transfer ticket, which I did not have, so I ended up legging it up
to Euston.

I may have got the bus numbers mixed up, but the second bus was
definitely a different route to the first. If I'd had a transfer
ticket, would the driver of the second bus driver technically have
been acting within the rules to have let me on, or indeed would they
have been under an obligation to do so - the latter seems rather
unlikely, although I had after all paid for a journey all the way to
Euston.

BUT ... we still don't seem to have had a definitive answer to whether
an inspector can tell which bus you touched in on, or just which route
and when.

Or is the transfer ticket only to show the driver of a straight bus,
who would expect you to do something when getting on? *With a bendy
there might be no point.


This talk of a straight bus befuddled me at first! I believe the
somewhat absurd term used in the business is 'rigid bus' - regular bus
or standard bus is what I'd say!

There is more than one type of handheld Oyster reader - there are
simple ones that are predominantly blue and look like a pocket
calculator, these have red and green lights that light up depending on
whether the card is properly validated, they also have a simple LCD
display and a numeric keypad. My guess is that these only provide
basic information and are set up to check whether or not an Oyster
card has been validated on the route that's being checked, perhaps
also the direction of travel too - but that is total guesswork.

There are also more advanced Oyster readers that look like handheld
PDAs - Tramlink ticket inspectors use these, as do conductors on
Routemasters (only the heritage ones now), but some RPIs also have
these. My understanding is that these can query the Oyster card for
much more detailed information - I would presume that would include
the particular vehicle (by that I mean actual bus) that the card was
validated on, plus the particular validator too. Whether these
elements are set up to be checked during a normal sweep of a bendy bus
is another matter, my contention is that they either wouldn't be or
that they wouldn't matter.