On May 31, 10:34*am, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Sun, 31 May 2009 10:12:53 +0100, "Andrew Heenan"
wrote:

"D DB 90001" wrote:
Southern seem to be gaining oyster readers at many of the
stations I have visited recently, so they are going to be
accepting oyster PAYG soon presumably, the main barrier
to implementation being revenue allocation, and not lack of
Oyster readers.

Revenue allocation is not the issue now - the agreements have been made
operator by operator, not line by line; so Southerns deal was made before
they started installing readers on non-shared stations.

Was it? *How do you know? * All the official statements seem to indicate
that the commercial agreements over fares and money have dragged behind
agreement to install the equipment. *The latter is (relatively) non
controversial given TfL are stumping up the cash.

Indeed.


Much more likely that installation is being phased to spread the financial
pain, and where possible to tie in with other work. It's not the readers
that are expensive, but installing them and making them part of the system.
There's even planning issues; though they may appear random, someone has
decided where they should go. The apparent randomness may indicate shortcuts
to share cable runs with other items, etc., etc.

I doubt it is anything to do with "spreading pain" given TfL are funding
it and the expenditure is already late. Surely it's much more to do with
the long lead times for design, procurement, manufacture, installation
and then a thorough testing of all of the systems to make sure fares are
being properly calculated and that supporting transaction data actually
reaches the centre and aligns with what testers say they did?

Also I think installation started when the masterplan was for switch-
on to happen earlier rather than later, i.e. some time this year (IIRC
summer was being mooted at one point).

Re testing - I really can't see how much on the ground testing is
going to be possible though, realistically speaking. As soon as the
Oyster readers are turned on, people will start wanting to use them -
and even if they are adorned with notices or covered up, people would
still here the beep and see someone (i.e. the tester) using the reader
and jump to the conclusion that they could use it too. If there is to
be a testing period I'd think it'd have to be fairly short. But maybe
I've got that all wrong.


Do you work on the NR roll out of Oyster?

I believe Mr Heenan does not!