On 3 July, 20:01, "solar penguin"
wrote:
Mizter T wrote:

No - you stated "for now Overground is completely useless for most
journeys" - absolutely *no* qualifier about your statement only
applying south of the river. Given that LO is incredibly useful to a
good number of people - *that is a fact* - then I just pointing that
out.

I'm not denying it it's useful for the journeys that just happen to be
made by those people.

But I suspect that if you were to calculate the shortest journey between
every possible start point and every possible end point in the London
area, then LO would be no use at all for most (i.e. over 50%) of them,
because it doesn't penetrate south London (as well several large chunks
of north outer London).

(However, I'm willing to admit I'm wrong if anyone has actually done
such a culculation and found otherwise.)



What you appear to be saying is that it's useless for most of *your*
journeys - which is fine, although one could say that puts you in the
same 'blinkered Londoner' bracket that you were trying to shove Martin
into earlier on.

No, I'm definitely talking about all possible journeys as calculated
above.



I'm not interested in placing blame with this organisation or that
one. I'm only describing the situation on the ground. That's all

No, you're interested in blowing off steam. And why not place blame -
it seems to be the root cause of why you're getting so steamed up
after all.

I'm not getting steamed up, just stating facts. *I'd forgotten how much
the Oyster enthusiasts in these groups hate being reminded of simple
facts.

You can't simply look at the tickets and see how many you've got
left. Instead you have to mess about with your online balance and
stuff. That's annoying.

I agree that's a definite downside with smartcard ticketing, no doubt.
As I said in my reply to Martin, perhaps one day there will be
smartcards that offer a visual display of what your balance is and/or
when your season ticket is due to expire.

Like I said, I'm interested in facts about the real situation on the
ground, not hypotheical future speculation that might never happen.



As for fraud, I've never seen those fake Savers tickets that
everyone keeps taliing about. And now they've gone, I'll never have
the chance to get someone come up to me in a pub and sell me a
dozen bus tickets for only a quid!

Point proven!

What point? *Being forced to obey the rules is a lot _less_ convenient
than being allowed to break them.

That reminds me of another advantage of paper tickects. *If I want to go
somewhere in North London, I can get a Z2-6 ODTC, change to the tube at
Balham or Vauxhall, and travel through Z1 knowing the chance of an
on-train ticket inspection is pretty much zero. *When Oyster PAYG
becomes standard, I won't be able to do that any more. *

On the other hand, someone travelling from, say, Harrow and Wealdstone
to South Hampstead can go via Euston with their Oyster card, not touch
at Euston and then only be charged Z2-4 without any risk of being
termed a fare evader.