On Jan 25, 10:58*am, MIG wrote:

On 25 Jan, 09:39, wrote:

In article , (Roland
Perry) wrote:

MIG remarked:
And someone on a touristy visit is particularly likely to be caught
out, spending short amounts of time at what may turn out to be an OSI,
thus paying maximum fares and cancelling all capping.

I thought I understood Oyster, but those remarks make no sense to
me. If someone is "always touching in and out", how they possibly
be charged more than the daily cap?

In a phrase "unresolved journeys". OSIs can accidentally create them.

Yes; eg you go from Greenwich to Charing Cross (with a change at
London Bridge), take your snaps of Nelson, then go into the
Underground for a trip to Kew Gardens. *Because Charing Cross is an
OSI, probably with a long timeout, the whole thing ends up as a single
journey which could go beyond the time limit, leaving you with an
unresolved journey and an unstarted journey at Kew, both of which are
charged at maximum. *Once you've got an unresolved journey (I'm pretty
sure) all capping goes out of the window.

No, that's not correct - whilst the 'unresolved' journey (i.e. the
problematic one that has 'timed-out') does not contribute towards the
cap, other journeys that are successfully resolved *do* contribute
towards the cap. And yes, I have experienced this first hand.

On 25 Jan, 11:36, Mizter T wrote:
On Jan 25, 10:58*am, MIG wrote:





On 25 Jan, 09:39, wrote:

In article , (Roland
Perry) wrote:

MIG remarked:
And someone on a touristy visit is particularly likely to be caught
out, spending short amounts of time at what may turn out to be an OSI,
thus paying maximum fares and cancelling all capping.

I thought I understood Oyster, but those remarks make no sense to
me. If someone is "always touching in and out", how they possibly
be charged more than the daily cap?

In a phrase "unresolved journeys". OSIs can accidentally create them.

Yes; eg you go from Greenwich to Charing Cross (with a change at
London Bridge), take your snaps of Nelson, then go into the
Underground for a trip to Kew Gardens. *Because Charing Cross is an
OSI, probably with a long timeout, the whole thing ends up as a single
journey which could go beyond the time limit, leaving you with an
unresolved journey and an unstarted journey at Kew, both of which are
charged at maximum. *Once you've got an unresolved journey (I'm pretty
sure) all capping goes out of the window.

No, that's not correct - whilst the 'unresolved' journey (i.e. the
problematic one that has 'timed-out') does not contribute towards the
cap, other journeys that are successfully resolved *do* contribute
towards the cap. And yes, I have experienced this first hand.

Ah right, although reaching a cap on the remaining journeys is
probably that much less likely once the disputed ones don't count
towards it. I was under the impression that if the system felt that
it didn't know what you'd been up to, it wouldn't know which cap to
apply.

On Jan 25, 12:02*am, MIG wrote:

On 24 Jan, 21:52, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:28:58 +0000, shaunrobinson70
wrote:

Hi all,

bringing my girlfriend down to London from pm-Wed 10th Feb until pm-Sat
13th Feb and was wondering what is the most economical and easiest way
to travel round london. I visit 3 or 4 times a year but since it's her
first time I expect she will mostly like to see the main touristy parts
so should think we will probably be staying within zones 1-2.
I've only ever purchased day travelcards before when I have been down
and have never used Oyster so which would be best please?

Any help appreciated.

Prepare to get lots of different answers!

If you know you will make a number of bus and tube journeys then it is
probably sensible for you to just get off peak one day Travelcards for
the zones you know you will use.

Latest prices here

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/faresa...aytickets/2911.....

If you don't think you will secure sufficient value from a one day
travelcard then it would be handy to have an Oyster card set for Pay as
you Go in your pocket if for no other reason than you get lower fares on
Oyster than paying cash.

Cash bus fare = £2, * Oyster Bus fare = £1.20
Cash tube fare in Zone 1 = £4, Oyster tube fare = £1.80.

You can get an Oyster card at an Underground Ticket Office. You pay £3
deposit for it and then load cash on top of that. You touch in on the
bus when you board - including on bendy buses if you get on at the
middle or rear doors. There are card readers on poles as you get on.
Your fare is deducted automatically from this one touch of your card.

On the tube, Overground, DLR and now National Rail you must touch in and
touch out. *You need to have a positive cash balance equal to the
minimum fare to be allowed entry to the rail system. On entering the
system will deduct an entry charge of £6 peak, £4.30 off peak. On exit
the system will work out your fare and will typically add back money to
your card so you charged the correct fare. For a Zone 1 trip it would
add back £4.20 so you only pay £1.80. * There are different charge bands
depending on whether you travel between 0430 and 0930 and 1600 and 1900
(peak times M-F), other times count as off peak. *The Oyster system will
keep track of your charges and will "cap" your daily charges to the same
as the relevant Day Travelcard rate.

The real issue is that Oyster is now pretty complicated and has some
fiendish rules that can catch people out. *I don't like to say this but
I'm struggling to keep up and I think I understand it pretty well. *If
you just want a very simple ticket and accept that you might make a
small financial loss on it then the One Day Travelcard is worth having
in your pocket.

Have a good visit!

And someone on a touristy visit is particularly likely to be caught
out, spending short amounts of time at what may turn out to be an OSI,
thus paying maximum fares and cancelling all capping. *Add that to the
£3 and they could be extremely out of pocket, with no convenient way
of getting a refund.

As I state in another post on this thread, an unresolved journey does
not cancel all capping for that day - instead, the problematic,
unresolved journey will not contribute towards the cap.

Seems to me the basic issue with OSIs and Oyster is that the system
cannot retrospectively spilt a previously combined journey (i.e. one
involving an OSI) into two distinct journeys and charge them as such,
instead of just 'timing out' the combined journey.

If the system could do this, then I think a whole host of problems
might be resolved, however I've no idea whether it would be remotely
do-able - it would require the system to do many more calculations
each time an Oyster card was presented, I think. Maybe this is
something that the next-gen Oyster cards could do? (i.e. the on board
chip could be more complex perhaps...)

On Jan 25, 11:43*am, MIG wrote:

On 25 Jan, 11:36, Mizter T wrote:

On Jan 25, 10:58*am, MIG wrote:

On 25 Jan, 09:39, wrote:
[snip]
In a phrase "unresolved journeys". OSIs can accidentally create them.

Yes; eg you go from Greenwich to Charing Cross (with a change at
London Bridge), take your snaps of Nelson, then go into the
Underground for a trip to Kew Gardens. *Because Charing Cross is an
OSI, probably with a long timeout, the whole thing ends up as a single
journey which could go beyond the time limit, leaving you with an
unresolved journey and an unstarted journey at Kew, both of which are
charged at maximum. *Once you've got an unresolved journey (I'm pretty
sure) all capping goes out of the window.

No, that's not correct - whilst the 'unresolved' journey (i.e. the
problematic one that has 'timed-out') does not contribute towards the
cap, other journeys that are successfully resolved *do* contribute
towards the cap. And yes, I have experienced this first hand.

Ah right, although reaching a cap on the remaining journeys is
probably that much less likely once the disputed ones don't count
towards it. *I was under the impression that if the system felt that
it didn't know what you'd been up to, it wouldn't know which cap to
apply.

The publicity about touching-in and out is certainly suggestive that
any failure to do so will wreck all capping for the day, though it
doesn't actually explicitly state this. However what appears to happen
in practice is that any unresolved journeys are simply excluded from
the capping calculation.

On 25 Jan, 11:49, Mizter T wrote:
On Jan 25, 12:02*am, MIG wrote:





On 24 Jan, 21:52, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:28:58 +0000, shaunrobinson70
wrote:

Hi all,

bringing my girlfriend down to London from pm-Wed 10th Feb until pm-Sat
13th Feb and was wondering what is the most economical and easiest way
to travel round london. I visit 3 or 4 times a year but since it's her
first time I expect she will mostly like to see the main touristy parts
so should think we will probably be staying within zones 1-2.
I've only ever purchased day travelcards before when I have been down
and have never used Oyster so which would be best please?

Any help appreciated.

Prepare to get lots of different answers!

If you know you will make a number of bus and tube journeys then it is
probably sensible for you to just get off peak one day Travelcards for
the zones you know you will use.

Latest prices here

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/faresa...aytickets/2911.....

If you don't think you will secure sufficient value from a one day
travelcard then it would be handy to have an Oyster card set for Pay as
you Go in your pocket if for no other reason than you get lower fares on
Oyster than paying cash.

Cash bus fare = £2, * Oyster Bus fare = £1.20
Cash tube fare in Zone 1 = £4, Oyster tube fare = £1.80.

You can get an Oyster card at an Underground Ticket Office. You pay £3
deposit for it and then load cash on top of that. You touch in on the
bus when you board - including on bendy buses if you get on at the
middle or rear doors. There are card readers on poles as you get on.
Your fare is deducted automatically from this one touch of your card.

On the tube, Overground, DLR and now National Rail you must touch in and
touch out. *You need to have a positive cash balance equal to the
minimum fare to be allowed entry to the rail system. On entering the
system will deduct an entry charge of £6 peak, £4.30 off peak. On exit
the system will work out your fare and will typically add back money to
your card so you charged the correct fare. For a Zone 1 trip it would
add back £4.20 so you only pay £1.80. * There are different charge bands
depending on whether you travel between 0430 and 0930 and 1600 and 1900
(peak times M-F), other times count as off peak. *The Oyster system will
keep track of your charges and will "cap" your daily charges to the same
as the relevant Day Travelcard rate.

The real issue is that Oyster is now pretty complicated and has some
fiendish rules that can catch people out. *I don't like to say this but
I'm struggling to keep up and I think I understand it pretty well. *If
you just want a very simple ticket and accept that you might make a
small financial loss on it then the One Day Travelcard is worth having
in your pocket.

Have a good visit!

And someone on a touristy visit is particularly likely to be caught
out, spending short amounts of time at what may turn out to be an OSI,
thus paying maximum fares and cancelling all capping. *Add that to the
£3 and they could be extremely out of pocket, with no convenient way
of getting a refund.

As I state in another post on this thread, an unresolved journey does
not cancel all capping for that day - instead, the problematic,
unresolved journey will not contribute towards the cap.

Seems to me the basic issue with OSIs and Oyster is that the system
cannot retrospectively spilt a previously combined journey (i.e. one
involving an OSI) into two distinct journeys and charge them as such,
instead of just 'timing out' the combined journey.

If the system could do this, then I think a whole host of problems
might be resolved, however I've no idea whether it would be remotely
do-able - it would require the system to do many more calculations
each time an Oyster card was presented, I think. Maybe this is
something that the next-gen Oyster cards could do? (i.e. the on board
chip could be more complex perhaps...)

I am not sure that that approach would be necessary. If the system
can already cope with variable timeouts, all it has to do is reset the
timeout at the same time as recalculating an OSI as a continuation.
It wouldn't need to resplit the journey with regard to the fare.

I suppose then there's the (minimal) risk of someone travelling around
all day, doing a few minutes' business only at OSIs, all charged as
one journey.

But is it justifiable to risk overcharging lots of people just to rule
out the tiny possibility of being scammed by someone whose business
involves spending a few minutes at OSIs all day?

On 25 Jan, 11:59, MIG wrote:
On 25 Jan, 11:49, Mizter T wrote:





On Jan 25, 12:02*am, MIG wrote:

On 24 Jan, 21:52, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:28:58 +0000, shaunrobinson70
wrote:

Hi all,

bringing my girlfriend down to London from pm-Wed 10th Feb until pm-Sat
13th Feb and was wondering what is the most economical and easiest way
to travel round london. I visit 3 or 4 times a year but since it's her
first time I expect she will mostly like to see the main touristy parts
so should think we will probably be staying within zones 1-2.
I've only ever purchased day travelcards before when I have been down
and have never used Oyster so which would be best please?

Any help appreciated.

Prepare to get lots of different answers!

If you know you will make a number of bus and tube journeys then it is
probably sensible for you to just get off peak one day Travelcards for
the zones you know you will use.

Latest prices here

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/faresa...aytickets/2911.....

If you don't think you will secure sufficient value from a one day
travelcard then it would be handy to have an Oyster card set for Pay as
you Go in your pocket if for no other reason than you get lower fares on
Oyster than paying cash.

Cash bus fare = £2, * Oyster Bus fare = £1.20
Cash tube fare in Zone 1 = £4, Oyster tube fare = £1.80.

You can get an Oyster card at an Underground Ticket Office. You pay £3
deposit for it and then load cash on top of that. You touch in on the
bus when you board - including on bendy buses if you get on at the
middle or rear doors. There are card readers on poles as you get on..
Your fare is deducted automatically from this one touch of your card.

On the tube, Overground, DLR and now National Rail you must touch in and
touch out. *You need to have a positive cash balance equal to the
minimum fare to be allowed entry to the rail system. On entering the
system will deduct an entry charge of £6 peak, £4.30 off peak. On exit
the system will work out your fare and will typically add back money to
your card so you charged the correct fare. For a Zone 1 trip it would
add back £4.20 so you only pay £1.80. * There are different charge bands
depending on whether you travel between 0430 and 0930 and 1600 and 1900
(peak times M-F), other times count as off peak. *The Oyster system will
keep track of your charges and will "cap" your daily charges to the same
as the relevant Day Travelcard rate.

The real issue is that Oyster is now pretty complicated and has some
fiendish rules that can catch people out. *I don't like to say this but
I'm struggling to keep up and I think I understand it pretty well. *If
you just want a very simple ticket and accept that you might make a
small financial loss on it then the One Day Travelcard is worth having
in your pocket.

Have a good visit!

And someone on a touristy visit is particularly likely to be caught
out, spending short amounts of time at what may turn out to be an OSI,
thus paying maximum fares and cancelling all capping. *Add that to the
£3 and they could be extremely out of pocket, with no convenient way
of getting a refund.

As I state in another post on this thread, an unresolved journey does
not cancel all capping for that day - instead, the problematic,
unresolved journey will not contribute towards the cap.

Seems to me the basic issue with OSIs and Oyster is that the system
cannot retrospectively spilt a previously combined journey (i.e. one
involving an OSI) into two distinct journeys and charge them as such,
instead of just 'timing out' the combined journey.

If the system could do this, then I think a whole host of problems
might be resolved, however I've no idea whether it would be remotely
do-able - it would require the system to do many more calculations
each time an Oyster card was presented, I think. Maybe this is
something that the next-gen Oyster cards could do? (i.e. the on board
chip could be more complex perhaps...)

I am not sure that that approach would be necessary. *If the system
can already cope with variable timeouts, all it has to do is reset the
timeout at the same time as recalculating an OSI as a continuation.
It wouldn't need to resplit the journey with regard to the fare.

I suppose then there's the (minimal) risk of someone travelling around
all day, doing a few minutes' business only at OSIs, all charged as
one journey.

But is it justifiable to risk overcharging lots of people just to rule
out the tiny possibility of being scammed by someone whose business
involves spending a few minutes at OSIs all day?-

A question (relating to "Bob" in another thread).

Is it possible for a ticket office to terminate a journey for you, eg
when you are in an OSI but want to start a new journey, either with a
long timeout or it's now off peak but wasn't when the first journey
started?

And if so, can they do it without resetting the cap at the same time
(which went wrong for me at Canary Wharf once)? For the off-peak
scenario, I guess that wouldn't matter.

On 25 Jan, 09:04, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
16:02:48 on Sun, 24 Jan 2010, MIG
remarked:

And someone on a touristy visit is particularly likely to be caught
out, spending short amounts of time at what may turn out to be an OSI,
thus paying maximum fares and cancelling all capping.

I thought I understood Oyster, but those remarks make no sense to me. If
someone is "always touching in and out", how they possibly be charged
more than the daily cap?
--
Roland Perry

This just came up on uk.railway.

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....2a6f8db7?hl=en

On Jan 25, 10:50*am, "Steve Dulieu"
wrote:
Because it doesn't always work properly. This is what happened to me over
the weekend;
As I work for LUL I'd got a new PAYG loaded Oyster with 20 quid on it for
use on National Rail.
I thought I'd read somewhere (or possibly just imagined) that LUL
staff passes could now be loaded with a PAYG balance for use where
they're not free. I take it that this isn't the case?

On Jan 24, 10:05*pm, DRH wrote:
X-No-Archive

My advice : One Day Travelcard. Z1-2 version is £5.60.

...which works on tubes, trains and the DLR within zones 1 and 2, and
buses across the whole city, after 0930 and all day at weekends.

Alternatively, if you/your girlfriend have a 16-25 Railcard, you can
get a zones 1-6 off-peak one-day travelcard for £5 - which basically
allows you to travel anywhere, on any means of transport. They're
available from tube and national rail ticket offices, and some NR
ticket machines.

wrote in message
...
In article , (Roland
Perry) wrote:

In message
,
at 16:02:48 on Sun, 24 Jan 2010, MIG
remarked:
And someone on a touristy visit is particularly likely to be caught
out, spending short amounts of time at what may turn out to be an OSI,
thus paying maximum fares and cancelling all capping.

I thought I understood Oyster, but those remarks make no sense to
me. If someone is "always touching in and out", how they possibly
be charged more than the daily cap?

In a phrase "unresolved journeys". OSIs can accidentally create them.

Bearing in mind that the original question is from a newbie to the group,
using such terms as OSI in a reply is stupid IMHO

tim