On Jan 25, 6:08*pm, "Paul Scott"
wrote:

Steve Dulieu wrote:
Although that minor complication could be getting a bit less minor,
yesterday I traveled from Kingston to Hammersmith via Richmond. At
Richmond I saw a yellow oyster pad on the platform as I got off the
train from Kingston "Ah-ha thinks I, just the thing to end my journey
and let my staff pass take over". Just in time I noticed that the
display said "touch here for interchange" and that the yellow pad had
the word "Pink" handwritten twice above and below the oyster symbol
in blue biro. At which point I decided that it was belt and braces
time and exited the barrier with my oyster, turned around and came
back in with my staff pass. I must admit, that from my first weekend
(see tale of woe up thread) I'm not hugely impressed.

There have been posts here suggesting that these (and many other) LU/LO/NR
interchange stations still need both yellow AND pink validators on the
platforms, as pax may still need to touch in having arrived on a NR paper
ticket from outside the zones.

I'm sure someone posted last year that the platform validators at West
Brompton had been changed to Pink, yet still functioned as Yellow at the
same time as well. * I can see that working if the Oyster card has't been
touched IN before, but how can the system decide whether to treat a
subsequent touch (having started elsewhere) as either interchange or a touch
OUT correctly? Hope that makes sense...

It doesn't matter - they can just act in exactly the same way as
standalone Oyster interchange readers elsewhere that are *within* paid-
for areas (i.e. at common interchange points, generally on the
platforms) - that is the journey is marked as 'possibly finished,
possibly being continued' state - the correct fare to that location is
deducted, but if the Oyster card then goes on to be touched-out
elsewhere later (but within the overall journey time limit), the
original journey will be extended. In the past I've referred to this
as a 'soft exit' from the system.

This won't work if the standalone Oyster reader is solely for entry
and exit to a station, though these will typically be located at the
entrance from the street as opposed to being on the platform. As an
open journey is totally concluded if you touch on them, I've referred
to these in the past as offering a 'hard exit' from the system (and
then, if touched again, a 'hard entry' back onto the system)

To confirm that my understanding is correct, I've touched my Oyster
card on numerous interchange readers/ validators (i.e. yellow ones as
well as pink ones) within stations whilst en-route - e.g. at
Stratford, at Moorgate/ Old Street (to or from Great Northern), at
Farringdon (to or from Thameslink) etc - to no ill effect at all.

So, there's no harm in touching on such an 'interchange reader' during
a journey - just don't do it on a reader on the exit from the station
to the street.

(And yes, I'm not convinced sure my made-up terminology is up to
scratch either, so feel free to invent something better!)

Mizter T wrote:

To confirm that my understanding is correct, I've touched my Oyster
card on numerous interchange readers/ validators (i.e. yellow ones as
well as pink ones) within stations whilst en-route - e.g. at
Stratford, at Moorgate/ Old Street (to or from Great Northern), at
Farringdon (to or from Thameslink) etc - to no ill effect at all.

Thanks for the explanation (and Andy's earlier) - however it does cloud the
situation for the traveller from outside the zones who is surely looking for
a yellow reader, if only because that's what the documentation suggests he
should be looking for?

Paul S

On Jan 25, 8:01*pm, "Paul Scott"
wrote:
Mizter T wrote:
To confirm that my understanding is correct, I've touched my Oyster
card on numerous interchange readers/ validators (i.e. yellow ones as
well as pink ones) within stations whilst en-route - e.g. at
Stratford, at Moorgate/ Old Street (to or from Great Northern), at
Farringdon (to or from Thameslink) etc - to no ill effect at all.

Thanks for the explanation (and Andy's earlier) - however it does cloud the
situation for the traveller from outside the zones who is surely looking for
a yellow reader, if only because that's what the documentation suggests he
should be looking for?


I agree and I think they should have kept the majority of the Oyster
pads yellow and maybe put a pink circle around it, pink line through
it or maybe a pink interchange symbol on it. Alternative, just a large
sign on the 'box' saying interchange validator.

MIG wrote

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?

You can always force a new journey by touching in on a bus !

It would be handy if you could do this on a ticket machine too.

Now my draft explanaion of OSIs
===========
As you know Bob, in Britain fares work differently on buses and trains,
on a journey by bus each bus taken is a separate fare, but on trains
and underground you are charged a fare for the whole journey even if
you have to change en route.

In the usual case when you never go through an exit barrier until your
journey is complete Oyster's only difficulty in working out the proper
fare on trains and underground is deciding what route you took but, for
example when changing between rail and underground, you will often go
though an exit barrier then a little later go through an entrance gate
to continue your journey.
In some case this may involve crossing the street to a station with a
different name or to a different part of the same rail or underground
station but in all such cases Oyster must recognise that a jouney is
not ending but continuing Thus for this purpose the Euston - Kings
Cross - St Pancras interchange consists of three rail stations and
three underground stations (because of Euston Square) and the Victoria
interchange is two barriered rail stations - Victoria (Southern) &
Victoria (SouthEastern) plus an underground station..

If at one of these interchanges (Out of Station Interchanges, OSIs) you
pass through another entrance gate within the specified time allowance,
say 20 minutes, the journey is regarded as continuing. After that time
or if you touch in on a bus or go to some other station that ends the
old journey.

====

Critics, please remember we want to leave out as much detail as
possible and just get the concept over. I don't want to mention /here/
that Kings Cross (Metropolitan) still counts as yet another underground
station nor that some stations don't have barriers, only validators and
so forth.

On Jan 25, 10:01*pm, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:23:45 -0800 (PST), martin
wrote:

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?

No, not correct. *It is impossible to load any Oyster product to a staff
pass. *This is similar to the situation where cash cannot be loaded to
Freedom Passes.

If you're ancient like me and have privilege ticket facilities then you
can get a privilege rate PAYG Oyster card for use on NR lines where a
TfL staff pass is not valid. *I have one of these but have not yet used
it in anger.

Staff without privilege facilities have to do what Steve D has done and
have a public card for use on NR.

Having two cards throws up all sorts of conundrums about where to
validate and not. *Even worse for those of us who also get free travel
on a TOC line as a perk of the job. *If I wanted to travel from
Chingford to Liverpool St I'd have to validate at Chingford, rush off
the train at Walthamstow Central to touch out and pay for that bit,
validate my staff pass for entry, get back on the train and then touch
out at the other end. *Oh and I need to hold an additional ticket for
the free bit from Walthamstow to Liv St! * *Needless to say I haven't
tried this yet ;-)

Basic question - this free travel on a TOC line, this is to enable an
LUL employee to get from their place of dwelling into work, right? If
so, is it just employees above a certain seniority? And does it apply
anywhere else within the TfL family?

(And if the extra ticket is a paper ticket, then would the second
validation - the 'touch-in' of the TfL staff pass - be required at
Walthamstow Central?)


There are other scenarios where mid journey validation could be
necessary. This is why I am joining MIG's campaign for validators on
trains ;-)

Validators in one's pocket, I should think!

On 25 Jan, 18:39, "John Salmon" wrote:
"Mizter T" wrote

"John Salmon" wrote:
"MIG" wrote
And there's never been any proper reason for refusing to put day
travelcards on Oyster anyway. It's extra money up front, and the punter
still buys into the Oyster system. *Instead of charging an uncapped
maximum single fare for unresolved journeys, the system could charge a
day travelcard instead, and let the punter use it as such thereafter..
That sounds like a very good idea. Is there any technical reason why it
can't be done?
Why's it a good idea? There's absolutely no need or calling for it (esp..
now that PAYG is acceptable on NR) - if you want a Day Travelcard, you get
a Day Travelcard. Why totally muddy the waters by offering it on Oyster,
especially now.

Prior to this month I had been using Day Travelcards during most of my
visits to London, but I hoped and believed that this would no longer be
necessary now that all NR lines within the zones are included within the
validity of Oyster PAYG. *Unfortunately it is now clear that the behaviour
of Oyster PAYG at OSIs is seriously screwing things up for quite a few of
the regular posters on here and on uk.r. *I think both MIG and I are looking
for a solution that gets round this problem. *The suggestion that Day
Travelcards might be made capable of being put on Oyster seems to be one
such way. *Another would be to provide some means of definitively ending a
journey at a location classed as an OSI, i.e. a means of preventing the
system from linking journeys when the customer doesn't want this to happen.

In article ,
(John Salmon) wrote:

I am rather surprised that an apparent advocate of Oyster should
now be seriously suggesting that some categories of passenger
should need to take the seemingly retrograde step of reverting to
the use of paper Day Travelcards.

The other alternative is two Oyster cards. Swap cards at OSIs.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On Jan 26, 12:40*am, wrote:
In article ,

(John Salmon) wrote:
I am rather surprised that an apparent advocate of Oyster should
now be seriously suggesting that some categories of passenger
should need to take the seemingly retrograde step of reverting to
the use of paper Day Travelcards.

The other alternative is two Oyster cards. Swap cards at OSIs.


Which will end up costing more, up to double the cap for using just a
single Oystercard.

Personally, now Oyster is available everywhere within the zones, I can
see no reason why One Day Travelcards can't be sold on Oyster,
especially as there should be a spare 'slot' if the card only has PAYG
on it.

In article
,
(Andy) wrote:

On Jan 26, 12:40*am, wrote:
In article ,

(John Salmon) wrote:
I am rather surprised that an apparent advocate of Oyster should
now be seriously suggesting that some categories of passenger
should need to take the seemingly retrograde step of reverting to
the use of paper Day Travelcards.

The other alternative is two Oyster cards. Swap cards at OSIs.


Which will end up costing more, up to double the cap for using just a
single Oystercard.

Yes, I realise that now.

Personally, now Oyster is available everywhere within the zones, I can
see no reason why One Day Travelcards can't be sold on Oyster,
especially as there should be a spare 'slot' if the card only has PAYG
on it.

Indeed.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On 25 Jan, 17:41, Mizter T wrote:
On Jan 25, 4:37*pm, "John Salmon" wrote:

"MIG" wrote

And there's never been any proper reason for refusing to put day
travelcards on Oyster anyway. *It's extra money up front, and the punter
still buys into the Oyster system.
Instead of charging an uncapped maximum single fare for unresolved
journeys, the system could charge a day travelcard instead, and let the
punter use it as such thereafter.

That sounds like a very good idea. *Is there any technical reason why it
can't be done?

Why's it a good idea? There's absolutely no need or calling for it
(esp. now that PAYG is acceptable on NR) - if you want a Day
Travelcard, you get a Day Travelcard. Why totally muddy the waters by
offering it on Oyster, especially now.

(MIG used to call for this in the days before PAYG was accepted on NR,
but didn't ever seem to want to acknowledge just how confusing a
situation this would have created - factor in PAYG being available for
tickets extensions on the Tube but not most NR lines and it would have
just been totally daft. And if it ever had been available then the
impetus to actually get NR to accept PAYG would have been diminished -
that was the big prize that has finally been achieved, much to the
immense gratitude of travellers in London. I honestly can't believe
he's still bringing this suggestion up now, it's *totally* daft.)

Honestly, I think this needs a bit of explaining. Why does it always
have to be give with one hand and take with the other?

The travelcard is probably the best and most revolutionary thing that
ever happened to transport usage in London. It gave total
interavailability.

One slight downside was that you might not know for sure if you were
going to make enough journeys to make it worthwhile. So a "nice to
have" is a ticketing product that allows punters to build up
individual journeys to a maximum. People were not crying out for
this, but one can see the advantage.

But no one ever ever ever called for day travelcards to be got rid
of. There's no point having the icing on the cake if the price is
losing the cake.

Nor did they call for cash single fares to be hiked by over 100% or
for returns to be abolished.

What people want is stress-free transport, with interavailability,
minimal queueing and best value.

It is claimed that Oyster PAYG offfers this, but it's rather twisting
the truth to claim that therefore people want Oyster. If it doesn't
deliever those Good Things, then what people want is something that
does. That's still the travelcard in most situations.

The motives for introducing Oyster are very much to do with cash flow
and so on, not purely the convenience of the punter. If there are
motives for getting Oyster into people's pockets, surely putting such
a popular product on it would be a way of doing that?