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London Transport (uk.transport.london) Discussion of all forms of transport in London. |
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Oyster
John Clausen wrote:
On Saturday I travelled around London on tubes and National Rail using my Oyster card instead of a paper travelcard. My advice to others thinking of doing the same is: don't bother. Instead of capping at £7.00 it kept charging me until there was no credit left, over £17 in total. Some credit has been put back but I have still been charged £14.60. There were three of us travelling together and we all got print outs at Victoria in the afternoon. Various parts of the journey were ignored including a trip to Harrow on the Hill where we touched out and back in again at Marylebone and the same at Harrow. So the system thought we had made a journey from Paddington to Vauxhall taking 95 minutes which is over the time limit. The bloke at Victoria suggested that we hadn't been touching in and out properly but then how would the gates have opened? The fact that three of us had the same problem suggests that it is system failure rather than user error. Has anyone else had similar problems? I will not be using Oyster as a travelcard again in the near future. The system just isn't designed for people travelling around the way 'rail enthusiasts' seem to. This has been widely discussed in uk.transport.london for the last few years, in fact if you check there this post has just been cross referred in the latest discussion, about the best way of travelling around as a tourist for a few days! Touching out and touching straight back in at the same station doesn't necessarily end and restart a new journey, and there are logical reasons for this. Once a journey that has been joined to another goes beyond the time limit (and that limit is variable dependent on zones crossed) the first part of the journey becomes 'uncompleted' and the latter part 'unstarted'. This is charged as two 'maximum cash fares' and doesn't contribute to the daily cap. I've had this happen a couple of times and it has been sorted with a call to the help desk. What they can do is sort out the 'unresolved' journeys into consecutive single journeys, then reapply the daily capping properly. [uk.transport.london added for more expert explanations] Paul S |
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Oyster
"Paul Scott" writes:
Touching out and touching straight back in at the same station doesn't necessarily end and restart a new journey, and there are logical reasons for this. Once a journey that has been joined to another goes beyond the time limit (and that limit is variable dependent on zones crossed) the first part of the journey becomes 'uncompleted' and the latter part 'unstarted'. This is charged as two 'maximum cash fares' and doesn't contribute to the daily cap. So would it not make more sense to only combine them if the combined journey is within the time limit for the overall journey and keep them as separate journeys[1] if the combined journey would be over the time limit. Also, always treat it as 2 separate journeys rather than combining them where someone touches in at A, touches out at B, then later touches in again at B travels to A and touches out. [1] As long as the time between between each touch in and the next touch out is within the time limit. |
#3
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Oyster
On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:51:11 +0000, Graham Murray
wrote: So would it not make more sense to only combine them if the combined journey is within the time limit for the overall journey and keep them as separate journeys[1] if the combined journey would be over the time limit. Also, always treat it as 2 separate journeys rather than combining them where someone touches in at A, touches out at B, then later touches in again at B travels to A and touches out. This would certainly make sense to me - and surely from TfL's side? Unresolved journeys (when people notice them) cost TfL money because they have to be corrected manually. They also cost goodwill when they aren't noticed but the dropping balance is. Or can't the card do that? Neil -- Neil Williams Put my first name before the at to reply. |
#4
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Oyster
"Neil Williams" wrote in message
On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:51:11 +0000, Graham Murray wrote: So would it not make more sense to only combine them if the combined journey is within the time limit for the overall journey and keep them as separate journeys[1] if the combined journey would be over the time limit. Also, always treat it as 2 separate journeys rather than combining them where someone touches in at A, touches out at B, then later touches in again at B travels to A and touches out. This would certainly make sense to me - and surely from TfL's side? Unresolved journeys (when people notice them) cost TfL money because they have to be corrected manually. They also cost goodwill when they aren't noticed but the dropping balance is. Or can't the card do that? The card probably can't do something as sensible and clever as that, but one would assume that a daily batch process on the central servers could correct such anomalies. But that would presumably require a lot more processing than is currently built into the current operation, and would make the system more complex and expensive to run. And explaining the algorithms would become even harder than it already is. |
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