Asian chappie in the queue in front of me took three Oyster cards up to the
counter and after inserting his credit card in the reader and signing lots
of bits of paper, walked away without them, before waiting to one of the
terminals with his family (I assume to fly home).

I guess that he was getting a refund. I didn't know you could do that at a
station.

OTOH there's sign saying "drop them in this box and the remaining credit
will go to charity" - the railway children fund (or similar)

Oh and this week's entry in the most pointless holiday snap competition is
"Here's a picture of the (large) group of us standing in the queue at the
underground station" WTF! (not the Asian chappie, a bunch of Europeans)

Tim

In message , at 22:02:14 on
Wed, 1 Jan 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:
Oh and this week's entry in the most pointless holiday snap competition is
"Here's a picture of the (large) group of us standing in the queue at the
underground station" WTF! (not the Asian chappie, a bunch of Europeans)

All part of that iconic LUL experience. You may mock but queues at a
LU ticket office will be a historic sight within 18 months or so.
Anyone who wants to capture a bit of Underground life should try and
get a few snaps of people using ticket offices before they disappear
and get replaced by coffee bars and Amazon lockers. It's a genuine
bit of Underground and London history and blink and it'll be gone. The
other aspect is the variation in the design of ticket offices (less
than there used to be but still there in places).

I recognise that the queues might be at ticket machines instead but
it's not the same thing.

If you go to Kings Cross or Euston you'll see there's no "might" about
it, even now. (And that's just two I use myself).
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 09:06:52 on
Thu, 2 Jan 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:
I recognise that the queues might be at ticket machines instead but
it's not the same thing.

If you go to Kings Cross or Euston you'll see there's no "might" about
it, even now. (And that's just two I use myself).

Yes I know that Roland. However I was talking about the future and at
this point in time we cannot be certain what queue lengths will be
like at some point in 2015. Several things may change by then which
might reduce queue lengths - that's what TfL must be hoping for.

I hope TfL has done some modelling of the situation, rather than just
hoping for the best!
--
Roland Perry

"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 2 Jan 2014 08:58:20 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 22:02:14 on
Wed, 1 Jan 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:
Oh and this week's entry in the most pointless holiday snap competition
is
"Here's a picture of the (large) group of us standing in the queue at
the
underground station" WTF! (not the Asian chappie, a bunch of Europeans)

All part of that iconic LUL experience. You may mock but queues at a
LU ticket office will be a historic sight within 18 months or so.
Anyone who wants to capture a bit of Underground life should try and
get a few snaps of people using ticket offices before they disappear
and get replaced by coffee bars and Amazon lockers. It's a genuine
bit of Underground and London history and blink and it'll be gone. The
other aspect is the variation in the design of ticket offices (less
than there used to be but still there in places).

I recognise that the queues might be at ticket machines instead but
it's not the same thing.

If you go to Kings Cross or Euston you'll see there's no "might" about
it, even now. (And that's just two I use myself).

Yes I know that Roland. However I was talking about the future and at
this point in time we cannot be certain what queue lengths will be
like at some point in 2015. Several things may change by then which
might reduce queue lengths - that's what TfL must be hoping for.

If TfL are expecting your average foreign tourist to start paying for
tickets using "pay wave" credit cards I think that they are tilting at
windmills

You only have to look at the number of suitably "qualified" individuals who
don't go through the self service passport check (at no risk and sometimes
considerable time cost) to see how "frightened" the average person is of
such technology

tim


--
Paul C

In article ,
(tim......) wrote:

If TfL are expecting your average foreign tourist to start paying for
tickets using "pay wave" credit cards I think that they are tilting
at windmills

You only have to look at the number of suitably "qualified"
individuals who don't go through the self service passport check (at
no risk and sometimes considerable time cost) to see how "frightened"
the average person is of such technology

Now maybe but the use of such cards will grow over time.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On 02/01/2014 16:24, tim...... wrote:
[snip]
If TfL are expecting your average foreign tourist to start paying for
tickets using "pay wave" credit cards I think that they are tilting at
windmills

You only have to look at the number of suitably "qualified" individuals
who don't go through the self service passport check (at no risk and
sometimes considerable time cost) to see how "frightened" the average
person is of such technology

They might not have a chipped passport yet. (Or have no passport - the
gates don't work with Euro national identity cards.)

Mizter T writes:

On 02/01/2014 16:24, tim...... wrote:
[snip]
If TfL are expecting your average foreign tourist to start paying for
tickets using "pay wave" credit cards I think that they are tilting at
windmills

You only have to look at the number of suitably "qualified" individuals
who don't go through the self service passport check (at no risk and
sometimes considerable time cost) to see how "frightened" the average
person is of such technology

They might not have a chipped passport yet. (Or have no passport - the
gates don't work with Euro national identity cards.)

Can't be many non-chip UK passports left now.

But you see the same everywhere, how few use pay-at-pump, although
self-service checkouts do seem to have gained acceptance.

Have yet to see anyone else use a pay wave card in my local co-op
though.

Phil

On 02/01/2014 19:02, Phil wrote:

Mizter T writes:

On 02/01/2014 16:24, tim...... wrote:
[snip]
If TfL are expecting your average foreign tourist to start paying for
tickets using "pay wave" credit cards I think that they are tilting at
windmills

You only have to look at the number of suitably "qualified" individuals
who don't go through the self service passport check (at no risk and
sometimes considerable time cost) to see how "frightened" the average
person is of such technology

They might not have a chipped passport yet. (Or have no passport - the
gates don't work with Euro national identity cards.)

Can't be many non-chip UK passports left now.

British passports with chips were introduced in March 2006, according to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport#Countries_using_biometric_passp orts

So another two years and two months before the last non-chipped British
passports expire (and that's excluding all the inevitable exceptions -
I've a feeling that Brit passports issued by embassies overseas weren't
issued with chips until a later date).


But you see the same everywhere, how few use pay-at-pump, although
self-service checkouts do seem to have gained acceptance.

Have yet to see anyone else use a pay wave card in my local co-op
though.

Possible that availability of contactless card payment on public
transport might drive awareness and usage elsewhere (I've certainly read
the industry hopes as much).

On 02/01/2014 20:05, Mizter T wrote:

They might not have a chipped passport yet. (Or have no passport - the
gates don't work with Euro national identity cards.)

Can't be many non-chip UK passports left now.

British passports with chips were introduced in March 2006, according to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport#Countries_using_biometric_passp orts


So another two years and two months before the last non-chipped British
passports expire (and that's excluding all the inevitable exceptions -
I've a feeling that Brit passports issued by embassies overseas weren't
issued with chips until a later date).


From a better source - the then IPS (now HM Passport Office):
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/118598/biometric-passports-readers.pdf

---quote---
The first e-passport was issued by our central production facility on
the 6th March 2006. These e-passports introduced a new design with
additional security features, including a chip with the holder’s facial
biometric. The passport showed the personal details at the back page
with the chip and antenna visible on observation page. They were
introduced gradually throughout 2006. This mirrored the introduction of
e-passports in over 40 other countries and ensured the UK remained
within the US visa waiver scheme.
---/quote---

So another three years till non-chipped British passports expire. (One
of them being mine!)

On 02/01/2014 16:24, tim...... wrote:

If TfL are expecting your average foreign tourist to start paying for
tickets using "pay wave" credit cards I think that they are tilting at
windmills

I walk from St.Pancras to King's Cross tube station quite frequently and
continue to be surprised at the number of arrivals from Eurostar who
head straight to the enormously long queue for the ticket office, when
there are plenty of ticket machines with no queue or only a small one.

It could be that some of them are conditioned by the near impossibility
of using ticket machines at stations in France (and for that matter in
the Netherlands) if you are a non-native. I recall arriving at the RER
station in Charles de Gaulle a few years ago and finding that the ticket
machines accepted neither UK credit cards nor Euro notes. I was able to
avoid the extremely long queue only by being able to feed in at least
two dozen small coins (which fortunately I had left over from a previous
trip).

You only have to look at the number of suitably "qualified" individuals
who don't go through the self service passport check (at no risk and
sometimes considerable time cost) to see how "frightened" the average
person is of such technology

Well my experience of these things at airports is that they only
recognise my face or iris about one time out of three, and that if it
fails I have to queue up for the manned barrier anyway after a few
minutes, so that on average there is little or no time saving. It's
nothing to do with "fright": if the technology gets better maybe more of
us will use them. I'm told that the new-fangled facial recognition
systems are slightly better than the old iris scanners, but my
experience has not provided me with much evidence of that so far.

--
Clive Page