In article ,
(James Farrar) wrote:

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 09:56 +0000 (GMT Standard Time),
(Colin Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article ,
(James Farrar) wrote:

Or bother to look at the screens on the gates.

Your lack of understanding is getting tiresome.

Your anti-Oyster moaning got tiresome a longtime ago.

Your refusal to understand the position of people who can't use Oyster
like you is what is really tiresome. People living outside the zones
can't do what you do.

Your circumstances are
different from those of the sort of users I'm thinking of.

My circumstances are (like many) that I have an Annual Travelcard
loaded onto my Oystercard, but that (unlike you) I've not got an
irrational hatred for Oyster.

You're not listening again.

People living in Network South East rarely need Oyster or cash fares
because Oyster isn't supported for most ticketing requirements
because of Travelcards. Therefore they will need singles only in
exceptional circumstances.

Rarely != never.

But twice a year is close.

This year that has required me to buy just two singles.
Next year I wouldn't recoup the £3 deposit on in those journeys.

You don't have to pay the £3 again next year!

I wouldn't go through gates with Oyster anything like often enough
to know *before* attempting a journey whether it has enough credit
on it maybe six months after I last used it.

Provided the credit is above the minimum fare, that doesn't matter
until you get to the end.

And then there's Auto top-up.

And as a last resort, you can always write your current balance (or
just a note saying "need to add credit" when appropriate) on a piece
of paper and keep it with your card at the end of your journey.

You refuse to try to understand other people's real experiences.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 12:03 +0000 (GMT Standard Time),
(Colin Rosenstiel) wrote:

Or bother to look at the screens on the gates.

Your lack of understanding is getting tiresome.

Your anti-Oyster moaning got tiresome a longtime ago.

Your refusal to understand the position of people who can't use Oyster
like you is what is really tiresome. People living outside the zones
can't do what you do.

What, specifically, can they not do? There are no rules preventing
people living outside the zones from having Oysters. I lost track of
your argument a long time ago, as I can't see what your point is.

The situation is very simple. Either

(a) They live outside the zones, and never buy Tube-only singles. They
are not affected by the fare increases. No problem

(b) They live outside the zones, yet occasionally buy Tube-only
singles. Then they can get a pre-pay Oyster instead for a £3 deposit,
which pays for itself after 2 journeys.

Your refusal to understand the position of people who can't use Oyster
like you is what is really tiresome. People living outside the zones
can't do what you do.

Can they not reach the pads? Have people outside London not yet learned
how to walk on their hind legs? I don't think so.

On what basis would London Underground and Transport for London
have devised a system and rolled out to the whole of the UK? Under
what remit? They can't even get the rail network in London to accept
Oyster fully so what hope would they have (and what possible motive)
to roll it out beyond London's border?

If you desite using Oyster for all of your journies so much I suggest you
move to its catchment area or stop winging about living beyond it.

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 00:02 +0100 (BST), (Colin
Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article ,
(TKD) wrote:

I don't follow. Who is "outside" the group of people that are
permitted to hold Oyster Cards? As I understand it anyone can have
a card.

Anyone not buying tickets often enough to bother to pay the £3
deposit, learn how to use the card and remember how much credit is
on the card when they come to use it again 6 months later, for
starters. I.e. many people living outside London who can't get
through tickets including the tube.

I'm sure you will declare me a nutter but I have a HK Octopus card.
I've paid my deposit years ago and dipped into it many times - Octopus
allows negative value for one trip. It takes approximately 2 minutes
to go to the desk, get its status checked and reset if necessary [1]
and value added at HK International Airport. I have encountered no
problems whatsoever with doing this. Similarly I retain a RATP Mobilis
card to allow me to purchase one day tickets when I go to Paris.

Presumably there are better facilities at those airports than at
Heathrow then? As for Gatwick or Stansted...

Or people arriving at airports who can't buy through tickets to NSE
destinations. I can buy a ticket from Cambridge to Heathrow but not
from Heathrow to Cambridge.

I'll confess to being somewhat out of date but I thought that the new
TOMs at LUL stations had a much enhanced range of NSE destinations. I
would have thought Cambridge would be one such option. I also thought
National Rail had a ticket counter somewhere within Heathrow to deal
with the passengers who use the Rail Air link services and could
therefore sell through tickets.

I last tried this in 2002 so you may be right that things are better
now. There was supposed to be a facility to buy National Rail tickets in
the airport then but it was in terminal 3 when I'd arrived elsewhere and
it was a single APTIS machine that had been away for repairs for three
weeks at that point.

In any case I was told there was no fare to Cambridge, except via SWT
and the bus to Feltham(?).

I have to say that I really don't understand what form of ticketing
system you want. You repeatedly moan like hell about what exists today
saying that little or none of it works for you. Would you like an
Oyster card that would work in, to and from Cambridge or do you want
Oyster thrown in the bin and paper tickets retained?

[1] the card tracking system will lock you out of the system if there
is a very long gap in usage which there can be in my case as I typically
only go to HK once a year.

I just don't want rip-off rates for cash tickets. The present
differential is perfectly acceptable.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(Nick Cooper) wrote:

On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 21:12 +0100 (BST), (Colin
Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article ,
(TKD) wrote:

The £3 deposit can be recouped from two journeys from next year
so its hardly a moot point.

Cash - 2 x Zone 2 (£3) singles = £6

Oyster - 2 x Zone 2 (£1) prepay = £2 (+ £3 deposit) = £5

Not only recouped but a pound saved.

A very basic fact the anti-Oyster brigade seem incapable of
understanding!

The *minimum* cash fare of £3 will get the message home.
I don't think people quite understand the implication of it just
yet.

From January just going one stop, even in zone 6, and paying cash
is going to cost £3 (instead of £1 on Oyster). This is a mark-up
of 200%. If this is prominently advertised at the ticket machines
and explained properly by staff surely only the insane would resist
migration to Oyster?

it's called ripping off outsiders.

I suppose my mother, who lives in Newcastle. would count as an
"outsider," except that she has - and happily uses - an Oyster card,
of course.

She being outside NSE can't buy tube-inclusive tickets anyway. Anyone in
NSE can do so but not for quite all journeys. Hence a very limited and
possibly pretty infrequent need for Oyster.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(TKD) wrote:

Your refusal to understand the position of people who can't use
Oyster like you is what is really tiresome. People living outside
the zones can't do what you do.

Can they not reach the pads? Have people outside London not yet
learned how to walk on their hind legs? I don't think so.

You don't use King's Cross do you? Do you know exactly how far the
ticket office is from the gates?

On what basis would London Underground and Transport for London
have devised a system and rolled out to the whole of the UK? Under
what remit? They can't even get the rail network in London to accept
Oyster fully so what hope would they have (and what possible motive)
to roll it out beyond London's border?

If you desite using Oyster for all of your journies so much I suggest
you move to its catchment area or stop winging about living beyond it.

They just shouldn't rip such people off so much. I have no desire to
live in London, thank you. I got over it in 1968.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Raoul wrote:
Richard J. wrote:

But I still feel that PAYG is a daft term for Oyster, since TfL want it
to be a replacement for cash fares which really are PAYG and don't have
a £3 initial charge.


Depends how much you value your time.

Anyone more senior than a kitchen cleaner will spend £3 of their time a
week queuing to buy cash singles.


Value of time is always a bit of a challenge. Using your hourly wage is
reasonable enough, although for most people that is really an average
and not a marginal value of time. It is quite possible that someone who
earns more than that would still be willing to spend the extra time to
save a few pounds - it really depends what else they would be doing with
the time.

--
To contact me take a davidhowdon and add a @yahoo.co.uk to the end.

In message ,
Colin Rosenstiel writes

I wouldn't go through gates with Oyster anything like often enough to
know *before* attempting a journey whether it has enough credit on it
maybe six months after I last used it.
Though you can always check the balance on machines before doing so.

As for tourists you have the reports here of a blue badge guide of the
problems many tourists have understanding transport systems in a
foreign language.
Given that I was the BBG saying this, I ought to re-state that I think
Oyster and especially Oyster Pre Pay are absolutely ideal for me. Some
of my journeys begin with a train ride to London, others bring me into
London by other means (coach or more rarely car) first.

As a rule of thumb, if my journey only involves LT services then I'll
use Oyster Pre Pay (probably but not always with the Daily Cap coming
in). If the journey involves NR (as one will later this week) then
it's a case of sticking with a paper One Day Travelcard. A bit
tiresome that but a small enough burden to bear!

When I come in by train (Chiltern) I'm not sure yet what I'll do. I'll
have to look at the differential between the cost of a ticket to London
+ the Daily capping rate versus the cost of a Chiltern ODTC.

Different circumstances always throw up different situations and Colin's
journeys (which seem to be Cambridge - Putney sometimes overnight if
I've understood correctly) might or might not involve the use of Oyster.

But the *concept* of stored value and daily capping suits me down to the
ground.

**However** I will say again that trying to explain this to visitors is
not nearly as straightforward as it probably is to most of us. I've
tried and I've failed to get the point over to people. They won't pay
£3 deposit for a card whose purpose they don't understand and I have a
horrible feeling that come January I'm going to start having to deal
with "megamoans" about tube fares. ( I already get this occasionally
about single bus fares.)
--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 12:03 +0000 (GMT Standard Time),
(Colin Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article ,
(James Farrar) wrote:

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 09:56 +0000 (GMT Standard Time),
(Colin Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article ,
(James Farrar) wrote:

Or bother to look at the screens on the gates.

Your lack of understanding is getting tiresome.

Your anti-Oyster moaning got tiresome a longtime ago.

Your refusal to understand the position of people who can't use Oyster
like you is what is really tiresome. People living outside the zones
can't do what you do.

They are unlikely to have a Z1-3 Annual, yes. But they can still use
Oyster pre-pay.

Your circumstances are
different from those of the sort of users I'm thinking of.

My circumstances are (like many) that I have an Annual Travelcard
loaded onto my Oystercard, but that (unlike you) I've not got an
irrational hatred for Oyster.

You're not listening again.

I'm listening, but I'm not hearing any sensible reasons why people who
live outside the zones cannot use Oyster pre-pay.

People living in Network South East rarely need Oyster or cash fares
because Oyster isn't supported for most ticketing requirements
because of Travelcards. Therefore they will need singles only in
exceptional circumstances.

Rarely != never.

But twice a year is close.

But still not never.

This year that has required me to buy just two singles.
Next year I wouldn't recoup the £3 deposit on in those journeys.

You don't have to pay the £3 again next year!

You've conveniently not acknowledged this point.

I wouldn't go through gates with Oyster anything like often enough
to know *before* attempting a journey whether it has enough credit
on it maybe six months after I last used it.

Provided the credit is above the minimum fare, that doesn't matter
until you get to the end.

And then there's Auto top-up.

And as a last resort, you can always write your current balance (or
just a note saying "need to add credit" when appropriate) on a piece
of paper and keep it with your card at the end of your journey.

You refuse to try to understand other people's real experiences.

You refuse to answer my arguments why you're "I can't use Oyster! I
can't use Oyster! *WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA*" arguments have no basis in
logic and sense.

If you give me a logical, sensible reason why you cannot (as opposed
to do not want to) use Oyster, then I may be able to accept you have a
point. But as yet, you have provided no such reason, nor have you
responded to any of the reasons I have given that your crying is
unwarranted.

--
James Farrar
. @gmail.com

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 12:52 +0000 (GMT Standard Time),
(Colin Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article ,
(Nick Cooper) wrote:

On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 21:12 +0100 (BST), (Colin
Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article ,
(TKD) wrote:

The £3 deposit can be recouped from two journeys from next year
so its hardly a moot point.

Cash - 2 x Zone 2 (£3) singles = £6

Oyster - 2 x Zone 2 (£1) prepay = £2 (+ £3 deposit) = £5

Not only recouped but a pound saved.

A very basic fact the anti-Oyster brigade seem incapable of
understanding!

The *minimum* cash fare of £3 will get the message home.
I don't think people quite understand the implication of it just
yet.

From January just going one stop, even in zone 6, and paying cash
is going to cost £3 (instead of £1 on Oyster). This is a mark-up
of 200%. If this is prominently advertised at the ticket machines
and explained properly by staff surely only the insane would resist
migration to Oyster?

it's called ripping off outsiders.

I suppose my mother, who lives in Newcastle. would count as an
"outsider," except that she has - and happily uses - an Oyster card,
of course.

She being outside NSE can't buy tube-inclusive tickets anyway. Anyone in
NSE can do so but not for quite all journeys. Hence a very limited and
possibly pretty infrequent need for Oyster.

So perhaps you would like to revise your use of the term, "outsiders,"
then?
--
Nick Cooper

[Carefully remove the detonators from my e-mail address to reply!]

The London Underground at War, and in Films & TV:
http://www.nickcooper.org.uk/