Michael R N Dolbear wrote:

But Oyster capping means that the bus cost, "more expensive" or not
will never be more than a total of £3 per day. The fourth or fifth and
all subsequent buses will be free.

True, but a single, one-off journey is still penalised. The nice thing
about the Dutch Strippenkaart (and most European railways where
single=return/2) is that a single journey is not penalised. Why should
it be? (I point that finger at the thieving full-service airlines, as
well).

This kind of discount is available in most of the regional operations
as well in the form of day tickets, but these are only any good if a
return journey is being made.

Neil

Earl Purple wrote:
The same applies to putting any kind of gates at the stations - there
has to be a member of staff there who is able to open the gate in case
of a problem. They cannot lock passengers in (or expect them to jump
over the gate).

Why not install a button, accessible to the passenger inside fare
control (under surveillance), that will unlock the gates in an emergency?

Although subject to abuse, I can't imagine the abuse would be any worse
than what surely takes place today at ungated stations and at stations
whose gates are propped open in the evening.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

Richard wrote:
Olof Lagerkvist wrote:
But there are also differences, all validators will be entry/exit
bidirectional. The first touch will be entry and the second touch will
be exit.

I see... like the DLR, then. And not like Croydon trams (note to self).
(snip)

That's confusing in itself. It would be simpler if the trams either had
on-board validators (in line with buses) or required touch-in and
touch-out (in line with DLR).

--
Dave Arquati
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

Dave Arquati wrote:
Richard wrote:
Olof Lagerkvist wrote:
But there are also differences, all validators will be entry/exit
bidirectional. The first touch will be entry and the second touch
will be exit.

I see... like the DLR, then. And not like Croydon trams (note to self).
(snip)

That's confusing in itself. It would be simpler if the trams either had
on-board validators (in line with buses) or required touch-in and
touch-out (in line with DLR).

....but of course you said that lower down in your post, and I should
read more carefully.

--
Dave Arquati
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

If you fail to touch in at Bank or Canning Town (two DLR/tube interchange
stations that do not require going through barriers) could you be charged
an incomplete journey... or even two incomplete journeys?

Or will the system employ some common sense and realise that eg Old Street
to Poplar, as long as you touch in at Old Street at touch out at Poplar,
will mean you must have changed from Northern to DLR at Bank....?

Yesterday in Croydon I noticed the readers had a bizarre message which
seemed to boil down to: "All PAYG users must touch in here. All Oyster
users going to Wimbledon must touch in here." What's the reasoning behind
this distinction? Surely the exit barriers at Wimbledon will just read the
travelcard and assume entry at an ungated point?

Although posters around the system say the reason is to avoid incorrect
fares being charged I believe that is likely to just be a side effect of an
anti-fraud measure. Say for example someone with his mind on fare evasion
regularly travels from the south coast on National Rail to Wimbledon. He
could purchase the cheapest possible season ticket to allow him to pass
through any entry checks and board the train, take his chance on his ticket
not being checked on board the train, and then have a bus pass on his Oyster
to get him out at Wimbledon. As bus passes would only be valid for exit for
those arriving on the trams a fix to this potential problem is to make sure
the bus pass had been used on the trams. There are no doubt other
variations involving travelcards.

FAQ's for the £4 charge now at:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/fares-tick...entry-exit.asp

In article ,
(Matthew Dickinson) wrote:

FAQ's for the £4 charge now at:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/fares-tick...-entry-exit.as
p

I'm a bit curious as to what this bit means:

"Travelling to Wimbledon by Tram using Oyster

You must touch in at the start of your tram journey and touch out at the
gate when leaving Wimbledon station (or on one of the card readers on
Platform 1 - 4 if transferring to the Tube)

Do not touch your card on the yellow reader adjacent to the manual gate
when leaving the station."

What is the difference between "the gate when leaving Wimbledon station"
and "the manual gate when leaving the station"?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

"Travelling to Wimbledon by Tram using Oyster

You must touch in at the start of your tram journey and touch out at the
gate when leaving Wimbledon station (or on one of the card readers on
Platform 1 - 4 if transferring to the Tube)

Do not touch your card on the yellow reader adjacent to the manual gate
when leaving the station."

What is the difference between "the gate when leaving Wimbledon station"
and "the manual gate when leaving the station"?

A Tramlink validation allows you to open the exit gates at Wimbledon,
but tram journeys do not require touching out, so there is no revenue
implication.

The manual gate validator will regard a touch as starting a new tube
PAYG journey.

For tube to tram interchange, what is not clear from the FAQs is
whether a touch in on the validator on Platform 10 resolves a tube
journey without a touch out on Platforms 1-4.

On Sun, 12 Nov 2006 01:07:50 +0000, Matthew Dickinson wrote:

FAQ's for the £4 charge now at:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/fares-tick...entry-exit.asp

This is an excellent document. Many of the previously opaque workings
of Oyster have finally been made public, and (for the most part) to a
very satisfactory level of detail. Even the less palatable parts are
candidly laid out. I did think it seemed unfair that they were going
to start charging £4 for not sticking to the rules, without ever quite
setting out what all the rules were. But that's (almost?) all been
fixed now.

A few specific comments:-

"What should I do if I’ve touched my Oyster card on a reader in the
middle of my journey by mistake?" This question seems to suggest
(going against some previous publicity) that you're not supposed to
touch readers in the middle of your journey (e.g. Bank DLR). That's a
better rule IMO, so I can forgive the lack of consistency.

The situations described in the answers to "What should I do if I
can't touch in at the start of my journey?" and "My Tube service has
been disrupted and I have been diverted to a nearby National Rail
service. What should I do?" are less than thrilling. If you can't use
PAYG for your journey, through no fault of your own, you're supposed
to fork out for a 'punitive' cash single fare (if you even have the
money on you), then hope that you will somehow be able to get a refund
later, which apparently involves some uncertainty and plenty of
hassle. It's downright disrespectful of them to make it the customer's
problem in this way.

The mechanism for resolving your journey after an evacuation is
mentioned, but seems vague, especially compared to the rest of the
document.

There are detailed instructions for using Wimbledon. But still nothing
for London Bridge (FCC).

They're still insisting on using a rip-off 0845 number for the
helpline.

Overall, however, the degree of detail on this web page is better than
I would ever have hoped for, and I congratulate TfL on it.