http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6161498.stm

"Passengers are being warned to use their Oyster Cards correctly or face
paying more for their journeys.
From Sunday, if passengers do not touch the electronic smartcard on the
reader on entry or exit to a station, they could be charged up to £4.

The cost of not doing so could rise to £5 if journeys are started or
ended at certain national rail stations.

Transport for London said if the card is not scanned it does not know
the correct fare to apply."

How to confuse absolutely everybody. I've already seen people looking
very confused when they have heard the announcements and read the
posters about the change to pre-pay only rules. Shame no one has made
that distinction in the publicity.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 13:36:36 +0000, Paul Corfield
wrote in :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6161498.stm

"Passengers are being warned to use their Oyster Cards correctly or face
paying more for their journeys.
From Sunday, if passengers do not touch the electronic smartcard on the
reader on entry or exit to a station, they could be charged up to £4.

The cost of not doing so could rise to £5 if journeys are started or
ended at certain national rail stations.

Transport for London said if the card is not scanned it does not know
the correct fare to apply."

How to confuse absolutely everybody. I've already seen people looking
very confused when they have heard the announcements and read the
posters about the change to pre-pay only rules. Shame no one has made
that distinction in the publicity.

Yeah, the radio ads on Capital Gold just say "Oyster card", no
distinction between travelcards and pre-pay.

--
Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, ___ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. ] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

Of course, there will be major problems when the next 7/7 type emergency
happens and a station has to be evacuated. Normally in such cases the gates
are all opened to ease egress, but how many PAYG Oyster customers will stop
to make sure they won't lose out on a fiver, thereby causing mass blockage
at the gates?



"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6161498.stm

"Passengers are being warned to use their Oyster Cards correctly or face
paying more for their journeys.
From Sunday, if passengers do not touch the electronic smartcard on the
reader on entry or exit to a station, they could be charged up to £4.

The cost of not doing so could rise to £5 if journeys are started or
ended at certain national rail stations.

Transport for London said if the card is not scanned it does not know
the correct fare to apply."

How to confuse absolutely everybody. I've already seen people looking
very confused when they have heard the announcements and read the
posters about the change to pre-pay only rules. Shame no one has made
that distinction in the publicity.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 14:59:42 -0000, "Steve"
wrote:

Of course, there will be major problems when the next 7/7 type emergency
happens and a station has to be evacuated. Normally in such cases the gates
are all opened to ease egress, but how many PAYG Oyster customers will stop
to make sure they won't lose out on a fiver, thereby causing mass blockage
at the gates?

I can touch in/out without breaking stride, even with a closed gate
(well, except the atrocious new gates at KXSP).

On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 14:59:42 -0000, "Steve"
wrote:


"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
.. .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6161498.stm

"Passengers are being warned to use their Oyster Cards correctly or face
paying more for their journeys.
From Sunday, if passengers do not touch the electronic smartcard on the
reader on entry or exit to a station, they could be charged up to £4.

The cost of not doing so could rise to £5 if journeys are started or
ended at certain national rail stations.

Transport for London said if the card is not scanned it does not know
the correct fare to apply."

How to confuse absolutely everybody. I've already seen people looking
very confused when they have heard the announcements and read the
posters about the change to pre-pay only rules. Shame no one has made
that distinction in the publicity.

Of course, there will be major problems when the next 7/7 type emergency
happens and a station has to be evacuated. Normally in such cases the gates
are all opened to ease egress, but how many PAYG Oyster customers will stop
to make sure they won't lose out on a fiver, thereby causing mass blockage
at the gates?

No there won't as there are special facilities built into the entire
system to deal with emergency situations. These have been enhanced to
add new functionality as part of the software developments to support
this change to pre-pay arrangements.

Next question.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

Paul Corfield ) gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying :

Of course, there will be major problems when the next 7/7 type
emergency happens and a station has to be evacuated. Normally in such
cases the gates are all opened to ease egress, but how many PAYG
Oyster customers will stop to make sure they won't lose out on a
fiver, thereby causing mass blockage at the gates?

No there won't as there are special facilities built into the entire
system to deal with emergency situations. These have been enhanced to
add new functionality as part of the software developments to support
this change to pre-pay arrangements.

Next question.

I think you miss his point.

The problem isn't a question of "Will people _have_ to touch out?" but more
one of "Will people _think_ they still need to touch out, and try, causing
chaos?"

And, fwiw, I'm sure plenty WILL try to. Even if announcements say "Leave
the station. Do NOT stop to touch out"

In article 70,
Adrian wrote:

I think you miss his point.

The problem isn't a question of "Will people _have_ to touch out?" but more
one of "Will people _think_ they still need to touch out, and try, causing
chaos?"

I saw a similar "unintended consequences" type problem the other week in a
section of motorway that had been reduced to one lane with a 50mph limit
enforced by SPECS cameras. There was a police car with the blue lights and
siren going, and it was stuck at 50mph because nobody in front of it was
willing to get a speeding ticket.

On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 16:48:22 +0000, Paul Corfield wrote:

Of course, there will be major problems when the next 7/7 type emergency
happens and a station has to be evacuated. Normally in such cases the gates
are all opened to ease egress, but how many PAYG Oyster customers will stop
to make sure they won't lose out on a fiver, thereby causing mass blockage
at the gates?

No there won't as there are special facilities built into the entire
system to deal with emergency situations. These have been enhanced to
add new functionality as part of the software developments to support
this change to pre-pay arrangements.

That does solve the problem of people being charged £4 for being
evacuated, but doesn't necessarily solve the problem posed...

"asdf" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 16:48:22 +0000, Paul Corfield wrote:

Of course, there will be major problems when the next 7/7 type emergency
happens and a station has to be evacuated. Normally in such cases the
gates
are all opened to ease egress, but how many PAYG Oyster customers will
stop
to make sure they won't lose out on a fiver, thereby causing mass
blockage
at the gates?

No there won't as there are special facilities built into the entire
system to deal with emergency situations. These have been enhanced to
add new functionality as part of the software developments to support
this change to pre-pay arrangements.

That does solve the problem of people being charged £4 for being
evacuated, but doesn't necessarily solve the problem posed...

And the more people are trained to use their Oyster to avoid the extra fare,
the more people will automatically stop to do it no matter of the emergency.
There are a lot of 'forgetful' (I am trying to avoid usig the word stupid)
people who will stop to touch in an emergecny situation as they have been
programmed to do it. And you will still end up with people who walk up to
the gate and hten decide they need to find their Oyster card whilst blocking
the exit, (despite gate being open) in much the same way, we've all at some
time or another been ages in a supermarket queue only to have to watch as
the person in front packs all their shopping and waits for the cashier to
ask them before they then spend 2 mns trying to find their wallets despite
knowing they would need it and could have got themselves sorted beforehand.
People are stupid and it seems to be getting worse, add to this the effects
of panic and the fact that a lot of tourists probably won't have a clue
what's happening. I know I'd rather lose £5 than my life, but unfortunatly
in a case like this no matter how sensisble I and others might be, it only
needs 1 persons to screw it up for everyone else.

No there won't as there are special facilities built into the entire
system to deal with emergency situations. These have been enhanced to
add new functionality as part of the software developments to support
this change to pre-pay arrangements.

No it doesn't.

On Saturday there was a "one under" at Camden Town which, coupled with
planned engineering work, took out a major part of the Northern Line.
Despite the "software developments" Pauln refers to, it took 3 or 4
people around in the NOC working flat-out over 45 minutes to make the
necessary changes to gate settings at all the stations so-affected.

In fact since the NOC started "dry running" this procedure prior to
today's launch of capping etc it has been common for an incident to be
over before all such settings have managed to be applied, such is the
user-unfriendliness of the program. A classic comment yesterday from
someone at Prestige was that it wasn't the fault of their system, but
rather that it was now "being used too much"!!!

For example, a simple service suspension requires auto-continuation,
auto-completion and emergency bit (return all paper tickets) put on at
each termination point, each adjacent station on any line serving that
station and any other stations within walking distance but not directly
linked (i.e. Aldgate to Aldgate East, Bayswater to Queensway). In
addition settings have to be altered at all stations along the
suspended section too. Changes have to be applied and taken off
separately in most cases. Nor are these changes applied and removed at
the same times. Some settings must be applied imediately, some are
back-dated 3 hours before the incident commenced, some are removed 1
hour after the service resumes and/or the station reopens, others must
be left on for the seven following days!