London Banter - Ken to TOCs - end of January deadline to sign up for Oyster PAYG

London Banter (https://www.londonbanter.co.uk/forum.php)

- London Transport (https://www.londonbanter.co.uk/london-transport/)

- - Ken to TOCs - end of January deadline to sign up for Oyster PAYG (https://www.londonbanter.co.uk/london-transport/4866-ken-tocs-end-january-deadline.html)

Ken to TOCs - end of January deadline to sign up for Oyster PAYG

What is important is ensuring that future Oyster equipment (Oyster
scanners on gates and in ticket offices etc) will be able to handle ITSO-
standard smartcards as well

ISTR reading in here some time back this was already the case. The Oyster
top up POM reads my works ID with the message "Your smart card is not
initialised for Prestige" (the project name for Oyster). I can't put both
cards in one wallet - it brings up the code for "more than one card read"
when presented to an Oyster pad. The pads at work do not respond to an
Oyster at all and if both are in one wallet it works fine there, so I
assume their readers are only able to talk to whichever standard the works
ID conforms to.

Regards, Dave

Ken to TOCs - end of January deadline to sign up for Oyster PAYG

Colin Rosenstiel wrote:
Really? I thought it was run by GNER.

Seems unlikely as it was the station they used to launch the gates.
GNER aren't interested in gates, and FCC pointed out to me that the
chances of gating the other platforms at Kings Cross (only platform 8,
and possibly 1, being totally 'open' and unprotected) were minimal
because history says Intercity services aren't protected by gates.

Mind you, if First gets control of GNER then perhaps they'll have a
chance to change this (they would like to have gates at all platforms
as they do run services from more than just platforms 9-11). Bar Grand
Central, they would run all the services out of Kings Cross; but it's a
Network Rail owned station so I have no idea how it all works.

Jonathan

Ken to TOCs - end of January deadline to sign up for Oyster PAYG

Colin Rosenstiel wrote:
You've forgotten Hull Trains. Heaven help us if First get the ECML
franchise.

Hull Trains is First too.

Jonathan

Ken to TOCs - end of January deadline to sign up for Oyster PAYG

Matthew wrote:
In London. Presuambly the names of other cards will also be used in
their own areas (Yorcard in south Yorkshire, etc). While the
compatibility issues does seem to get portrayed as evil TOCs conspiring
against cuddly Oysters out of pure malice, the desire of DfT and the
TOCs to have a national set of open standards rather than lots of
individual incompatible proprietary systems does strike me a good idea.
An awful lot of UK transport technology and planning seems to be a case
of "I wouldn't start from here", and getting a standardised system might
avoid another set of problems in the future.

Oystercards are now included in the ITSO spec, at page 88 of
http://itso.org.uk/content/Specifica..._1_2006-10.pdf

According to today's London Lite, Chiltern are to accept PAYG from June
at the rest of its Greater London stations (Northolt Park to Wembley
Stadium) .

They are also to retail cards outside London.

"We are also happy to announce that we are working very hard with
Transport for London on being the first train company to sell Oyster
Smartcards outside London. We will be launching this to our passengers
in 2007"

C2C are also reported to be enabling PAYG acceptance at Dagenham Dock
and Rainham.

That's good news - with two TOCs fully on-board within London, pressure
will mount on others to follow suit. Of course, Chiltern and c2c are the
easiest...

I imagine a system update of Oyster will be necessary so that it can
handle NR zonal fares. Passengers using this new PAYG territory will
have be especially careful to touch in and touch out correctly, because
cross-London fares calculated incorrectly could be quite expensive!

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

Ken to TOCs - end of January deadline to sign up for Oyster PAYG

Jonathan Morris wrote:
Colin Rosenstiel wrote:
Really? I thought it was run by GNER.

Seems unlikely as it was the station they used to launch the gates.
GNER aren't interested in gates, and FCC pointed out to me that the
chances of gating the other platforms at Kings Cross (only platform 8,
and possibly 1, being totally 'open' and unprotected) were minimal
because history says Intercity services aren't protected by gates.

There's the problem of format with many pre-booked Intercity tickets -
they're that rather large airline-style ticket (if you get them by post
- if you collect them at a machine, they seem to be normal
credit-card-sized tickets).

Saying that, Paddington has gates which can handle the large tickets (as
does Waterloo International, but those are rather odd gates).

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

Ken to TOCs - end of January deadline to sign up for Oyster PAYG

On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 18:42:19 +0000, Dave A wrote:

Matthew wrote:
In London. Presuambly the names of other cards will also be used in
their own areas (Yorcard in south Yorkshire, etc). While the
compatibility issues does seem to get portrayed as evil TOCs conspiring
against cuddly Oysters out of pure malice, the desire of DfT and the
TOCs to have a national set of open standards rather than lots of
individual incompatible proprietary systems does strike me a good idea.
An awful lot of UK transport technology and planning seems to be a case
of "I wouldn't start from here", and getting a standardised system might
avoid another set of problems in the future.

Oystercards are now included in the ITSO spec, at page 88 of
http://itso.org.uk/content/Specifica..._1_2006-10.pdf

According to today's London Lite, Chiltern are to accept PAYG from June
at the rest of its Greater London stations (Northolt Park to Wembley
Stadium) .

They are also to retail cards outside London.

"We are also happy to announce that we are working very hard with
Transport for London on being the first train company to sell Oyster
Smartcards outside London. We will be launching this to our passengers
in 2007"

As Chiltern have Cubic equipment at their stations this means they have
the smallest technological hurdle to climb over for this initial stage.
They've always been very keen on Smartcards - even way back when I was
involved as I talked to Adrian Shooter and their marketing chap about
them.

C2C are also reported to be enabling PAYG acceptance at Dagenham Dock
and Rainham.

Well they are already gated and must be working to the new zonal fares
anyway.

That's good news - with two TOCs fully on-board within London, pressure
will mount on others to follow suit. Of course, Chiltern and c2c are the
easiest...

Indeed and I notice from an article in a paper last week that the two
Govia franchises appear to be most awkward. This is particularly odd
given Southern's launch of zonal based tickets long before the last
fares revision and also the proposed trial of PAYG between Balham and
Victoria (all news of which has disappeared). I can't recall if the
South Eastern franchise got caught by the DfT "you will adopt Oyster and
Smartcards" requirement - I don't think it did although more gating was
part of the franchise commitment.

I imagine a system update of Oyster will be necessary so that it can
handle NR zonal fares.

Not really sure about this as every LU gate can recognise a fare from
every station in the zonal area. Where the TOCs have installed gates
then "in theory" such gates should recognise the fare from everywhere
that can issue to that location. I don't believe it actually works like
that but I can't see any issue with such equipment knowing fares from LU
zonal origins and all NR locations within the zones as a minimum
requirement.

Where it gets complex is what the fare is for a given journey -
especially as more orbital journey opportunities become available.

Passengers using this new PAYG territory will
have be especially careful to touch in and touch out correctly, because
cross-London fares calculated incorrectly could be quite expensive!

This statement I entirely agree with.
--
Paul C

Admits to working for London Underground!