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.

Interest stuff Matthew, thanks for that!

I can't quite decipher from the ITSO specification exactly how Oyster
and the ITSO smartcard standard will work together, but it appears that
a combination smartcard that utilises both Oyster and the ITSO standard
will be possible, which is logical enough.

There's a myriad of implementation issues with regards to how Oyster
would work with a national ITSO standard travel smartcard, but given
that any such national smartcard is a long way off that's not something
to worry about too much. 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 - and it
appears that this will indeed be the case.

Also very interesting stuff regarding Chiltern. The bit about them
accepting Oyster PAYG for journeys within Greater London - i.e. within
the zones - is just an (overdue) logical development. It's a pretty
stupid situation from the passengers point of view where Oyster PAYG
can't be used at some intermediate stations.

The situation on the DC lines (Euston - Watford) at Kilburn High Street
and South Hampstead will be resolved when TfL take over from Silverlink
in November, which just leaves the 'one' lines from Liverpool Street up
to / Seven Sisters/ Tottenham Hale/ Walthamstow Central to be sorted
out. C2C accepting Oyster PAYG at Rainham and Degenham Dock is just a
logical development in that they are of course the only two stations
C2C has in the zones that don't currently accept PAYG.

However the stuff about Chiltern offering Oyster smartcards outside of
London is very interesting - so much so that I'm going to start a new
thread about it!