The platform validators at London Bridge for FCC journeys northwards
now seem to be working properly for PAYG. However the ticket gates
(which are not active for PAYG) aren't letting Oystercards without
travelcards through, so you have to ask to be let through the manual
gate. I suspect that this is deliberate to stop people using Oyster
PAYG as a gate pass..

On Jan 30, 2:12 am, Matthew Dickinson
wrote:
The platform validators at London Bridge for FCC journeys northwards
now seem to be working properly for PAYG. However the ticket gates
(which are not active for PAYG) aren't letting Oystercards without
travelcards through, so you have to ask to be let through the manual
gate. I suspect that this is deliberate to stop people using Oyster
PAYG as a gate pass..


I don't get that. If you wanted to get from, say, London Bridge to
Blackfriars, you might be using PAYG, so you'd need to come in at the
barrier.

If you were arriving by train from somewhere in Kent, it's more likely
you'd have a London Terminals or through ticket or be on a travelcard
anyway.

So it seems to allow the least likely use and rule out the most
likely.

If the idea is to stop people travelling to Tonbridge having got
through the gate with PAYG ... how long before the unresolved journey
will cost more than a single to Tonbridge anyway?

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 02:12:52 +0000, Matthew Dickinson wrote:

The platform validators at London Bridge for FCC journeys northwards
now seem to be working properly for PAYG.

As far as I'm aware, they've been working for a long time.

However the ticket gates
(which are not active for PAYG) aren't letting Oystercards without
travelcards through, so you have to ask to be let through the manual
gate. I suspect that this is deliberate to stop people using Oyster
PAYG as a gate pass..

Not really - that's what the £4 charge is for.

In fact it actually has the opposite effect: you can go to the manual
gate, wave any old Oyster card (even a defunct one) at the staff,
assure them that you will touch/have touched the platform validator,
and be let through without so much as an unresolved journey.

I had assumed this arrangement was an "interim" one while the gates
were being correctly programmed, but it seems to have been like this
for at least a year.

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 12:02:08 +0000, asdf
wrote:

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 02:12:52 +0000, Matthew Dickinson wrote:

The platform validators at London Bridge for FCC journeys northwards
now seem to be working properly for PAYG.

As far as I'm aware, they've been working for a long time.


They were rejecting valid PAYG Oystercards for quite a while.

However the ticket gates
(which are not active for PAYG) aren't letting Oystercards without
travelcards through, so you have to ask to be let through the manual
gate. I suspect that this is deliberate to stop people using Oyster
PAYG as a gate pass..

Not really - that's what the £4 charge is for.

The £4/£5 charge does not apply to the ticket *gates* at London Bridge
as they are not part of the PAYG network, and cannot be used to start
or complete PAYG journeys. How they originally behaved was that they
rejected PAYG only Oystercards with the usual National Rail error code
57, but opened the gates so that the platform validators (which *are*
part of the PAYG network) could be reached. It is this behaviour which
I suspect Southeastern may not have been happy with.

In fact it actually has the opposite effect: you can go to the manual
gate, wave any old Oyster card (even a defunct one) at the staff,
assure them that you will touch/have touched the platform validator,
and be let through without so much as an unresolved journey.

I had assumed this arrangement was an "interim" one while the gates
were being correctly programmed, but it seems to have been like this
for at least a year.