On 5 Jan, 10:12, Patrick Osborne wrote:
Every year it's the same, and this year was no exception. *The queues
at Lewisham this morning had to be seen to be believed; they were so
long that they were seriously affecting the ability to enter the
station itself. *Presumably this scene was re-enacted across the
network.

I went there today, intending to use the card-only Oyster topup
machine, but there was a huge queue for that as well.

However, people didn't seem to have noticed that the DLR now has an
Oyster-compatible ticket machine, for which there was a one-person
queue.*

Incidentally, although it worked OK, it was disconcertingly slow in
responding.

The one at the NR ticket office is very different. For example, when
it asks you to touch your Oyster at the end of the transaction, it is
so quick to tell you that your card has been updated, it almost seems
to have anticipated the touch.

The new DLR machine seemed to be very slow to respond. I wasn't sure
if it had done anything or not and had taken my card away for a few
seconds before it gave me the message that it had been updated.

Also ... for this transaction it required a PIN. The old DLR machines
take cards, but don't require a PIN, presumably because the maximum
you can spend is quite low. I wonder if the new machines require a
PIN for every transaction?


*This might support a hypothesis that the main demand for the older
machine is for travelcards for people using NR, unless DLR users are
walking straight past the DLR machine, unaware of its existence.



Is there a reason why people queue up for ages on the first working
day of the year to renew their season ticket, when you can easily
purchase it online or by phone weeks beforehand, and at the old price
too? *Or, if you insist on purchasing it face-to-face, why not buy it
a couple of weeks early, or make it so that it runs Feb-Feb rather
than Jan-Jan?

Are people really so stupid that they'll happily queue for half an
hour in the cold, or is there a reason for this annual craziness?

Patrick