| Author |
Message |
Haylands
Joined 29-09-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, 11 January, 2007 - 05:29 pm: | |
Good to see our dear friends at Southern (that's the trains and not the utilies) are dragging their feet on the Oyster question. They basically can't see what is in it for them. Wonderful to see such great customer care. |
Sherwood
Joined 30-03-2005
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 11:10 am: | |
Personally I think there is a lot in it for them.
Barriers with oyster machine should make it difficult for passengers to avoid paying their fare.
Hence increased revenue.
Also it should improve security by keeping non-payers out of the stations. |
Robwinton
Joined 07-06-2006
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 11:32 am: | |
Barriers seem to need to be manned (push chairs, big bags, getting stuck, ticket not working, etc.)
They would need someone permanently position on each platform, and therefore need at least 1 or 2 more staff. I think that would be a big hurdle |
Roz
Joined 17-03-2005
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 01:58 pm: | |
The 'Oyster' issue seriously hit my pocket very early in the New Year to the cost of £13.
I made the human error of forgetting my credt card/debit cards on the first day back at work on 2nd Jan- I didnt realise this until got to London Bridge, having bought a single from FH to there with my limited cash where I had intended to renew my travel card. I then had to buy a single from LB to Camden where I work- total expenditure for the day around £6 by this time.
No problem,I thought, I'll get my partner to give me my card details on the phone and I'll renew on line. Could I heck. Despite having set up an account and inputted my card details, the on line system asked me to choose a station to validate my card, and would only let me choose one in zone 3 as this is where I live. However this had to be a zone 3 tube station- nearest one Morden or thereabouts. Not possible to do. It would not let me renew at Camden Town. No variations from the norm possible. ( Why is this so strict!).
The next ' issue' was that it would not in any case let me renew for the same day, only the next day, so even if the renewal had worked, I would still have to pay a further £4.70 to get back to FH. This I did, then another £2.70 from FH to LB the next day where I queued for 20 minutes at LB to renew my travel card at the delightful cost of £105 per month. All in all a very expensive month, once again hitting us non Oyster suburbanites in the pocket.
We had just come back from Brussels where you can travel anywhere for 1euro50. All train travel in Belgium was £7 per journey per person for a return. A small country and small city I know, but otherwise not particularly cheap but not visibly affluent either. Perhaps someone well versed in transport economics could enlighten me as to the precise reasons why travel in London and the UK is so particularly prohibitive in comparison with the rest of Europe. Is it strictly about subsidy levels, and how much is it to do with infrastructure costs.?
The particularly serious thing about this is that people in the UK are going to be better acquainted with the rest of the world than their own country. I work with several people who have never been to either Wales or Scotland and are never likely to either given train fares circa £160 for a return. |
Michael
Joined 04-03-2005
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 03:13 pm: | |
It is stupid that you have to go to a zone 3 tube station to swipe to renew your Oyster season ticket. I noticed that it did include Tram stations, which I believe included Beckenham Junction. I almost got a season ticket from zone 1 to zone 3, so that I could swipe my card at London Bridge. But since I was not planning to travel into London for 10 days before the 1st of Jan, this would have meant a 30 minute round trip just to swipe a piece of plastic, and if I had renewed on the day I was returning to work (after the price rise) it would have cost an extra £40 on top of the £1040 I was already paying.
The solution I found was to order a completely new Oyster card online and it was posted to my home address, no need to swipe it at a specific station. Simple enough, but it shows what a weird system we currently have. |
Sherwood
Joined 30-03-2005
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 03:19 pm: | |
Michael,
I would like to order an oyster card online.
Can you post the link to the website? |
Fhssecretary
Joined 12-10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 03:34 pm: | |
Think you are encountering problems because you are trying to fight the system. Functionality of the gates at London Bridge aside, it's still paper tickets on the railway so you are going to encounter these sort of problems if you try to do something different as the system is not set up for you to have an Oyster because that is your preference. |
Sherwood
Joined 30-03-2005
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 03:45 pm: | |
My understanding is that oyster card users receive discounts. (In reality cash payments are being penalised.) Therefore, it seems reasonable to expect to be able to use oyster cards throughout London. |
Loneranger
Joined 29-10-2005
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 04:23 pm: | |
Last year a Southern Trains report referred to introducing the use of smart cards not necessarily Oyster.
The latest South Eastern Trains newsletter refers to smart cards and gives Oyster as an example but the answer.
Looking to the future (which has only just begun) will competing rail companies regard smart cards as a form of loyalty card? |
Loneranger
Joined 29-10-2005
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 04:25 pm: | |
CORRECTION:
Last year a Southern Trains report referred to introducing the use of smart cards not necessarily Oyster.
The latest South Eastern Trains newsletter refers to smart cards and gives Oyster as merely an example but the not answer.
Looking to the future (which has only just begun) will competing rail companies regard smart cards as a form of loyalty card? |
Sherwood
Joined 30-03-2005
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 05:04 pm: | |
I suspect that they will need to have some provision for oyster cards as the freedom pass is given to residents of the borough of 60 years of age. They will need to provide at least one barrier that can read the freedom pass (or provide a member of staff to open the barrier). |
Michael
Joined 04-03-2005
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 05:31 pm: | |
The online sales for Oyster Cards is at http://sales.oystercard.com/oyster/lul/entry.do |
Fhssecretary
Joined 12-10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 05:32 pm: | |
You are mixing the issues of season tickets / travelcards with single bus and tube fares. There is no difference in price between an Annual Oyster Card and an annual paper season ticket issued by Southern. There is no Oyster discount; indeed the paper ticket may be cheaper depending on Southern's performance - at present there is no discount but in previous years it has been 4%.
If you want to make the occasional tueb journey, you are quite free to acquire a pay-as-you-go Oyster, and these can of course be recharged at local newsagents etc - even in Forest Hill!
I do agree though that it is ridiculous that the system is not London-wide and think Southern should be stamped on by whoever is in a position to. In the meantime, we just have to learn how best to use the system we have. |
Blushingsnail
Joined 21-12-2005
| | Posted on Friday, 12 January, 2007 - 05:56 pm: | |
Roz: why are you renewing your Oyster ticket at London Bridge? You can get weekly and monthly travelcards on Oyster in some newsagents in Forest Hill. And a return train ticket to Scotland needn’t cost £160: from London to Edinburgh a Saver Return costs £98.20 and Advance tickets cost £14.05 each way.
Southern etc: if anyone’s sufficiently interested there’s a recent article in the Railway Gazette (not my usual reading material I hasten to add) that explains about the Dept for Transport wanting to introduce smart card ticketing on national rail services based on something called ITSO, which is different to the Oyster technology. London train operators will therefore need to be able to accept both cards and it raises a lot of technical issues, not just about reading/writing to the cards at the stations but all the back-office operations like revenue-allocation. If I get bored over the weekend I’ll do a short summary of it.
http://www.railwaygazette.com/Articles/2007/01/01/ 3517/Britain+grapples+with+main+line+smart+ticketi ng.html
I have a lot of sympathy for the train operators when Ken keeps blaming them for ‘depriving’ us of the benefits of Oyster – if he hadn’t made cash fares more expensive than Oyster pay-as-you-go we wouldn’t be suffering in the first place. |
Fhssecretary
Joined 12-10-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, 13 January, 2007 - 10:56 am: | |
I never had you down as a railway person! |
Roz
Joined 17-03-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, 13 January, 2007 - 11:31 am: | |
Just for the record, my initial switching to Oyster was not my preference; I went to renew my travel card at Camden and they told me they didn't do paper tickets any more so had to apply for an Oyster there and then. I have since had the option of taking out a new paper travel card at Forest Hill but either the queues are too long in the mornings and they are mostly closed in the evenings when I get back.
I have investigated buying cards at local newsagents but have only found weekly and pay as you go cards- not my monthly travel card. If you know of any specific newsagent that does this I'd appreciate details as clearly I am going to the wrong one!
The only answer is to make sure I renew at London Bridge or Camden a few days before the card expires as nothing else seems to work. |
Roz
Joined 17-03-2005
| | Posted on Sunday, 14 January, 2007 - 11:01 am: | |
Also- re UK travel- we tried to book a train to the Scottish highlands last year with two weeks in advance of our intention to travel. but no apex seats were available and train costs were certainly circa £160 return each on a one way sleeper. Unfortunately our lives are not always planned that much in advance, as I suspect are most peoples. And I see no reason why one should plan extensively for a trip in their own country as they would a long haul trip to the US or Middle East. Plane fares were much more as no bargains were available. We did not fancy the coach trip.
A trip to Barcelona was arranged at less than half this cost and 1/4 of the hassle. |
Blushingsnail
Joined 21-12-2005
| | Posted on Monday, 15 January, 2007 - 05:23 pm: | |
Roz: according to the TFL website these newsagents are ‘Oyster Ticket Stops’
B.K'S NEWS - 20 LONDON ROAD
LITTLE SAIGON - 17 DARTMOUTH ROAD
DARTMOUTH NEWS - 67 DARTMOUTH ROAD
It says Oyster Ticket Stops sell weekly and monthly travelcards, although at the bottom of the page it also says to “check if your local Oyster Ticket Stop sells the type of ticket you require”, so perhaps not all of them sell all types of ticket (in which case what’s the point of them?!). Have you tried any of these newsagents?
Scotland [read it quick, before it gets modded!]: a ‘normal’ Saver Return (ie daytime) to Inverness is £113 but given the long journey time I’m not surprised you preferred a sleeper, which unfortunately, but not surprisingly, is more expensive. Sleeper services aside, a Saver Return from London to Scotland is around £100 and can be bought at any time prior to getting on the train. There are some restrictions as to time of travel but they’re not too onerous, and the average holidaymaker shouldn’t have a problem with them. Even if buying a ticket at the last minute, travelling to Scotland by train needn’t be very expensive. |
