please empty your brain below

Hello, I am a visitor to London from another country. Does anyone have the time to explain to me how I can get anywhere? My English is not too good.
What? You came all the way here with the intention of using public transport and didn't bother to find out anything about it?
Yes I am a visitor, not a tourist. I had to come suddenly because my brother has been taken ill and I need to visit him at the hospital.
Oh it's OK, I've set up auto top-up so that I never have less than £10 on my Oyster card.

What's that beep?

Oh, I have to activate the top up at an underground, overground or DLR station first?

[same applies to online top-ups.]

Who dreams this stuff up?
0.7%? Oh, that is only ... hundreds of people every day.

Is it legally possible to refuse to accept legal tender?
Can anyone tell me what I am meant to do if I live in Dorking, don't have a contact less card and want to make a journey on the 465, especially late at night, when the nearest top up point is a newsagent in Leatherhead?
What? You don't have a contactless card, grandpa? Get with the program. You need to call up your bank first thing Monday and get them to send you a new Visa card in the post that had the contactless symbol on it - but don't forget to make a chip & pin transaction on it first!
Oh - I've been out and about but I have lost my Oyster card - WHAT? you won't take the Queens shilling?

How the *** do I get home?
That's OK, comrade. Please accept this knife of mine between your ribs.
most European countries use non cash travel. you buy from news vendors etc so its not something new we are just catching up with europe
The point isn't that moving away from cash fares is necessarily a bad thing per se, but that TfL are doing it before the infrastructure is there for people to have a viable alternative in many cases (e.g. enough places to buy/top up Oysters, particularly late at night, and before enough people have contactless cards)

One of the other sets of figures I read when this was initially being consulted was that while during the day the amount of cash use was around 1%, at night it was much higher (unsurprisingly, as it's much harder to top up your Oyster once the shops and tube stations shut)
"Is it legally possible to refuse to accept legal tender?"

In this case yes. The concept of legal tender refers to settling an existing debt, whereas if you're simply offering it in a transaction for something you haven't had yet (e.g. a ride on a bus) then they're not required to accept it.
The driver could issue an Unpaid Fare Notice.
Classic DG commentary.

"but they were wrong so we ignored them." - ha!

"Well get with the program, grandma. TfL can't be held responsible for minority interests such as people without plastic money. You're still in the dark ages having circular bits of metal in your pocket, and society can't be expected to tolerate your old school ways any more" - miaow.

It will be interesting to see how things pan out especially on cross boundary routes and on evening / night journeys when the off bus ticketing infrastructure may not be available. Comments from bus drivers on groups indicate cash fares were still being proffered last night so the message hasn't got to everyone.
so now if in London you get asked 'can I please have 20p for my bus fare home' you know they are lying...
Oh look! I've found an unused book of those funny-shaped cardboard ticket things that were being promoted instead of cash a few years ago... Surely you can take one of those?
Honestly, you blokes! Why don't you do what I did. Get old, they'll issue you with a bus pass and you will never have to pay again.
If I can do it so can you.
The on-board messages advised passengers to contact the TFL website for more info. Frankly, the sort of people who have no option but to pay cash are the least likely to have internet access!
Not one notice on any of the buses or bus stops where I live in Zone 4.
@ Bob LS - Yes, we still take those funny cardboard shaped Bus Saver tickets! They're still valid for travel and TfL sell them to businesses via Corporate Sales.
As to the first post the visitor to London must have, assuming he did not swim here, arrived by train, plane or ship and arrived into a London terminal. At that place an Oyster card could be obtained and information would be available. The Oyster ticket machines support many languages so poor English should not be a problem.
The person living in Dorking has had plenty of time to buy an Oyster card and keep it for use when needed.
As a last resort I think London Taxis take credit cards!
Maybe a system of paying for a bus ride using a mobile telephone account for payment be devised.
What about kids (or anyone) who used to be able to give their name and address if they didn't have any money and desperately needed to get home? The moneygrabbers are making us into slaves to the system. We serve the system instead of vice versa. They should be introducing more ways to pay, not removing ways to pay. The general public are treated like dirt in this country. To be walked on and farmed. And they call it progress! The false economy started with Thatcher selling off state assets and now it ends with people treated as less than robots. All to provide opportunities for amoral international brigands and rotten bastards.
@PC - that must be yet another obscure rule for the trainee bus driver to learn!
Feergal: Children travel for free on London Buses up to the age of 10, they just walk on.
Also related to Feargals comment, many responses in the consultation were in regards to worries about the very old and very young travelling. Both groups are able to get free travel as long as they have their Zip or Freedom pass. If they have lost that card then they should be treated same as someone who lost Oyster. If possible, buy a new Oyster, if not (late at night or no shop/station near) then extra journey as vulnerable person.
@Feargal - "they" did introduce more ways to pay.... it used to be cash only (and tokens in some places), now there is Oyster and contactless (and saver tokens). If you're going to the pub, you make sure you've got cash or card; if you're going on a bus, you make sure you've got a (contactless) card or Oyster. What's the problem ?
@Feargal - as others have said there are free travel concessions for many groups. The final fall back provision is the Unpaid Fare Notice which all drivers can issue even if it's a slightly time consuming transaction. I've seen a driver issue one when someone was clearly in some distress. The problem, as ever, is that people who want a free ride but aren't in distress try to bully drivers into issuing one to them. If I was ever to end up in real problems having lost / had stolen my means to travel I'd not hesitate to request one but only if I was genuninely in distress.
I believe the main driver for phasing out cash fares is it now costs more to process / collect than they actually get in revenue. Collecting cash fares is therefore an entirely pointless transaction: they'd be better off just letting all the cash fare payers on for free. (And which for a woman at night is exactly what would likely happen)

As others have pointed out

1) most european cities force you to buy tickets in advance for buses / trams.

2) "grandma" without a contactless bank card will have a free bus pass. As will her grandchild.

3) Tourists may get confused by London's public transport system but as far as i've seen the one thing they do know is to buy an oyster card.
I got a new credit card through the post on Thursday. It wasn't contactless.

When I took part in the consultation I said I had no problem WHEN the vast majority for cards are contactless. The fact the major banks banks are still issuing brand new cards that are not contactless shows how clueless TfL have been on this one.

Incidentally I used a Saver ticket in 2011. One driver took it without comment. Another was amazed - he hadn't seen one for years!
^DK

"which for a woman at night is exactly what would likely happen"

what of a man? old perhaps and slightly confused...or a adult teen male on their own who may be "at risk"?

Think each case should be judged on it's merits...regardless of gender.
I do wonder how much of is this is well-meaning people getting worried on other peoples' behalf unnecessarily?

People have said:

"What about tourists?" - most arrive at major airports / rail termini - all of which have multilingual machines which issue Oyster. Guidebooks all tell people to get Oyster too.

"What about people who can't get a bank account?" - what about getting an Oyster? I find it hard to believe that people who are on low incomes and are unbanked also have the spare money to throw away on cash fares vs Oyster PAYG.

"My bank doesn't issue contactless cards" - get an Oyster card - or switch bank to one that does. A 7-day switching service is now offered by the UK banking industry.

"What about vulnerable passengers with no means to pay?" - people will be able to ride on an Unpaid Fare Notice.

As has been mentioned above - it costs more to take cash on the buses than they receive in cash revenue (i.e. cash fares make a net loss for TfL and are in essence subsidised). This move will save £20M. Why should I as a passenger who pays by Oyster continue to subsidise fares for people who can't be bothered to do so? I would far rather see that money being put towards improving the service.
"Excuse me, I'm this lady's husband and I'd like to pay her fare for her. Here's my card."

Here's my *contactless* card. A great way to pay for someone else, if you've paid with your Oyster.
^E

No sexism meant, just using it as an example. Applies to anyone in a "vulnerable" situation.

The point still stands. They could ALL (vulnerable or not) be allowed to travel for free and TFL would be financially better off... (Though obviously if this policy was made public everyone would try it on.)
@ Mark - you need to be careful about using the "I'm not subsidising that person argument". It's only a small step to someone arguing that your PAYG bus fare shouldn't be subsidised by 15p every journey (that's the latest number) and wouldn't it be wonderful to jack the fare up by over 15% to make the bus network profitable.

There are only two plausible reasons why this change has happened - one is the march of technology with people adopting it and the second is TfL having stripped away the easily realisable efficiencies and now service quality has to be affected to strip out more cost.

There's a genuine debate to be had, and we haven't had it via the consultation process, about whether passengers wanted to retain cash acceptance even if it meant they had to pay a bit more or had to forego something else instead. I might not have minded too much *if* the £24m pa saving was ring fenced to improve bus services. However TfL have refused to do this so the savings might end up funding a director's bonus payment or paying interest to creditors on the finance TfL raises on the markets or it might fund a cycle lane. Who knows? The money will disappear into the centrally held efficiencies pot and we've no way of knowing where it goes and certainly not if the benefit will be felt by bus passengers. If only the bus service could have £24m pa spent on service improvements - that would be a decent policy change.
TfL have consistently failed to provide a breakdown of the '£24 million per year' figure, nor the £130 million 'total' which has been mooted (and misquoted as an annual saving by several media outlets).
I strongly suspect that the contract with G4S(?) to collect and deliver money from and to bus garages accounts for a substantial part of the figure, as does calculated 'savings' from drivers not having to cash up at the end of their shifts.
In truth, no-one knows how much this will save, nor how that saved money will be used.
This terrible decision potentially affects everyone who may ever need to take a bus and finds themselves without a working Oyster card or contactless payment card for whatever reason.
It means that the truly poor who may, on any given day, be able to scrape together £2.40 for a bus fare but not £6.45 for an Oyster card plus bus fare will suffer even more than they already do.
It means that a passenger who is unable to take the Tube for whatever reason, simply wanting to take a journey between one rail station and another to complete their trip by train will have to pay £6.45 for their bus journey, then queue up again to get their deposit back, or have to pay postage to send the card back for refund.
It means that tourists, many of whom never touch the Tube during their short stay - and I speak from experience - will have to queue to get their card and queue to get their deposits back.
It means that adults travelling with children between 11-15 wanting to take one ride on the bus,who may have one contactless payment card but not two, will have to queue up to buy a child Travelcard or register an ordinary Oyster card, pay a £5 fee, ask for a temporary half price discount to be set (see the TfL website for details of this new development, add 70p, take the bus and then either post the card back in or return it to a Tube ticket office at some point to get a refund.
I predict this will last a year.
"And people actually agreed to this?
No, two thirds of the people who replied to the consultation said they wanted to keep cash as a means of payment, but they were wrong so we ignored them."
PMSL
(Or wanted to, if only there was anything funny about it)
Interesting to see if any potential or actual candidate for London Mayor in 2016 has anything to say on this issue.

And if they have, and get elected, how much longer after that, relevant TfL personnel have before any acquaintance with a Job Centre.

Overseas card users may end up paying a foreign currency fee each time they swipe a contactless card, and note for all that contactless travel is NOT CAPPED, so you pay for each trip (bus, tube, tram, overground) every day - lots of luvly noo lolly for TfL, and no commission to those off-bus vendors either on contactless travel, who I'm sure will thank TfL most warmly.

Think also of the effects of delays for those caught out, and be a bit more sympathetic repliers above, as not everyone can know about this change of rule. The adverts have only been in London, only refer you to the web, and otherwise you have to know in advance to look for a coming rule change... Not very likely. The delay for getting a means of payment acceptable to TfL may mean missing a train, a plane, a coach, or being late for work (employment at risk?) or leaving kids uncollected from school for a bit longer. But of course, TfL doesn't care about people, only money.
DW "It means that the truly poor who may, on any given day, be able to scrape together £2.40 for a bus fare but not £6.45 for an Oyster card plus bus fare will suffer even more than they already do. "
But they only pay the £6.45 once, after that it is only. £1.45 so after 6 journeys they have the money back spent on the deposit. There isn't argument for not switching to Oyster.

@Joel, TfL posters state most overseas contactless cards won't work anyway so advice for tourists is still, get an Oyster card. I did get an RFID smartcard in both San Francisico and Los Angeles as it was the cheapest and easiest method of travel.
@Anon

I'm sorry. This is about a failure of imagination and a lack of understanding of how poor people actually have to live. A decision made by people who don't pay for their own travel.
I know that there are plenty of people for whom £5 is too much money to have sitting as a deposit on an Oyster card - a card which may be lost or stolen. They do get cards but then cash in the deposit when they need the money. Some days they can't afford the card but can manage a bus fare. Please try to put yourself in other peoples' shoes. Your rational choices may make no sense to them.
"I know that there are plenty of people for whom £5 is too much money to have sitting as a deposit on an Oyster card - a card which may be lost or stolen"

https://www.tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/replacements-and-refunds/oyster-refunds-and-replacements

says that

"You can report your Oyster card as lost or stolen online and we'll stop your card so no one else can use it and post you a replacement. If you don't have an online Oyster account, call Customer Services to get a replacement."
@Briantist
"Call customer services"
...........on the phone you can't afford presumably.

"Here's my *contactless* card. A great way to pay for someone else, if you've paid with your Oyster"
Not much help if the someone else is travelling further than you are, and an inspector gets often after you've left the bus.

@DW
"It means that adults travelling with children between 11-15 ...,.. will have to queue up to buy a child Travelcard"
Zip cards take between two and four weeks for it to be processed and posted to you. If you are applying from abroad, the parent or legal guardian must collect it in person (not much use if the child is not travelling with its parents, for example on a school exchange)
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/students-and-children/11-15-zip-oyster-photocard

@Anon
"But they only pay the £6.45 once, after that it is only. £1.45 so after 6 journeys they have the money back spent on the deposit. There isn't argument for not switching to Oyster."

Yes there is - exactly the same argument as why you might pay £2500 a month over 25 years for your house instead of paying £500,000 up front. (a 50% premium)

The £6.45 Oyster option is not much use if you only have £3 to your name - nor if the nearest Oyster outlet is a bus ride away and/or not open for another six hours.

Cash payers already paid a premium - surely that paid for the extra costs of handling it.
@Briantist, if they're that poor they might not be connected to the internet (ok, they could use the library computer but that's probably a bus ride away...)
@Tina Lewis: Or they can make a phone call?
@timbo: "Not much help if the someone else is travelling further than you are, and an inspector gets often after you've left the bus. "

But the same as paying for a second fare with the Oyster card as per the article.
- How can cashing 2,40 cost more than the cash/oyster difference of 0,95 (+merchant fee for contactless)? If that would be true many small retailers would be out of business.

- Bus savers are still available? At around oyster cost? Probably tfl should offer those in bulk to the drivers and allow to sell them for the cash price and keep the difference. I'm sure they'll like it.

- Probably getting some handfuls of bus savers and selling them to those in need might be an interesting option for anybody interested in a little more income. Let's see...
Timbo "The £6.45 Oyster option is not much use if you only have £3 to your name - nor if the nearest Oyster outlet is a bus ride away and/or not open for another six hours. "
But if you already bough your Oyster card 5 years ago and only have £3 to your name you can two journeys rather than one so can afford to have a return journey. I really don't think this hypothetical situation exists where someone doesn't already have an Oyster card and only has very small amount of cash and cannot afford more. I haven't seen anyone board a bus and use cash for a very long time. Even those on low incomes realised the benefit of Oyster.
Just because you haven't seen something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. According to TfL, 24 million bus journeys last year were paid for in cash. That's over £50million revenue TfL are turning away - to save £24m in running costs!

"But if you already bought your Oyster card 5 years ago and only have £3 to your name you can have two journeys rather than one "
Irrelevant to the person whose card is damaged, lost or stolen, or who has never needed an Oyster before*: or is several miles, or hours, from finding a newsagent that is open to top it up.

Examples such as someone who had no intention of visiting London, but because of missed connections or car breakdown, finds themselves in a strange city with an unexpected need to use a bus late at night.
If cash is "ineffective" then the simplest way to cope with this inefficiency is to low fares to zero. It is also J.H. Crawford's recommendation (see his book "Carfree cities").

Prohibiting to pay someone else's fare clearly indicate true purpose of the system: people tracking on "antiterrorism" pretext. Just another addition to Ring of Steel. Raw cash is very unhandy for police.
@Alex

Buy an Oyster and don't register it
@ Anon 0829 - I've seen people present 2 or 3 Oyster cards to a bus card reader and have all of them rejected because they had no money on them. Goodness knows how you end up with three cards but clearly some people do and have difficulty keeping track of what is on each one. They're as at risk of getting stuck if no shops are open or a station isn't close by as someone with no Oyster.

The problem with the "absolute" nature of this scheme is that anyone can be caught out by it *even* if they have an Oyster card and a bank card. If cards fail or a PIN activation is needed you can't travel. You try fixing that at the roadside at Cudham village or at Box Hill or at West Thamesmead at 2130 on a Sunday! None of us know when an Oyster Card might give up the ghost or reach its maximum transaction limit. We are slowly but surely getting to the point where Oyster Cards will reach the end of their lives due to the volume of transactions that have been recorded and there's no way for people to know if they're in that category.
On the bus today, held up by the driver have to explain to a woman that she couldn't pay for both herself and her two companions with contactless. She (now £1.45 down after having touched her contactless card) and her companions (I think they were her non-English-speaking, visiting parents) all had to get off.
StarTrek IV: The Voyage Home. Reboot.

"What does it mean, 'No Cash Taken'?"










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