please empty your brain below
via Victoria Station on the train on a Saturday and realise I have to queue for half an hour to
Buy a ticket!
I have to say, having used Contactless on a bus outside London, the rest of the country has a lot to learn. It took several minutes for a driver to try to issue me a ticket with it, because he put the fare in wrong and couldn't work out how to sort it out. In the end I got a free ride, but that's not the point. Another time they got it right but it's still look up the fare, issue ticket. All the money saving benefits but none of the time saving ones.
Card in hand, arm outstretched.
Touch while still walking forward.
Then a delay as the card is processed.
Only a small delay, but enough to slow one's forward motion.
If there is a queue, these small delays ripple backwards and the pace of the queue slows.
Are there any plans to reduce the processing time?
I'd imagine anyone with an oyster season would be best off boarding the first train and seeking the "on board supervisor" to buy an extension.
TfL are not only keeping more fares revenue for themselves, but they're also doing it with passengers' interests in mind too.
Take monthly tickets. You can have a bus only ticket, a train only ticket, a tram only ticket, a train+bus ticket, or a tram+bus ticket. You cannot have a train+tram ticket or a bus+train+tram ticket. Oh no. You have to buy separate ones at a greater cost. Why? Who knows. It makes no sense.
TfL say that this is because most of the current cards are first generation. The next generation ones shouldn't have this problem.
They are well aware of this issue and know that reducing the time by as little as 100 milliseconds will have a significant effect on flow. It was a long time since I heard the details but I think they aim to get it consistently under 500ms and generally better than that.
Having said that, the Verkehrsverbund Bremen-Niedersachsen, the public transport provider for Bremen and North Lower Saxony in Germany, introduced a 'pay after you travel' ticket as far back as 2003. Passengers who signed up received a chip card that they then had to insert into readers mounted in buses, trams and at railway stations, and selected where they were headed on the touchscreens. They then received an itemised bill at the end of the month - much like from your mobile or electricity provider - where the system selected the cheapest ticketing options available based on your pattern of travel.
Traditional thinking but not necessarily applicable to the modern world.
TfL can borrow money so cheaply in the financial market that they have absolutely no need or desire to borrow from passengers at far higher rates.
Also, they have no real desire to encourage demand by offering free or highly reduced rate additional trips - witness the dramatic rise in the capping level over the past few years. If they were starting from scratch there are people within TfL would would have everything Pay As You Go.
10) Watford
11) Gatwick
12) Bus
13) Shenfield
What else? Trams (are they not just buses)? Cable Car?
Is it really too hard to enable the National Rail TVMs at the appropriate stations (E & W Croydon, Wimbledon, Mitcham Junction, Elmers End) to issue tram tickets?
At West Croydon the TVM for London Overground is just metres away from the tram stop and located outside the station.
dg writes: The paper about removing TVMs from tram stops is linked from the quote in the post about removing TVMs from tram stops.
For starters, what about all the intermediate stations to Gatwick e.g. Merstham, Redhill, Horley?
For a fuller answer see here.
However, I agree that with current demand levels the default position would be to provide only PAYG with higher rates for peak travel.
Thanks! I knew I'd seen a list somewhere! TBH though, I didn't know you were allowed to get off between East Croydon and Gatwick on Oyster.
TfL had no desire to introduce free transfers on buses - if by that you mean short hops.
But, as Peter Hendy once said, the job of TfL is to do the Mayor's bidding. So if the Mayor wants it then it happens (if technically possible) whatever TfL might think.
Peter Hendy also opposed free travel for those under 16. At the end of the day, the Mayor chose to ignore his advice and so TfL was obliged to implement it.
dg writes: Paragraph rewritten, thanks.
I know technology is changing things and no one is immune but some of these policy initiatives may have undesirable consequences beyond the transport network.
A move away from Oyster, a long cherished objective for some in TfL, may also prove a little odd in the context of extending TfL rail services. If your policy is not to have agents selling your ticket products then you are wholly reliant on having very reliable and yet complex ticket machines in places like Reading, Twyford, Maidenhead etc when Crossrail extends westwards. I guess TfL may not care given it has not fully catered for Oyster sales in places where its bus services run beyond the Greater London boundary.
Going to be interesting to watch how TfL manage to bring in all these initiatives given some are already many months or years behind previously published dates.
We're not suffering from any new-fangled hi-tech either: Southeastern's gates still don't accept contactless payments and its not-very-smart card 'The Key' doesn't even offer PAYG. Amazingly, it's not even compatible with Southern's version of The Key, despite both TOCs having the same parent company.
We just have to be content with rumours that a few TVMs are already accepting the shiny new £1 coins, and that the car park TVMs that haven't already been axed may follow suit one day...
Since the Mayor is TfL's Chairman of the Board, then what the Mayor wants generally becomes what TfL wants.
It so happens that this Mayor (and the previous two) have appointed themselves as chairman - as they are quite entitled to do - but the Mayor is not inevitably chairman of the TfL board.
Anyway, it makes no difference. If you attend or view board or committee meetings (where the Mayor is not present) TfL officers will be asked by other board members about how their proposal is compatible with the Mayor's wishes as laid down in the Mayor's Transport Strategy.
If you were in an isolated place waiting for a bus, with nowhere to buy oysters, how will they get around. The bus driver just lets them jump on for free rather than paying in cash.
National Rail are becoming the same. I've just been given an e-ticket to travel during the summer, and I have no-idea how I will use it, or if I need to collect a paper ticket. Haven't seen a code; so I hope I get it in paper form.
- If you're arriving/departing mid-week, it means you can end up paying an additional weekly cap as opposed to a travelcard that runs seven days.
- PAYG doesn't allow you to get cheaper rail tickets when travelling outside of the TfL zones (unless you get off at the first/last station in Oyster land to touch in/out and then wait for the next train, which is of course totally ridiculous).
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