London Banter - View Single Post

Walter Briscoe · August 27th 10, 07:22 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In message of Fri, 27
Aug 2010 09:56:22 in uk.transport.london,
writes

[snip]

I only keep £1.80 credit on my Oyster cards if possible, or whatever
the minimum fare to get into the tube at King's Cross is this year.

Why does it bother you so? I don't really get it. Who do you bank
with?

Because for months at a time I don't use Oyster. And it's not like the

While I appreciate YMMV, I use Auto Top Up on a registered card.
It suits me; it would not suit you.

Metro carnet tickets which are still worth a journey now despite being
bought in 1999 money. Credit on my Oyster will pay less towards journeys
as fares rise.

I don't bother with such small numbers. Today, I was behind a German
teacher returning 9 Oysters for the deposits. I showed a New York
Metrocard which has some credit and is kept as a souvenir. While
interested, she thought her charges' parents would object. When I
suggested registration, ticket office staff said this is only available
to those with UK addresses.

Metrocard was produced by Cubic at about the same time as it produced
Oyster for London. It uses a swipe - at a limited range of speeds - on a
magnetic reader. I found NY transport interesting: (The following list
is unordered.)
a) it has payphones in subway stations;
b) most trains have air con - stations don't & are vilely hot in summer;
c) PA is manual, sporadic and difficult to understand;
d) trains with dot matrix displays show the HH:MM time when nothing more
interesting is available - LU shows nothing, suggesting display failure;
e) no "stand on the right" on escalators;
f) only station staff seen was an agent selling fares;
g) I envy their local and express trains - the Metropolitan north of
Finchley Road is so limited in comparison;
h) the 2nd Ave Subway has been in planning since 1940 - the first
section should open in 2015;
i) hard seats are adequate; armrests are not used; many spread over 2;
j) at first, I thought they had less grafitti - trains seem worse;
k) while I did not try this, it seems there is a one hour transfer
between subway and bus - Boris and Caroline Pidgeon were discussing this
for London in the Mayor's questions on Bastille Day. She was told
something to the effect of "not now if it hits revenue".

The queues at King's Cross are still enormous and now you can only top up

If you find the queues long, try the Northern Ticket Hall. I expect the
walk to and fro will be faster than waiting in the queues in the other
ticket halls. I find it sad that LU does not use peripatetic staff to
weed those horrible queues..

under £5 if you have the exact change. So I have to keep some credit on

I suspect "you can only top up under £5 if you have the exact change" is
confused. Some machines bear "exact money only" notices. I think that is
a transient condition due to running out of change - I may be wrong.

Oyster to be able to use it. If I top up at a ticket stop elsewhere I can
get the right amount added and get the right receipt with no worry about
change.

Have you considered using a photo of a POM last 8 journey statement?
The machines do print receipts which show what was paid - but not what
was bought ;(
I find the inability of the machines to print such statements is one
example of strong arguments against reducing ticket office hours.
Another is a typical 20 minute phone call to fix an Oyster mistake.
I have not found Oyster's email service a useful alternative.
--
Walter Briscoe