On Nov 17, 6:42*pm, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Wed, 17 Nov 2010 06:46:30 -0800 (PST), George
wrote:

On Nov 13, 6:38*pm, (Roy Badami) wrote:
Thanks, Paul, very helpful.

Interesting (and slightly surprising) that they're removing pay as you
board from routes -- it seems a waste of resources to have to go
around removing perfectly good ticket machines.

Roy it was installing the ticket machines in the first place that was
a waste of money, hardly anybody uses them.

Hello George! *Another place for you to post.

No it wasn't a waste of money. If you think about the operating concept
then it is absolutely essential that passengers who do not have an
Oyster card, one day travelcard or saver ticket have the ability to buy
the ticket to use the service. *Otherwise you leave people in limbo
which is not acceptable when you have a penalty fares scheme.

The fact that off bus ticket sales are at very high levels courtesy of
Oyster is what means that usage of roadside machines is low. Please get
the concepts in the right order.

Indeed, I agree with all of that. Levels of usage are indeed low
(outside of the pay-before-you-board area), but people certainly do
use them. Bit of a shame that they no longer offer the one-day bus
pass, but of course that was because the product was withdrawn from
sale across the board. (An aside - I noticed that the Tramlink ticket
machines still offer printed weekly bus passes - don't think these are
still available anywhere else.)