On Nov 18, 12:00*am, "Q" ..@.. wrote:

"Mizter T" wrote:

On Nov 17, 8:55 pm, "Q" ..@.. wrote:

"Paul Corfield" wrote:

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.

What would of been good was to retain the machines at busy places and fit
oyster pads to them to allow topup/balance check

That would be useful and of course it's hardly the first time it's
been suggested, but one should bear in mind the current machines are
little more than basic parking ticket machines.

(p.s. I didn't mean for the first half of that sentence to come across
in a dismissive way!)


This is very true - maybe it's time to put buses 'online' then. They already
have the machines, the reader/writer pads etc.

There is already GPRS/3G and MPT1327 - any of those could provide a data
barer.

I wouldn't back that at all - the massive benefit of Oyster w.r.t.
buses is quicker boarding (and it really is a benefit), so introducing
such transactions would negate that benefit, indeed it could really
slow things down.