On May 6, 11:31*am, Clive Page wrote:
[snip]

I have to say, that I use Oyster in London reluctantly, and only when a
paper One-day travel card is unavailable or much more expensive. *And
when visiting cities abroad I'm extremely reluctant to take out an
Oyster-equivalent card unless I can find out in advance exactly what I'm
letting myself in for. *In Paris, for example, the carnet of 10 tickets
is still available, and that works for me.

I am the exact opposite to you. As I will typically be making a lot of
use of public transport I will seek out the "ride at will" ticket or
smartcard version thereof. This saves me having multiple single trip
transactions right throughout a stay or worrying about finding cash
all the time. I'll do this even if I might make a financial loss
because I value the convenience of having "travel" in my pocket.

On this basis I have a RATP Mobilis card (their version of a ODTC but
you have a ID card), a Singapore EZ Pass, Hong Kong Octopus and Tokyo
Suica. I've had magnetic Metrocards in Hong Kong and paper "seasons"
in other cities. I cannot claim to know all the ins and outs of these
fare systems but I do what most people will do and that is search the
web and do a bit of research beforehand.

Fortunately many systems do provide some English language info but
usually it is a subset of the info provided in the native language.
While I suppose I might be deemed an "expert user" here in London I
can't be said to be that in these other places. I cannot recall ever
being wrongly charged nor have I been caught out by the system other
than a couple of times in Paris. That was dealt with very quickly. I
had an Octopus Card fail in HK on my final day there and I was
refunded on the spot based on my estimate of the card balance. Some
systems have features that London does not have (e.g exit validation
on buses) but you learn to cope with those features. I didn't know
how to use my Suica on a tram in Tokyo but coped just fine; ditto on a
Tokyo bus. I even had a ticket machine revert to Japanese part way
through a top up transaction but "guessed" what to do and got the
money on the card fine.

Having looked at the TfL website I wonder what more TfL could do in
terms of making getting an Oyster Card easy for visitors and providing
pretty clear info on the system's rules and features. OK it is all in
English but many visitors will have a smattering of the language or
they can use an on line translation facility. It's not absolutely
perfect (show me a transport ticketing website that is) but neither is
it some sort of disaster zone where information is virtually
impossible to obtain or understand.

--
Paul C
via Google