asdf said:


The situation is very simple. Either

(a) They live outside the zones, and never buy Tube-only singles. They
are not affected by the fare increases. No problem

(b) They live outside the zones, yet occasionally buy Tube-only
singles. Then they can get a pre-pay Oyster instead for a £3 deposit,
which pays for itself after 2 journeys.


The REAL problem with Oyster is that it's almost totally useless for a
lot of people living IN the zones.

I live in south London, and can't use Oyster for my season ticket to
Croydon, because it's not valid on trains. There's no point using it on
the tubes, because I'll have to get a train into London before I can get
to the tube, so a paper one-day travelcard will be cheaper. So, I have
this otherwise useless card lying in my purse just so I can get a
slightly cheaper bus fare on the once or twice a month when I find that
I need to go by bus!

Except that this saving in money is paid for by an annying waste of
time, since I have to queue up in the newsagents to pay for my ticket,
instead of paying on the bus. Yes, I know I could in theory pay for my
tickets on-line, but to do that I would have to :
(a) know in advance that I will need to make a bus journey (which is
silly because if you know ion advance that you're going on a journey,
you can make other plans and so you won't need to take the bus), and
(b) be the sort of person who actually buys things on-line in the first
place instead of in a real shop where you can actually see the face of
the person you're buying from and maybe even talk to them.

If they just reduced the real bus fare down to Oyster levels, I could
get rid of the card, my purse would be slightly less cluttered, and
theyre'd be no need to keep queuing. (And if TfL do get rid of Oyster,
they wouldn't be spending money on making all those cards and readers
and gadgets and things, so they'd save money and the fares could come
down anyway.)

But, no. After all, TfL is run by men. And men love gadgets and
gizmos. The more pointless a gadget is, the more men love it. Oyster
is a particularly useless gizmo, so it's no wonder that we're stuck with
it.