Bob Wood wrote in
:

In ,
Martin Underwood typed:

Forgive an equally naive supplementary: what is "capping" in this
context?

Individual fares are deducted from the balance until the daily
'capping' level is reached. After that no more is deducted.

To take the simplest example, the off-peak Oyster bus fare is 80p. Make
one bus journey and 80p is deducted from your balance. Make
another bus journey and another 80p is deducted. Make a third bus
journey and another 80p is deducted, making £2.40 for the three
journeys. Now comes the clever bit - the daily cap for bus
journeys is set at £3 - so, you make a fourth journey and 60p is
deducted. Nothing more would be deducted for any further bus
journeys on the same day.

Hey, that's really impressive. So it works a bit like a one-day travelcard
in the sense that you get unlimited travel for a fixed price (£3 for buses)
with the additional benefit that if you use it less than this amount on a
certain day, you don't even pay the full £3.

I can see why they are beneficial to customers, but what's the incentive for
the train/bus operators - are the admin costs lower?

If/when they ever include NR trains as well as buses and underground, and
assuming the same geographical coverage as for the paper one-day travelcard,
it might be worth considering. However I bet if you live outside London
there won't be a way of buying a paper return ticket to the nearest boundary
station and then an "Oyster travelcard" - unless your train happens to stop
at that boundary station.