Neil Williams wrote:

Phil Richards wrote:

Again what I don't like about bus fares in London (& elsewhere in this
country) is that you need separate tickets for each ride if you need to
change. Again a £1 fare valid for say two hours on any number of buses
would be a better solution.

Agreed.

Alternatively, it could be sold as a benefit of Oyster, as it is with
the Dutch Strippenkaart[1] - say, once you touch in for any bus
journey, you may touch in for free an unlimited number of further times
on different buses[2] within an hour, two hours or whatever. If that
offers a quick return, so be it - I don't think they'd lose a lot from
people doing that.

It would also be completely immune to fraud, unlike a single ticket
which could be passed on. As it's a disadvantage to have to tack a bus
journey onto the end of a Tube or rail journey, you could also either
heavily discount the bus fare if you touch in and out for a Tube or
rail journey 1/2 hours before or after the bus journey, or make it
completely free in such a situation.

[1] Actually, as singles are just 2- or 3-strip Strippenkaarten at an
inflated price, it applies to those as well, but the principle is
there.

[2] to prevent 'pass-back' fraud, i.e. the same Oyster being passed out
of the window to another pax and used again on the same bus.


You don't need to worry about 'pass back' fraud with Oyster - any
Oyster card can only be validated _once_ on any one bus. If you try and
do it again you get an error with a double-beep noise. This is also the
case on bendy buses - once you've touched-in on one reader you can't
then touch-in on any of the others so you can't accidentally pay twice.

(I guess it might be helpful for people who're unsure if they'd
successfully touched in or not if there was some different error noise
that signified 'this card has already been validated on this bus', but
that however is a somewhat different issue).