On 3 Apr, 14:23, "Tim Roll-Pickering"
wrote:

MIG wrote:
Last week I saw notices by those readers which suggested that they're
for
Oyster users going out of zone, not people who've come down in the lift.

Yeah, it's possible that you'd enter the system by a cross-platform
interchange and/or ungated station, not needing to touch your Oyster
because of using a travelcard, and then realise that you needed to
travel beyond your zones on LU.
BUT in that case, why only at Bank and only on the DLR?

There aren't actually that many other in station Underground-DLR
interchanges that I can think of - Stratford and Canning Town are the only
ones that spring to mind and I don't know if the latter has any internal
readers, but it did used to have a non-Oyster service.

Canning Town does not have any internal standalone Oyster readers,
though it did when the NLL was open.


Was the original idea perhaps that DLR would be keep distinct and people
expected to always touch in upon entry.


I have *never* heard or read the supposed requirement that you state
anywhere else beforehand, so might I suggest that you may have somehow
come to that erroneous (mis)understanding after having seen the DLR
posters which in fact issue a different instruction - that holders of
period Travelcards on Oyster who are travelling outside their zones on
DLR need to remember to touch-in and out (so as to ensure the correct
excess fare is debited from their PAYG balance).

Why can't
they provide them for that purpose on all LU platforms so that you
don't have to go all the way to the exit at the point when you realise
that you are going to use PAYG to complete an unplanned journey (or
extension of a paper travelcard as it happens)?

Because that would be too convenient for customers?

No. It would create plentiful opportunities for people who's
destination station was ungated (or indeed for those willing to take
more of a risk their origination station was ungated) to abuse the
system by underpaying their fare, by staring or finishing their
journey short.

At interchange stations with internal Oyster readers this 'hole'
already exists - I'm not keen on utl becoming some masterclass for the
dishonest, but ultimately if you think through the system logically
this becomes apparent so I'm not divulging some state secret here. As
Oyster PAYG expands onto the National Rail network this will become a
bigger issue, so TOCs do perhaps have a point when they say they have
concerns.

Of course the way of countering this, by not having standalone readers
at interchange stations, just isn't really practical given the number
of people who may be entering the Tube/DLR network from National Rail
services. Even when PAYG goes Londonwide and there are readers at
every National Rail station in London, there will still be people
arriving on trains from origination stations outside the London zonal
area.