The displays on the gateline at St Pancras High Level have now been
changed to state "ITSO/Tickets" instead of "Oyster/Tickets" as they
previously did. Whether they actually now accept ITSO cards is hard to
check without one.
(They have always rejected Oyster cards previously, even when FCC
trains are running from the high level platforms.)

I think this is the first gateline mentioning ITSO acceptance.

On 2 July, 01:10, Matthew Dickinson
wrote:
The displays on the gateline at St Pancras High Level have now been
changed to state "ITSO/Tickets" instead of "Oyster/Tickets" as they
previously did. Whether they actually now accept ITSO cards is hard to
check without one.
(They have always rejected Oyster cards previously, even when FCC
trains are running from the high level platforms.)

I think this is the first gateline mentioning ITSO acceptance.

EMT gatelines at St Pancras and Derby have ITSO readers, EMT had a
franchise committment to introduce smartcard season tickets, there are
also smartcard gate passes issued to certain people. Oyster was meant
to be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear to be
happening. I believe its a similar situation at SWT.

"Andrew Cullen" wrote in message
...
On 2 July, 01:10, Matthew Dickinson
wrote:
The displays on the gateline at St Pancras High Level have now been
changed to state "ITSO/Tickets" instead of "Oyster/Tickets" as they
previously did. Whether they actually now accept ITSO cards is hard to
check without one.
(They have always rejected Oyster cards previously, even when FCC
trains are running from the high level platforms.)

I think this is the first gateline mentioning ITSO acceptance.

EMT gatelines at St Pancras and Derby have ITSO readers, EMT had a
franchise committment to introduce smartcard season tickets, there are
also smartcard gate passes issued to certain people. Oyster was meant
to be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear to be
happening. I believe its a similar situation at SWT.

There are a fair number of ITSO smartcard gatelines already operational on
SWT's main routes (although outside London), so St Pancras is not the
first...

Paul S

On Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:47:15 -0700, Andrew Cullen wrote:

Oyster was meant to
be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear to be happening. I
believe its a similar situation at SWT.

They have changed something, last year when in London, I discovered the
LU readers were responding to my Singapore CEPAS card, where as the
Oyster readers on the buses were ignoring it.

In fact they were responding to the CEPAS card while it was still in my
pocket and I was holding the Oyster in my hand next to the gate reader.

Experiments with the ticket machines at Earls Court revealed the ticket
machine would respond to the Singapore CEPAS card at 30-40cm where as the
Oyster had to be with in 10cm. It's actually a surprise the security
people didn't come over and ask what I was doing :-)

(Every time the Singapore card got anywhere near an LU Oyster terminal
it would respond with 'multiple cards presented', even if the proper
Oyster card was kept well away)

At a guess the Oyster terminal was interacting with the card and
discovering it had multiple 'products' loaded, generating the multiple
card error before noticing that none of the products were usable by it
anyway. (The Singapore CEPAS cards are used to pay road tolls via
hardware installed in each car as well as transit fares, so I assume have
multiple 'products' loaded).

Matthew Geier wrote on 02
July 2010 23:30:58 ...
On Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:47:15 -0700, Andrew Cullen wrote:

Oyster was meant to
be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear to be happening. I
believe its a similar situation at SWT.

They have changed something, last year when in London, I discovered the
LU readers were responding to my Singapore CEPAS card, where as the
Oyster readers on the buses were ignoring it.

They made some changes a few months ago to enable the gates to accept
the new issue of Freedom Passes (free travel passes for elderly and
disabled Londoners). These now have both Oyster and ITSO technology on
the same card. Maybe you encountered an early version of the updated gates.
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)

In message
,
Andrew Cullen writes

Oyster was meant to be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear
to be happening. I believe its a similar situation at SWT.

I think that the basics for Oyster/ITSO compatibility must be in place,
because all Freedom passes issued in the last few months speak ITSO as
well as Oyster (although I imagine that the Oyster implementation is
quite basic on Freedom cards).
--
Paul Terry

On Jul 2, 9:47*pm, Andrew Cullen wrote:

On 2 July, 01:10, Matthew Dickinson
wrote:

The displays on the gateline at St Pancras High Level have now been
changed to state "ITSO/Tickets" instead of "Oyster/Tickets" as they
previously did. Whether they actually now accept ITSO cards is hard to
check without one.
(They have always rejected Oyster cards previously, even when FCC
trains are running from the high level platforms.)

I think this is the first gateline mentioning ITSO acceptance.

EMT gatelines at St Pancras and Derby have ITSO readers, EMT had a
franchise committment to introduce smartcard season tickets, there are
also smartcard gate passes issued to certain people. Oyster was meant
to be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear to be
happening. I believe its a similar situation at SWT.

The plan in London was for validators to be able to handle both ITSO
and Oyster cards - there has never been a plan to replace the current
MiFare standard Oyster cards with ITSO standard ones. Given the usage
of the high-level platforms by FCC trains, the gates there should
handle Oyster cards - Matthew's experience (as he recounts above) is
that they don't.

On Jul 2, 10:15*pm, "Paul Scott"
wrote:

"Andrew Cullen" wrote:

On 2 July, 01:10, Matthew Dickinson
wrote:
The displays on the gateline at St Pancras High Level have now been
changed to state "ITSO/Tickets" instead of "Oyster/Tickets" as they
previously did. Whether they actually now accept ITSO cards is hard to
check without one.
(They have always rejected Oyster cards previously, even when FCC
trains are running from the high level platforms.)

I think this is the first gateline mentioning ITSO acceptance.

EMT gatelines at St Pancras and Derby have ITSO readers, EMT had a
franchise committment to introduce smartcard season tickets, there are
also smartcard gate passes issued to certain people. Oyster was meant
to be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear to be
happening. I believe its a similar situation at SWT.

There are a fair number of *ITSO smartcard gatelines already operational on
SWT's main routes (although outside London), so St Pancras is not the
first...

You mean (I think) ITSO *and* Oyster compatible gates - all SWT
gatelines within the London zones (e.g. the massive array at Waterloo,
Surbiton, Earlsfield etc etc).

On Jul 2, 11:30*pm, Matthew Geier
wrote:

On Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:47:15 -0700, Andrew Cullen wrote:
Oyster was meant to
be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear to be happening. I
believe its a similar situation at SWT.

*They have changed something, last year when in London, I discovered the
LU readers were responding to my Singapore CEPAS card, where as the
Oyster readers on the buses were ignoring it.

*In fact they were responding to the CEPAS card while it was still in my
pocket and I was holding the Oyster in my hand next to the gate reader.

*Experiments with the ticket machines at Earls Court revealed the ticket
machine would respond to the Singapore CEPAS card at 30-40cm where as the
Oyster had to be with in 10cm. It's actually a surprise the security
people didn't come over and ask what I was doing :-)

*(Every time the Singapore card got anywhere near an LU Oyster terminal
it would respond with 'multiple cards presented', even if the proper
Oyster card was kept well away)

*At a guess the Oyster terminal was interacting with the card and
discovering it had multiple 'products' loaded, generating the multiple
card error before noticing that none of the products were usable by it
anyway. (The Singapore CEPAS cards are used to pay road tolls via
hardware installed in each car as well as transit fares, so I assume have
multiple 'products' loaded).

Interesting stuff - there is or was a programme to upgrade the Oyster
validators to handle ITSO standard cards as well as the MiFare type
(as used by Oyster cards) - afraid I'm not up on the details of this -
but it may be the case that these gates had been updated to have ITSO
capability.

My half-impression was that upgrading the validators would involve a
hardware modification, as opposed to just a software one, but I'm
really not clued up on that. Perhaps some of the newer Oyster
validators - such as the one you encountered - have always had the
ability to read ITSO cards as they are newer installations/
replacements, or something?

All that said, I realise I'm making the massive presumption that the
Singapore CEPAS card might be similar to the ITSO standard, but that's
hardly self-evident - ITSO is a British standard, of course that
doesn't mean that it can't be adopted elsewhere, but a quick glance at
the wiki article for CEPAS doesn't instantly betray it as being an
ITSO or ITSO-alike system (though it does appear to follow some ISO/
IEC smartcard standards). I wonder if there's anything MiFare-esque
about the CEPAS cards?

On Jul 3, 7:34*am, Paul Terry wrote:

In message
,
Andrew Cullen writes

Oyster was meant to be updated to ITSO technology but it doesn't appear
to be happening. I believe its a similar situation at SWT.

I think that the basics for Oyster/ITSO compatibility must be in place,
because all Freedom passes issued in the last few months speak ITSO as
well as Oyster (although I imagine that the Oyster implementation is
quite basic on Freedom cards).

Though the Freedom Pass change need not necessarily have meant any
changes on the validator side of things - the new Freedom Pass being a
combined MiFare (Oyster) and ITSO standard card.