On Mar 13, 11:27*pm, wrote:

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

They were an overly complex "solution" to a perceived risk to revenue.
The fact that the people who wanted the system put in place did
*nothing* to advertise it to their passengers says it all. *It was also
clear from early GLA member questions that there was little or no
training of TOC staff about the concept and why it was required.

Maybe true at the outset but the posters at Putney Station seemed clear
enough last time I saw them there, last week.

I wouldn't extrapolate from what can be seen at Putney station to the
349 other National Rail stations in Greater London. I'll keep my eyes
open and look out for what's on display, but my instant reaction to
that is that there remains scant publicity about OEPs on show around
the rail network in London.

Furthermore, given SWT machines don't yet (UIVMM) offer any Oyster
capabilities (this is coming but I don't think we're there yet),
passengers can't even enable an OEP at SWT stations - they
(supposedly) need to hunt down an Oyster 'ticket stop' shop to get an
OEP loaded there. Balls to SWT, I say!

On Mar 13, 11:27*pm, wrote:

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

The only opportunity to influence events is now in terms of you creating
a huge campaign that one of the Mayoral candidates decides is worth
taking hold of and using in their campaign. I'm sure Ken and Lembit will
be delighted to hear from you! *Might be a bit hard for Boris to
backtrack given all the push he gave (and credit he has taken) for
getting Oyster on to the NR network in London.

I don't think Lembit will care either way. He's not a candidate.

He wants to be, of course...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11369273

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 06:09:01PM +0000, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:57:02 +0000, Paul Terry
wrote:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12710059

OEPs are to be discontinued in May.

Interesting news - a relatively easy "win" to headline the rail summit
that will be well received by everyone, including the Mayor's critics.
I wonder how much arm twisting has been applied in the background to get
to this point?

Probably not much, given that they haven't ever (or at least not after
the first couple of weeks when everyone realised just how stupid they
were) been enforced.

--
David Cantrell | Nth greatest programmer in the world

Computer Science is about lofty design goals and careful algorithmic
optimisation. Sysadminning is about cleaning up the resulting mess.

In article
,
(Mizter T) wrote:

On Mar 13, 11:27*pm, wrote:

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

They were an overly complex "solution" to a perceived risk to
revenue. The fact that the people who wanted the system put in
place did *nothing* to advertise it to their passengers says it
all. *It was also clear from early GLA member questions that there
was little or no training of TOC staff about the concept and why it
was required.

Maybe true at the outset but the posters at Putney Station seemed
clear enough last time I saw them there, last week.

I wouldn't extrapolate from what can be seen at Putney station to the
349 other National Rail stations in Greater London. I'll keep my eyes
open and look out for what's on display, but my instant reaction to
that is that there remains scant publicity about OEPs on show around
the rail network in London.

Furthermore, given SWT machines don't yet (UIVMM) offer any Oyster
capabilities (this is coming but I don't think we're there yet),
passengers can't even enable an OEP at SWT stations - they
(supposedly) need to hunt down an Oyster 'ticket stop' shop to get an
OEP loaded there. Balls to SWT, I say!

I made my comment because it was much better than things were a year ago
and seemed to be typical of SWT, one of the Oyster refusenik TOCs in the
sense that you still can't buy Oyster credit at their booking offices
(other than where they share with TfL as at Richmond and Wimbledon).

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article
,
(Mizter T) wrote:

On Mar 13, 11:27*pm, wrote:

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

The only opportunity to influence events is now in terms of you
creating a huge campaign that one of the Mayoral candidates decides
is worth taking hold of and using in their campaign. I'm sure Ken
and Lembit will be delighted to hear from you! *Might be a bit hard
for Boris to backtrack given all the push he gave (and credit he has
taken) for getting Oyster on to the NR network in London.

I don't think Lembit will care either way. He's not a candidate.

He wants to be, of course...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11369273

Wanted to be I'm sure. That was last September. I saw him at the weekend.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message ,
writes

I made my comment because it was much better than things were a year ago
and seemed to be typical of SWT, one of the Oyster refusenik TOCs in the
sense that you still can't buy Oyster credit at their booking offices
(other than where they share with TfL as at Richmond and Wimbledon).

SWT will be offering Oyster products at all their booking offices from
May, following an agreement with the DfT last year.
--
Paul Terry

wrote in message
...
In article
,
(Mizter T) wrote:

I made my comment because it was much better than things were a year ago
and seemed to be typical of SWT, one of the Oyster refusenik TOCs in the
sense that you still can't buy Oyster credit at their booking offices
(other than where they share with TfL as at Richmond and Wimbledon).

I don't know if they started recently but when Oyster was an TfL only
product stations shared with NR didn't sell Oyster products unless the
station was Owned by TfL.

(so the above examples didn't, but Kew Gardens did)

tim

"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:29:29 +0000, Paul Terry
wrote:

SWT will be offering Oyster products at all their booking offices from
May, following an agreement with the DfT last year.

Eh? Booking offices? I thought the plan was only to provide the
capability on passenger operated machines. Given SWT's penchant for
closing booking offices it seems perverse to just provide Oyster
capability at offices. It won't help anyone trying to top up their
Oyster card at somewhere like Barnes. The practice on other TOCs has
been to provide Oyster functionality *only* on POMs / TVMs.

It is SWT's TVMs only according to their own media release Paul.

As those of us who've been following this for a few years will realise
already, the basic issue was that DfT insisted that SWT's TVMs were provided
with ITSO compatibility , which wasn't supposed to be a problem because DfT
would also ensure Oyster/ITSO compatibility in parallel. The latter turrned
out not to be possible.

Paul S

In article ,
(Paul Terry) wrote:

In message ,
writes

I made my comment because it was much better than things were a year go
and seemed to be typical of SWT, one of the Oyster refusenik TOCs in
the sense that you still can't buy Oyster credit at their booking
offices (other than where they share with TfL as at Richmond and
Wimbledon).

SWT will be offering Oyster products at all their booking offices
from May, following an agreement with the DfT last year.

Oh good! They can replace the posters about OEPs with ones about Oyster!

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , Paul Corfield
writes

Eh? Booking offices? I thought the plan was only to provide the
capability on passenger operated machines.

It is indeed, but TVMs are provided outside all SWT booking offices.
--
Paul Terry