"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 06 May 2011 22:13:59 +0100, Clive Page wrote:

On 06/05/2011 13:33, Paul Corfield wrote:
Having looked at the TfL website I wonder what more TfL could do in
terms of making getting an Oyster Card easy for visitors and providing
pretty clear info on the system's rules and features. OK it is all in
English but many visitors will have a smattering of the language or
they can use an on line translation facility. It's not absolutely
perfect (show me a transport ticketing website that is) but neither is
it some sort of disaster zone where information is virtually
impossible to obtain or understand.

I'm not sure what more TfL could do: the Oyster system is,
unfortunately, extremely complex when you consider all the possible ways
you can use it. And visitors are quite likely to use it (or try to)
when going to places like Greenwich or Windsor, in awkward combinations
of tubes and buses and national rail trains and maybe even trams, so
they run more than a tiny risk of encountering the rough edges of the
scheme.

Let's take a step back. At the most basic level Oyster is not that
complicated.

You buy a card, pay a deposit and add money or a Travelcard on it.
On rail journeys in the zonal area you must touch in and then touch out.
On a tram journey you touch in.

Unless that tram's a docklands tram where you have to touch out!

On a bus journey you touch in.

You can add more money at a LU station, at ticket machines at stations
across the zonal area and at shops with signs saying Oyster Ticket
Stops.

Oh and Oyster will add up your daily PAYG travel and will ensure you pay
the cheapest total fare.


The above concepts are common to many smartcard systems elsewhere in the
world

Perhaps I'm not as travelled as you, but none of the similar systems that I
have used ever require you to touch out.

They either have a completely flat fare system (with or without "free"
transfers) or they require you to specify (by some mechanism) your exit zone
when you touch in, and rely upon honesty (and random on board checks) to do
it right.

It is "unresolved journeys" that cause most Oyster **** ups and is something
that no other system I have used can ever suffer from.

tim