On Tuesday evening , WAGN rail from Essex Road (Z2) to Highbury and
Islington, then Victoria line to Walthamstow Central (Z3) was charged
at £1.80 instead of £1.10

My first thought was that the journey had 'timed-out' and charged a
Z2-6 fare which is £1.80,

When I 'touched-in' at Essex Road, a change of mind meant I went back
to the ticket office (it's ungated) to renew a Period Travelcard -
thus adding an extra 15 minutes to my journey time.

Seeing as I touched in *and* out, within a reasonable timeframe (about
45 minutes) I assumed this shouldn't be the case.

So it's either my journey time was too long, or the fare was charged
incorrectly. Which is more likely?
--
Cheers,

Jason.

"Jason" wrote in message ...
On Tuesday evening , WAGN rail from Essex Road (Z2) to Highbury and
Islington, then Victoria line to Walthamstow Central (Z3) was charged
at £1.80 instead of £1.10

My first thought was that the journey had 'timed-out' and charged a
Z2-6 fare which is £1.80,

When I 'touched-in' at Essex Road, a change of mind meant I went back
to the ticket office (it's ungated) to renew a Period Travelcard -
thus adding an extra 15 minutes to my journey time.

Seeing as I touched in *and* out, within a reasonable timeframe (about
45 minutes) I assumed this shouldn't be the case.

So it's either my journey time was too long, or the fare was charged
incorrectly. Which is more likely?
--
Cheers,

Jason.

Some prepay fares seem to be charging incorrectly. I went from East Ham to Canary Wharf (Zone 3-2)
and should have been charged £1.10 but was charged £1.30. At the tube station they admitted the
problem but asked me to call the Oyster helpline. They told me the only way to get the money back
was for them to send me a cheque for 20p. I asked them not to bother but to email me when they were
charging correctly. They said that was not possible as they are too busy. Pretty lousy service all
round.

On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 16:16:18 +0000, Jason wrote:

On Tuesday evening , WAGN rail from Essex Road (Z2) to Highbury and
Islington, then Victoria line to Walthamstow Central (Z3) was charged
at £1.80 instead of £1.10

My first thought was that the journey had 'timed-out' and charged a
Z2-6 fare which is £1.80,

When I 'touched-in' at Essex Road, a change of mind meant I went back
to the ticket office (it's ungated) to renew a Period Travelcard -
thus adding an extra 15 minutes to my journey time.

Seeing as I touched in *and* out, within a reasonable timeframe (about
45 minutes) I assumed this shouldn't be the case.

So it's either my journey time was too long, or the fare was charged
incorrectly. Which is more likely?

My guess - and please note that it is a guess - is that the validator is
set to deduct £1.80 on entry and the gates at Walthamstow failed to
credit the 70p to give you a charge of £1.10. Looking at the TfL fares
leaflet there is mention as to what the fare deduction on entry is post
the fares revision.

I don't buy the time out theory because for some services you can take
15 minutes from validation until catching the train you need and then
you have the journey time on the top. Once the entry record is on the
card it cannot "time out" - it is what happens at exit and on reading of
the entry record that is important.

I assume there is no requirement for you to validate at Highbury as you
change from GN to Victoria Line services? The notices don't list any
specific requirement to do so but I was told a long time ago that the
validator would know what to do depending on the journey record on the
card.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

TKD wrote:

Some prepay fares seem to be charging incorrectly. I went from East Ham
to Canary Wharf (Zone 3-2) and should have been charged £1.10 but was
charged £1.30. At the tube station they admitted the problem but asked
me to call the Oyster helpline. They told me the only way to get the
money back was for them to send me a cheque for 20p.

Rather than a more logical option of simply crediting your pre-pay account
by 20p there and then whilst still on the phone.....

--
Phil Richards
London, UK
Home Page: http://www.philrichards1.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 01:21:03 +0000, Phil Richards
wrote:

Rather than a more logical option of simply crediting your pre-pay account
by 20p there and then whilst still on the phone.....

That's not quite as easy as it sounds - the balance is on the card,
and in your hand. You would need to at least nominate a station to
collect it.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

Neil Williams wrote:

Rather than a more logical option of simply crediting your pre-pay account
by 20p there and then whilst still on the phone.....

That's not quite as easy as it sounds - the balance is on the card,
and in your hand. You would need to at least nominate a station to
collect it.

I'd disagree to say it's on the account with the card being the device to
use to access the account. The same as say your bank card is used to access
funds in your bank account. If my bank want to refund me 20p they owe me, I
don't have to go to my local branch with my switch card, it can all be done
over the phone.

--
Phil Richards
London, UK
Home Page: http://www.philrichards1.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 09:54:02 +0000, Phil Richards
wrote:

I'd disagree to say it's on the account with the card being the device to
use to access the account.

Not that I'm aware of. Contacting a central computer before[1]
opening a set of barriers would be too slow, and on a bus would be
difficult and costly (you'd need a high-speed, 100% coverage and
high-reliability radio data network covering all of TfL Buses'
operating area for a start).

One of the ideas of "smart cards" is that they can, with relative
security, store actual value on the card. This may well, for security
reasons[2], be shared with the "shore" systems, but is not the primary
storage, and doesn't have to take place in real time.

While I don't know what kind of connection the barriers have with
"Oyster central control" (for want of a better term) it'd need to be a
decently quick and permanently online one for online validation (and
you know how long that tends to take for credit cards - can you
imagine that delay at a ticket barrier?), but for batch communication
it could be a 14k4 modem online for half an hour every night[3].

The above is the reason why, when you credit a pre-pay card, you must
nominate a specific railway station (not a bus!) to load the card with
the credited value - because it needs to be transferred to that
station to tell it to credit the card.

[1] I don't think it would be sensible to "trust" the card and update
the account later on, because this could lead to widespread fraud once
people noticed you could get away with it.

[2] so a duplicate can be issued in the event of loss (I think they do
that), and also to prevent anyone who can circumvent the security on
the card from adding value to it without getting caught.

[3] I know this is unlikely, but the point is that real-time
transactions involving that amount of data use a lot of bandwidth,
while batch transactions don't.

The same as say your bank card is used to access
funds in your bank account. If my bank want to refund me 20p they owe me, I
don't have to go to my local branch with my switch card, it can all be done
over the phone.

The difference is, as stated above, that the card is the primary
value-holding device for Oyster, as it is for the stored-value
magstripe tickets you get in some cities outside the UK, or even for
simple technologies like Clippercards or Bus Savers where the stored
value is a physical bit of paper.

It would not be feasible, or even desirable, to make a card the
primary means of storage for a bank account - though schemes do exist
like the German Geldkarte scheme whereby you can store a small
"electronic purse" on a smart card - just like Oyster Pre-Pay!

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
When replying please use neil at the above domain
'wensleydale' is a spam trap and is not read.

On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 08:38:41 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:



That's not quite as easy as it sounds - the balance is on the card,
and in your hand. You would need to at least nominate a station to
collect it.


Have smartcard travel "ticketing" schemes been as poorly implemented
in other cities? I really don't think they could have done it any
worse. Has the Hong Kong scheme got as many shortcomings as Oyster?

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 11:05:59 +0000, k wrote:

On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 08:38:41 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:



That's not quite as easy as it sounds - the balance is on the card,
and in your hand. You would need to at least nominate a station to
collect it.


Have smartcard travel "ticketing" schemes been as poorly implemented
in other cities?

I'm biased as I was involved in the design of what become Oyster but I
don't think it has been poorly implemented. Due to the ancient physical
design of the LU network there are gaps in the validation process that
have to rely on voluntary validation instead of forcing people through
ticket gates as occurs on all other Smartcard schemes.

There are also considerable issues about historical London fares policy
issues, the impossibility of removing Travelcard and the inability to
force the TOCs to participate in the scheme. These also result in a
less than optimal system design. All things considered I think the
project team has done well.

One key aspect that everyone conveniently forgets is that TfL's fare
policy has been turned upside down since TfL was created. That has
caused massive changes to what Oyster is supposed to do. The policy on
Pre-Pay has also changed considerably from the original design
assumptions. To me it is no wonder at all that capping has been delayed
- TfL has changed the fares products and their relationships at every
fares revision for the last 3 years. No wonder no one can stabilise the
design and get it out into the wide world for people to use.

The other big changes have been in distribution channels and the push to
Telesales and Internet transactions. These have all had to be developed
from scratch alongside the main system design and these will have
impacted on what was originally specified.

I really don't think they could have done it any
worse.

On what do you base this conclusion?

Has the Hong Kong scheme got as many shortcomings as Oyster?

Define shortcomings.

There are no Travelcard or Concessionary Permits in Hong Kong.
Everything is set on the basis of deducting cash from the card.
Therefore the system design has to deal with fewer products.

Originally Octopus was a rail based system valid on the MTR and KCR East
Rail. This was easy because it was a simple switch from magnetic SVT to
Smartcard SVT. The gates needed touch pads added and they needed to
modify the old tracking system that existed for SVT. Not very difficult
to be honest.

The roll out to buses in Hong Kong took quite a long time because there
is no unified fares structure at all. You can easily pay 6 or 7
different fares between 2 points if you use different routes /
operators. The trick is to learn the cheapest route! Each operator had
its own preferences and these took a long time to deal with. You also
have some bizarre section fare issues on the routes to Stanley on Hong
Kong Island. For many months Octopus did not work on these services.
Roll out was also patchy on KMB thus depriving people in Kowloon and the
New Territories of discounted travel compared to their equivalents on
Hong Kong Island where Citybus quickly embraced Octopus. The bus
situation is now resolved and very few people pay cash now - well over
95% of transactions are Octopus based from my observations. I now use
the bus far more in HK because Octopus makes it so easy compared to
always having to have the right money to use a bus. You also get rail
to bus, rail to rail and bus to bus discounts if you change between
modes or routes at defined points.

There were also big problems in that initially all sales were via rail
stations - no good if you live in Tuen Mun that at that time did not
have a rail station. 7-Eleven shops are now agents and thus there is an
agent based network - in London that was ready from day one.

Octopus has also had problems in integrating the KCR light rail network,
the public light minibuses, ferries and various other transport
operators. It has been far from smooth but it is now very comprehensive
and has expanded to take on 3rd party applications like council services
and parking. One big step forward was to get the banks in Hong Kong on
side and that has allowed auto uploading of value to cards to take
place. Initially the banks were very worried that Octopus would supplant
cash - HK banks issue the banknotes - and thus damage their business.
There has now been a form of accommodation which has given Octopus added
legitimacy.

I think Oyster will come to rival Octopus in time but London started
from a far more difficult position with few of the advantages that
places like Hong Kong or Singapore enjoy. Now tell me I am wrong.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

k wrote:

Have smartcard travel "ticketing" schemes been as poorly implemented
in other cities? I really don't think they could have done it any
worse.

It could have been done much worse. For example, if it didn't work at all.
--
Michael Hoffman