In article ,
(TKD) wrote:

And it is not supposed to be. It is for Londonders not "people all
over the Home counties"

Don't be silly. It is for whoever uses London's transport. There is
no requirement to live in London.

No. The primary market is Londoners.

The secondary market is people from somewhere else who use it to travel
*within* London.

Colin Rosenstiel was talking about journeys from a place outside London
to a place in London and Oyster Card is not intended for that, which
was my point.

Indeed. So why should we be ripped off with an extortionately higher fare?

Our taxes help subsidise TfL too, which is presumably why Travelcards
can be purchased from places all over Network South East.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 19:49:07 +0100, "TKD" wrote:

It hasn't worked for me once. The last piece of advice I got was to
touch in at the barriers at Kings Cross TL and touch the validator on the
platform. When arriving at London Bridge, touch the validator on the
platform and then touch out through the barriers (so touch-in/out twice at each
end).

I don't think you need to touch the platform validator at KXTL. This would only be needed if you
arrived at KXTL from somewhere else on another ticket.

That is what I assumed but the Oyster helpline person told me the barriers
at Kings Cross TL only let you through, they don't record the start of your
journey and you have to touch the validator.

Either way it didn't work for me so I only use TL if I have a weekly on my
card.


The oyster helpline was wrong. Only one validation should be performed
at Kings Cross Thameslink, either on the gateline or the interchange
tunnel. The advice is only applicable to London Bridge, where you must
use the platform validator (However, this has been faulty for a few
months.)

Colin Rosenstiel was talking about journeys from a place outside London
to a place in London and Oyster Card is not intended for that, which
was my point.

Indeed. So why should we be ripped off with an extortionately higher fare?

Our taxes help subsidise TfL too, which is presumably why Travelcards
can be purchased from places all over Network South East.

You can't have it both ways. You either live in the capital with all the advantages
and disadvantages of life here or you don't.

It is evident from posts here, as well as from the very low level of
take up, that people simply do not understand what pre pay is and how it
works. The huge attachment to Travelcard and its relative ease of use is
obviously a factor in making it hard for people to understand how
pre-pay works alongside it or in the case of capping or extensions in
conjunction with it. TfL urgently need to get more information out to
actual and potential card holders as to how Oyster works - publicity has
been dumbed down too far.

I'd agree with that. I was at a tramstop in Croydon and there were some
young girls standing around talking and when one of them queried what the
Oyster validator was another replied that 'it was for old people'.

I am trying to remember if there has been a mailshot to everyones homes
talking about Oyster Pre-Pay. Every now and again bus maps and timetables
and area guides turn up but I can't recall a Pre-Pay one.

I haven't bought a single on the bus or tube for ages. Is there any Oyster
publicity on them? It would be great if it were possible to print 'you
would have saved at least £x.xx on this ticket if you'd used Pre-Pay' on
them.

When it comes to actually using Pre-Pay, something that does frustrate me is
the signs above tube and rail platform validators that say words to the
effect of "Pre-Pay users touch in here". That simply isn't good enough.
More information is needed. For example, at Farringdon Pre-Pay users who
will be entering and leaving the station through the gates may pass these
validators on the platforms and be tempted to use them. If they are
switching between tube and Thameslink they might pass one or two or them and
again use one or both of them. Maybe this is harmless but if isn't they
should be warned off. The signage should make it clear under what
circumstances a validation is needed. Similarly at Wimbledon there are
validators on the tube platforms but again no explanatory note to make it
clear when they are being used. For example someone arriving on the
District Line and switching to the tram might think that touching in on the
tram platform removes the need to have touched out on the tube platform or
touching out on the tube platform removed the need to touch in. It is also
incredibly easy to walk past the validators on the tube platform without
thinking.

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 00:53 +0100 (BST), (Colin
Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article ,
(TKD) wrote:

And it is not supposed to be. It is for Londonders not "people all
over the Home counties"

Don't be silly. It is for whoever uses London's transport. There is
no requirement to live in London.

No. The primary market is Londoners.

The secondary market is people from somewhere else who use it to travel
*within* London.

Colin Rosenstiel was talking about journeys from a place outside London
to a place in London and Oyster Card is not intended for that, which
was my point.

Indeed. So why should we be ripped off with an extortionately higher fare?

You're not.

If a Travelcard is cheaper, use it.

If you need to make single journeys as well, get an Oyster as well.

Simple.

--
James Farrar
. @gmail.com

James Farrar wrote:
On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 15:59:22 +0100, Paul Terry
wrote:

In message , TKD
writes

"Paul Terry" wrote in message
...

You cannot use pre-pay Oyster on South-West Trains (or on most other
National Rail services in London), so the only part of the journey
covered by Oyster is the bus and tube journeys. That comes to £5.90,
which is well below the £8 cap for peak-time travel in both Zones 1-4.

You would come under the Zone 1 cap as all your tube use is in Zone 1.
Bus journeys ignore zones and are included in any capped tube price even
if the bus journey was in a totally different zone to the tube cap.

Not sure what that makes your cap without looking it up.

The Peak Zone 1 cap is £6, so £5.40 (sorry, its not £5.90) still
wouldn't reach the cap. Thus Oyster remains almost 50% more expensive
for the journey I have described.

If you cared about costs, you'd get the District line from Richmond...

Perhaps he wants to get somewhere by a certain time! The District line
can be slow & unreliable, NR services from Richmond are normally quite good.

--
Paul

In article ,
(TKD) wrote:

Colin Rosenstiel was talking about journeys from a place outside
London to a place in London and Oyster Card is not intended for
that, which was my point.

Indeed. So why should we be ripped off with an extortionately higher
fare?

Our taxes help subsidise TfL too, which is presumably why Travelcards
can be purchased from places all over Network South East.

You can't have it both ways. You either live in the capital with all
the advantages and disadvantages of life here or you don't.

Not so. Look at the funding of transport in London. We pay too.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 22:52:17 +0100, Ian Jelf
wrote:

In message , Paul Corfield
writes
On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 00:15:26 +0100, Ian Jelf
wrote:
My group this weekend were on what was essentially a theatre break and
many of them do the same thing several times a year. And yet I
estimate that 80% of them went no further than they could walk from Park
Lane this morning (bearing in mind we dropped them off there at about
1030 and picked them up at 1500). Coming back to the coach, four
ladies managed to get lost between Hyde Park Corner and the coach which
was parked near the new "Animals at War" monument near Upper Brook
Street.

Do you have a theory as to why this is? Are they just nervous about
being in a big city, frightened they are going to be robbed or just have
no sense of direction and thus are likely to get lost?

They often seem not to understand London's vast size, strangely enough.
I'm regularly asked how far it us to "the centre" or "the shops" as
though we were talking about Norwich or Saint Helens or somewhere much
smaller. The concept of a multiple-centred city seems not to occur to
some.

Ah this is a good point. London is, as you say, multi centred although
really it is just a series of rather big districts that all touch other.
Odd that they can obviously cope with little a town or even a city with
districts (and centres of such) but still expect there just to be one
big centre in London.

As for the theory, I think all the things you suggest there can be
factors. I'd add to that fear of being blown up now, too.

Well I suppose that is understandable although there seem to be as many
people as ever using the buses and the tube and the tourist areas seem
to be heaving with people. Is that your experience of more recent weeks
compared to the immediate aftermath of July's incidents?

There are also *many* people from other parts of the UK who *never* use
public transport and I think that that can be a BIG factor.

I would entirely agree with this. So many people have no idea how to use
public transport and more often that not see it was the "failure" option
to get about.

I appreciate you are not being cruel about these people but it does make
me wonder how they cope in doing other basic life tasks - assuming they
are not disabled in some way.

Maybe because they only ever do things in a routine. Exploring new
places is off the agenda for a lot of people.

Again a very fair comment but I use holidays to get out of a routine and
try something or somewhere new with all the unfamiliarity that brings.
Goodness knows how they'd cope with Japan!

While there is always a learning curve in
any new city - Rome's ticketing system and its buses were a good example
of that for me recently - it's normally quite easy to do a bit of
research, read a guide book, ask some "dumb" questions and off you go.
Do your clients not do any of this?

Often not, no!

I guess I'm just odd then ;-)

Someone in a shop told me recently that when they ask people if they
have a PIN for their Credit Cards, a lot of people promptly recite it to
them!

chortle
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 22:54:50 +0100, Ian Jelf
wrote:

In message , Dave Hillam
] writes
The arcane art of getting on buses has been something that seems to
elude even people who have lived and worked in London for most of their
life. One friend who has just retired regards the red omnibus as the
work of the devil, despite having a strong preference for public
transport in general.

Trying to persuade some of my LU colleagues to use a bus when it is more
convenient than the Tube can prove somewhat challenging! "But it's a
bus?!"

When I was training as a guide, I always travelled around central London
by 'bus, unless time was such that I had to take the Tube. I did this
because I was having to get a "feel" for the geography of London.
Where buildings are in relation to one another, time taken to drive past
and - yes- for the pleasure of it!

You are me and I am you. That is exactly how I have put together my
mental map of London.

All of my fellow students thought I was at the very least a bit strange
for doing this.

*ding*

Back in student days -

friend - "where did you go at the weekend"
me - "Catford"
friend - "Why? where's Catford?"
me - "Oh South London, I just went to see what it was like and how to
get there on a bus."
friend - "on a bus? you must be mad"

or words to that effect
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 07:53:27 GMT, "Graham J"
wrote:

It is evident from posts here, as well as from the very low level of
take up, that people simply do not understand what pre pay is and how it
works. The huge attachment to Travelcard and its relative ease of use is
obviously a factor in making it hard for people to understand how
pre-pay works alongside it or in the case of capping or extensions in
conjunction with it. TfL urgently need to get more information out to
actual and potential card holders as to how Oyster works - publicity has
been dumbed down too far.

I'd agree with that. I was at a tramstop in Croydon and there were some
young girls standing around talking and when one of them queried what the
Oyster validator was another replied that 'it was for old people'.

The validator concept is very difficult. We had to specify them because
they have to exist at the boundaries of the LU / TfL fare scale. You
can't ever gate every interchange point given the historical "design" of
so many of our stations. New systems design interchange between stored
value systems to work flawlessly - Hong Kong between the MTR and KCRC is
the key example. They have the advantage of always having had the
requirement to validate in and out of each system.

I am trying to remember if there has been a mailshot to everyones homes
talking about Oyster Pre-Pay. Every now and again bus maps and timetables
and area guides turn up but I can't recall a Pre-Pay one.

No but then the tickets book is readily available at stations and you
get it on the TfL website. While it has to be written for a mass market
it tries, but fails in my view, to deal with the complexities of
London's ticketing arrangements. A lot of the old system has necessarily
been "compromised" or watered down to make some things work. However
places like Wimbledon and London Bridge NR and their arcane validation
rules seem to be trying to more than compensate via their own
complexity.

My recent trip to Berlin uncovered a range of extremely detailed
booklets covering the Berlin regional fare system. As with many such
systems it is a complex structure but at least information is readily
available. Much of this was also covered in a superb Berlin Atlas that
shows all the transport routes overlaid on a very clear street atlas
complete with schematic diagrams and frequency guides for every bus,
tram and U Bahn line. First and last times are included together with
times between every stop and what routes you can interchange to at each
stop. Their stop specific information is also a model of clarity.
Please can we have this for London !!!!!!

I haven't bought a single on the bus or tube for ages. Is there any Oyster
publicity on them? It would be great if it were possible to print 'you
would have saved at least £x.xx on this ticket if you'd used Pre-Pay' on
them.

I'm not aware that there is any such information on tickets - most
people don't look at their tickets anyway. I think it is far more
important for good publicity to be provided alongside high quality
information being available for people to take away. I couldn't
understand the capping rules until I saw a series of worked examples at
work. Such examples really should be provided to customers so they can
understand how their journey variables (time, date, zone, validate or
not) relate to what they can end up paying. The average person doesn't
stand a chance of understanding whether they are being charged the right
fare.

When it comes to actually using Pre-Pay, something that does frustrate me is
the signs above tube and rail platform validators that say words to the
effect of "Pre-Pay users touch in here". That simply isn't good enough.
More information is needed. For example, at Farringdon Pre-Pay users who
will be entering and leaving the station through the gates may pass these
validators on the platforms and be tempted to use them. If they are
switching between tube and Thameslink they might pass one or two or them and
again use one or both of them. Maybe this is harmless but if isn't they
should be warned off. The signage should make it clear under what
circumstances a validation is needed. Similarly at Wimbledon there are
validators on the tube platforms but again no explanatory note to make it
clear when they are being used. For example someone arriving on the
District Line and switching to the tram might think that touching in on the
tram platform removes the need to have touched out on the tube platform or
touching out on the tube platform removed the need to touch in. It is also
incredibly easy to walk past the validators on the tube platform without
thinking.

I agree with all of the above but the problem is that the sign could end
up being 20 feet tall to deal with all of the possible journey / ticket
permutations that could arise. NR to / from LU / DLR permutations are
almost beyond comprehension because of the wide range of NR tickets. If
you then perm that with the range of possibilities of people holding
paper travelcards (from out of London) and also an Oyster for pre-pay
extensions then I can't see how you communicate clearly on a sign
without causing people to crowd by the validators and thus causing
congestions. It was mind bending when we did the initial design work to
define all of the interfaces - since then DLR and Tramlink have been
added in to system. The ticket range and the operation of pre-pay have
also changed considerably since the earliest assumptions so I imagine it
is even more complex now than in the "mind bending" days.

I do agree that many validators are "invisible" and that they need more
obvious locational signage when located on platforms or routeways.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!