Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:17:20 on
Sat, 10 May 2008, Paul Corfield remarked:
I can't think of a city anywhere that makes it easy for people with
loads of fresh, high denomination currency to use standard public
transport services.

They've solved that in Geneva, where previously you had to have the
somewhat unlikely amount of 3 Francs in coins only, by giving all
arrivals at the airport a free bus/tram/train ticket to the City centre.

In Lisbon you can buy a voucher (for about a tenner) which will pay for
a taxi ride from the airport to anywhere in the city.

A useful scheme would be an EU-wide voucher for a "bus/train/tram ticket
from airport to anywhere in that City" for about 5 Euros,

London Ashford airport? Or even Luton and Stansted.

and you could
buy a book of them in any place and use them later. In most towns you
could do better ad-hoc, but at least you'd never be stranded.

My favourite was Ryanair's place in Sardinia, where you get the bus for
free (or at least people with hand baggage do, others got left behind),
but half way to the town it stops at a road-side florists where you buy
the tickets and get back on. Of course the florist had "no change". Some
of us made ourselves unpopular with the natives by clubbing together and
buying (say) 10 tickets with a single EUR10 note, those of us with loose
change then sorting the change out among the people on the bus :-)

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

In message , at
18:55:21 on Sat, 10 May 2008, Arthur Figgis

I can't think of a city anywhere that makes it easy for people with
loads of fresh, high denomination currency to use standard public
transport services.
They've solved that in Geneva, where previously you had to have the
somewhat unlikely amount of 3 Francs in coins only, by giving all
arrivals at the airport a free bus/tram/train ticket to the City centre.
In Lisbon you can buy a voucher (for about a tenner) which will pay
for a taxi ride from the airport to anywhere in the city.
A useful scheme would be an EU-wide voucher for a "bus/train/tram
ticket from airport to anywhere in that City" for about 5 Euros,

London Ashford airport? Or even Luton and Stansted.

It's always going to be more difficult for London because the PT prices
are so much higher anyway. But if I can get a bus from the airport into
the centre of Berlin for £1.50, or a train from Schiphol to Amsterdam
for £2.60, or Brussels Airport to City Centre for £2.10, then I think we
should make more of an effort (for people with air tickets to prove
entitlement to the flat rate fare).

--
Roland Perry

Found an "interesting" problem with Oyster today. One of my collegues
has been over from the States and goes back today. He had a prepay
oyster which originally he bought with cash but he topped up with a
credit card.

Because he had used both cash and topped up with a credit card he
couldn't get a refund (well they would post a cheque to him).
Fortunately there was someone at work happy to buy it off him for
cash.

Tim.