First Great Western will accept Oyster Pay As You Go at all stations
between Paddington and West Drayton or Greenford from the 21st
September, according to a leaflet I picked up at Ealing Broadway
yesterday. The fares and peak periods will be the same as for the
tube.

On 20 Sep, 14:56, Matthew Dickinson
wrote:
First Great Western will accept Oyster Pay As You Go at all stations
between Paddington and West Drayton or Greenford from the 21st
September, according to a leaflet I picked up at Ealing Broadway
yesterday. The fares and peak periods will be the same as for the
tube.


Excellent news.

South of the river, I've seen new installations of Oyster readers at
Brockley and East Dulwich stations (the one at ED was also noted by
someone else here as well). I'm not 100% up to date on developments
but I presume that the Southern Metro network is gearing up for Oyster
acceptance - I understand that the new South Central franchise will
contain a commitment to smart card ticketing - presumably with a
specific commitment to Oyster, as opposed to merely ITSO?.

Some follow on questions - who's paying for and co-ordinating these
new installations - Southern acting on instruction from the DfT to get
things ready for the new franchise (and possibly franchisee), or
Southern acting off their own back in the hope of impressing the DfT
so they win the new franchise (which seems unliekly). Obviously TfL
will be in the mix there somewhere as well, not least because they are
partially funding this work (or at least I think they are, going by
past pronouncements).

And presumably these new readers are capable of both reading the
proprietary Oyster cards and also the new ITSO smart cards? I recall
reading something along the line of this being the plan from now on,
and in addition to this something about the DfT having agreed to pay
for the existing installed base of Oyster readers to be modified so
they can also scan ITSO cards.

DERWENT FGW Oystercard PAYG
Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:56:02 -0700 (PDT), Mizter T


On 20 Sep, 14:56, Matthew Dickinson
wrote:
First Great Western will accept Oyster Pay As You Go at all stations
between Paddington and West Drayton or Greenford from the 21st
September, according to a leaflet I picked up at Ealing Broadway
yesterday. The fares and peak periods will be the same as for the
tube.


Excellent news.

South of the river, I've seen new installations of Oyster readers at
Brockley and East Dulwich stations (the one at ED was also noted by
someone else here as well). I'm not 100% up to date on developments
but I presume that the Southern Metro network is gearing up for Oyster
acceptance - I understand that the new South Central franchise will
contain a commitment to smart card ticketing - presumably with a
specific commitment to Oyster, as opposed to merely ITSO?.



Oystear readers have appeared at my local stations: Norwood Junction &
Selhurst. They are not in se yet though. No evidence of the ticket
offices being able to issue Oyster tickets yet though.

PRAR
--
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On 21 Sep, 08:43, PRAR wrote:

(snip)

Oystear readers have appeared at my local stations: Norwood Junction &
Selhurst. They are not in se yet though. No evidence of the ticket
offices being able to issue Oyster tickets yet though.


One must assume that they will only come into use when the whole of
the Southern Metro network 'goes live' for Oyster PAYG acceptance,
though I'm not sure when that will be.

Ticket offices being able to issue Oyster products is theoretically no
big deal, as an Oyster pad device known as 'Pearl' should be attached
to the ticket issuing equipment, which - with an appropriate software
update - should then be able to issue such tickets. AIUI that's the
theory at least.

"Matthew Dickinson" wrote in message

First Great Western will accept Oyster Pay As You Go at all stations
between Paddington and West Drayton or Greenford from the 21st
September, according to a leaflet I picked up at Ealing Broadway
yesterday. The fares and peak periods will be the same as for the
tube.

As a matter of interest, how do you get charged on a pre-pay Oyster card
if the journey involves both NR and LE, with an out of barrier change --
eg, if you take FGW from, say, Ealing Broadway to Paddington, then
change to the Circle from Paddington to, say, Baker Street? Is it
treated as a single zone 1-3 journey, or a zone 1-3 plus a zone 1
journey? And, presumably, the same rule applies with other operators,
such as Chiltern or even London Overground?

Mizter T wrote:

Ticket offices being able to issue Oyster products is theoretically no
big deal, as an Oyster pad device known as 'Pearl' should be attached
to the ticket issuing equipment, which - with an appropriate software
update - should then be able to issue such tickets. AIUI that's the
theory at least.

AFAIK, Pearl is the "standalone" Oyster only device being rolled out
across "Ticket Stops" that don't already have Oyster capabilities.

The only "Next Generation" [National Rail] Ticket Issuing System with
Oyster functionality that I'm aware of is Cubic's FasTIS+.

Cheers,

Barry

On 21 Sep, 15:30, "Recliner" wrote:

"Matthew Dickinson" wrote:

First Great Western will accept Oyster Pay As You Go at all stations
between Paddington and *West Drayton or Greenford from the 21st
September, according to a leaflet I picked up at Ealing Broadway
yesterday. The fares and peak periods will be the same as for the
tube.

As a matter of interest, how do you get charged on a pre-pay Oyster card
if the journey involves both NR and LE, with an out of barrier change -- *
eg, if you take FGW from, say, Ealing Broadway to Paddington, then
change to the Circle from Paddington to, say, Baker Street? *Is it
treated as a single zone 1-3 journey, or a zone 1-3 plus a zone 1
journey? *And, presumably, the same rule applies with other operators,
such as Chiltern or even London Overground?


I presume that "LE" is a typo for LU.

In scenarios such as that which you describe, you are only charged
once for the whole journey - the segment from Paddington to Baker
Street is merely counted as a continuation of your journey. This
applies at locations where there are out-of-station interchanges (OOSI
- we have sometimes referred to them here as 'outerchanges'!), though
that term is potentially confusing when one doesn't actually leave the
station, one just exits through an automatic gate, crosses a
concourse, drops down some stairs and then enters another gate.

It does remain possible that journeys on NR routes might be charged at
different different rates to the LU fare scale - in such a
hypothetical scenario what one pays for a combined NR and LU journey
would be open to question - however, thankfully, thus far all the TOCs
who have adopted Oyster PAYG have also adopted the LU fare scale as
well.

On 21 Sep, 15:57, Barry Salter wrote:

Mizter T wrote:
Ticket offices being able to issue Oyster products is theoretically no
big deal, as an Oyster pad device known as 'Pearl' should be attached
to the ticket issuing equipment, which - with an appropriate software
update - should then be able to issue such tickets. AIUI that's the
theory at least.

AFAIK, Pearl is the "standalone" Oyster only device being rolled out
across "Ticket Stops" that don't already have Oyster capabilities.

The only "Next Generation" [National Rail] Ticket Issuing System with
Oyster functionality that I'm aware of is Cubic's FasTIS+.


I stand corrected!

The reasons I mentioned Pearl is that the new Pearl pads at "Oyster
Ticket Stops" look similar to those used in NR ticket offices. I'll
try and find that TfL document that discussed the Pearl kit, I seem to
recall it being described as 'all purpose' or somesuch.

Apols for disseminating incorrect info about whether all NR ticket
offices' kit could easily be adapted to handle Oyster - I must admit
that, now you've said it, I recall reading something (probably one of
your past posts!) about the Cubic system being the only one that could
handle Oyster.

Is there no chance that the Fujitsu Star system could be adapted to
deal with it? And I forget - any idea which system Southern have at
their ticket offices?

Mizter T wrote:

[Oyster]

Is there no chance that the Fujitsu Star system could be adapted to
deal with it? And I forget - any idea which system Southern have at
their ticket offices?

As far as I'm aware, neither Star, Tribute nor Shere Smart (which is
what FCC and Southern use) can be modified for Oyster.

Why this is, I'm not sure, but I seem to remember a proposal that
stations not using FasTIS already were to be equipped with a FasTIS+
terminal, with tickets being issued as normal on "paper" tickets, then
read on the FasTIS+ and loaded onto the Oyster card, with the paper
ticket being voided.

Cheers,

Barry

On Sep 21, 5:56*pm, Barry Salter wrote:
Mizter T wrote:

[Oyster]

Is there no chance that the Fujitsu Star system could be adapted to
deal with it? And I forget - any idea which system Southern have at
their ticket offices?

As far as I'm aware, neither Star, Tribute nor Shere Smart (which is
what FCC and Southern use) can be modified for Oyster.

That apparently is the case but it is hard to see why those systems
can't be made Oyster compatible when they managed it with APTIS. (The
add-on was called APTIS-ANT IIRC) perhaps the functionality required
then was more starightforward than what is needed now.



Why this is, I'm not sure, but I seem to remember a proposal that
stations not using FasTIS already were to be equipped with a FasTIS+
terminal, with tickets being issued as normal on "paper" tickets, then
read on the FasTIS+ and loaded onto the Oyster card, with the paper
ticket being voided.


I think some TOCs are installing/have installed FasTIS at stations
that need to issue Oyster, regardless of the tiscket system used
elsewhere on the TOC.

RPM