PalenQ

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/22/bu...vice.html?_r=0

on Friday and Saturdays on five lines to start then more.

Oyster Cards Being Phased Out - bank debit cards to be used instead.

Unions threaten striked

great info in this NY Times article.

xyz123

I read the same article. I am not sure how quickly they will be phasing out oyster cards. They're talking of using contactless debit cards which are not necessarily availablee everywhere. Just look at backward countries like the USA which hasn't even embraced emv chip and pin cards let alone contactless cards and to the best of my knowlege there are many different contactless systems and nothing has been standardized yet.

PalenQ

Yup I was wondering how Americans could use debit cards that are contactless.

Southam

This tourist carries contactless cards, but I won't be waving them at the Tube and racking up a foreign transaction fee with each ride.

BigRuss

<<Just look at backward countries like the USA which hasn't even embraced emv chip and pin cards let alone contactless cards>>

The USA isn't filled with credit card thieves like nearly all of Europe, thus the lack of chip and pin cards. But your anti-American view wouldn't account for that.

alanRow

<i>The USA isn't filled with credit card thieves like nearly all of Europe,</i>

47% Of The World's Credit Card Fraud Occurs In The USA

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ameri...#ixzz2lObMl1ta

nytraveler

Out of how much of the world's credit card activity?

flanneruk

" racking up a foreign transaction fee with each ride."

You won 't.

The intention is that, if Oysters are phased out, daily caps will still live in virtual space. Apart from any virtual packages that may be re-introduced (like 7 day virtual travelcards), anyone on the PAYG system will incur just one payment per day - as now.

But there is no official announcement of Oyster phase-outs. There's no reference to any such proposal in Boris's announcement (http://www.london.gov.uk/media/mayor...re-of-the-tube), which actually says "Customers will be able to purchase Oyster cards" from Visitor Information Centres at major stations.

flanneruk

Nor is there a plan to extend 24-hour tube service beyond Fri and Sat nights.

The priority is to extend 24-hour weekend service to all lines, once the current batch of heavyweight Tube upgrades and interconnections with new cross-London rail connections is finished (unlikely before 2018).

But it's a much bigger problem to extend 24 hour opening to weekdays. The lines inevitably need maintenance, a lot of that maintenance is unpredictable, and it really can't be done without closing substantial slugs of line. With a configuration like London's, that really needs 4-hour or so windows several days a week when it's possible to close the whole system. And late night demand is far, far, less on weekdays.

I suspect the feasibility of shorter, or fewer, or less universal, closure windows can't be assessed till all the current upgrades (some of which are intended to reduce the amount of maintenance needed) have been finished and their promise tested.

xyz123

...also I read somewhere that many people find that over the last few years many of the bus lines have begun running 24/7 besides the special night buses that had existedpreviously. Quite frankly at night, with much of the congested traffic in central London reduced, buses are not all that much slower than the tube for journeys other than really longoner say out to the outer reaches of London outside central zones 1 & 2 so there indeed is something to be said for nightly shut downs for maintenance. To boil it all down; from what I've read, the trade off for the extension to 24 hour service is the closing of all ticket offices on the tube (again fromwhat I've read elsewhere). Ultimately perhaps oyster will be withdrawn but I thin that is still a ways down the road (although the buses now take contactless debit cards in addition to oyster cards and paper tickets).

flanneruk

"the trade off for the extension to 24 hour service is the closing of all ticket offices on the tube (again fromwhat I've read elsewhere)""

No. Ticket offices are being closed (though see the Mayor's announcement) to save money. The extended hours announcement is intended to add a slight sweetener.

It's a rather emotive issue among The Yoof, who mostly live way beyond the shortish radius night buses really make sense. It's a commonplace among old farts like me that, when we were in our early 20's, it was no big deal to walk the three or four miles from Soho to our first shared flats at 0130: these days, though, the few people in the early 20s not living with their parents live eight or more miles out - and even at night that can be a pain by bus.

It's very likely that the extra revenue from extended tube hours will pay for itself: the pressure to cut admin and overmanning costs remains (quite rightly) relentless.

xyz123

...just the messenger; I don't profess to be an expert on all this. I read an article from tfl from late October where tfl claims Uncle Boris is jumping somewhat ahead with the idea to convert to use of debit cards in lieu of oyster. And as I said, while all transit systems do cater mostly to locals as well they should, one also has to tae into consideration the large amount of tourists world class cities like London or New York see annually. There will, for the foreseeable future, be need for other fare media than just debit cards or credit cards. And just as an example, unlike the metrocard vending machines in NY, the fare machines in London are all (or almost all, I haven't seen any not) only in English.

But then again, indeed it's time in many ways to embrace 21st century technology. I'm telling you the time is coming when there will be retina scanning to enter mass transit sytems and bills automatically generated. Just a far bit down the road!

29FEB

The mere mention of Oyster potentially being phased out saddens me; the pounds on my Oyster are like a promise to return to London and I cherish it as I do my passport~

flanneruk

"unlike the metrocard vending machines in NY, the fare machines in London are all (or almost all, I haven't seen any not) only in English."

It's a common London problem. There's no obvious second, or third, or fourth language. If there were, they'd be Urdu and Bangla - which is no use to tourists and bloody well oughtn't to be much use to Londoners (it's a disgrace that we tolerate their husbands keeping them away from English lessons.)

IMHO, the reason foreigners take so long at ticket machines is that most of the slowcoaches are illiterate, or incomputerate, in their own language. Watch the performance at ticket machines on the Paris metro (which makes snails look like Usain Bolt). Clearly technology OUGHT to make providing interfaces in the top 50 languages (much fewer and it's a waste of time) cheap and easy.

"Uncle Boris is jumping somewhat ahead with the idea to convert to use of debit cards in lieu of oyster. "

That's what he's got public servants for: to keep him in check (though I still can't find any evidence anyone authoritative has said Oyster's getting phased out). The reality, I suspect, is that the big gain is getting rid of paper tickets: after that, the difference between debit cards and Oyster is trivial - except that many people have lots of good reasons for being unable to use debit cards.

Our post offices survive almost entirely on the unbanked, for example - and foreign tourists are a trivial proportion of people in London who simply don't have a contactless payment card.

Boris is over-enthusiastic: but he's a professional and highly ambitious politician. No-one wants to be associated (in the way any big change in TfL payments will always be linked to the Mayor) with a sloppily devised destruction of Britain's most successful technological innovation for the past 20 years. Especially in a year (2015) there's a very high chance the Tory party will be looking for a new leader.

That's why I think reports of an Oyster phase-out are just poor reporters misinterpreting a badly phrased answer to a question at a press conference.

PalenQ

flanner - what do you think about the Tube union threats that if several staff at presently manned offices are made redundant it may launch the first major Tube strike in four years? And probably strike just at the right moment?

Or has the Tube union been smashed like many other U K unions?

Thanks for your valuable insights about the whole thing - clears up several ambiguous things from the NY Times article.

Toucan

Maybe Boris wants to give a shot in the arm to his bikes.

PalenQ

Well the NY Times also has an article this week on how dangerous biking is in London with I think 4 separate fatalities the past week!

flanneruk

"Or has the Tube union been smashed like many other U K unions?"

Not really - but sort of.

Public-sector unions in the UK, as in the US, have retained much of their membership. The problem London Transport unions struggle to deal with is that their strikes affect everyone - including their neighbours and their children's schoolfriends.

So individual members come under huge pressure at home, while neighbours etc can always use, with difficulty and inconvenience, other means of transport (buses, trains, and tubes don't share common unions, and it's usually illegal for unaffected unions to strike in sympathy). There's usually widespread resentment these days in London that TfL staff are trying to get public-sector job security (and pensions) and private-sector pay.

This is always unpredictable: Boris is clearly a Tory (and forever subject to some new scandal) and never underestimate the ability of today's Tory party to shoot itself in both feet. The union's trying to make the strike about "safety" (there's a common perception that the remoter stations need real staff late at night just in case...) rather than the (in London) self-evident argument that it's dozy paying people to do something a machine can do better.

Then, of course, there's the "London can take it" myth. There just is a culture than Londoners get on with life, whatever unions (and the main TfL union concerned in this is run by a Grade A fat dinosaur), terrorists in tea towels or Hitler may try to do.

My money's, just, on Boris. As long as no-one digs out another indiscretion.

PalenQ

Thanks flanner - you always have the lowdown on things like this to separate the fog from reality.

Is there any truth the 'Mind the Gap' recordings are also to be phased out?