Mike (admin)

Time for a review of the latest expansion of contactless payments in the South East.  It’s safe to say that things didn’t go according to plan, but read on for more details, including measures being taken to address issues that have been found. Information on this site I’m pleased to say that adding extra information … Read more

As part of the set up for the additions to Project Oval next weekend, many of the caps for GTR family routes are being revised for contactless PAYG users from tomorrow.  All the daily caps will be set at a small discount (usually 3%) to the price of the one day travelcard, in common with … Read more

Just as I’m preparing updates to include the 50 new stations in the Project Oval PAYG rollout, Greater Anglia has announced that it’s extensions to Stansted Airport, Witham and Southend Victoria have been deferred until Summer 2026.  The Chiltern extensions to Aylesbury Vale Parkway, and Thameslink/Southern/Great Northern extensions to Harlington, Baldock, Dorking, Reigate and East … Read more

This also probably applies to the other stations between Reading and Iver, plus the branches for Henley, Marlow and Windsor as well. First the bad news.  The off-peak cap from Reading when using PAYG appears to have risen by £1 to £35.40 from September 7th.  We know that GWR increased the prices of off-peak day … Read more

If you’ve read the text underneath the fare finder results then you’ll know that I put quite a lot of effort into improving the useability of the tool compared to the single fare finder on the TfL website. Most of the improvements involve additional data (zonal coverage and time allowed) or tweaks to the station … Read more

UPDATE 4th September: The issue is now fixed and NRE no longer suggests contactless fares are available. The National Rail Enquiries journey planner has started suggesting that contactless PAYG will be available for travel to Stansted Airport from this Sunday (September 7th). The fares appear for stations on the line between Liverpool Street and Stansted … Read more

In February this year c2c became the first National Rail operator (not including TfL) to accept contactless payments throughout it’s entire network. Shortly after being taken back into public ownership the company announced that there had been over 1 million taps (touches in or out) at their new stations in just under 6 months of … Read more

This is a followup article to https://oysterfares.com/walthamstow-central-overcharging-from-some-stations/.  It turns out that asking questions about complicated issues in August is a bad idea, as key people go on holiday at different times. I did eventually get a response from the Rail Delivery Group: “In the TfL PAYG system, all flows need a “no intermediate clicks” route … Read more

I’ve recently come across a video on Youtube by creator Nick Badley where he attempted to visit every station in zones 7-9 on the rail and tube map, plus a couple of other weird ones.  The weird ones are, of course, Cuffley and Epsom, and Nick correctly explains that the reason they’re not shown officially … Read more