As if the inconsistencies with pricing along the line between Merstham and Gatwick Airport weren’t already bad enough, it looks like TfL have completely ripped up the rule book with regard to contactless capping once you venture south from zone 6 at Coulsdon South. This means that since May 16th some part-time commuters have seen their daily fares rise by 27%, without any warning at all.
Contactless Pilot
Authorised User CPC cards
I’d actually forgotten about this issue until I recently came across mention on the TfL site explaining that you can link authorised user cards to an online account. Originally there was a problem where the name on the card did not match the name that the bank statements were sent to. I had tried to … Read more
Missing Contactless touches
Time for another update on my personal adventures. On Monday evening I decided to visit some of the new Overground lines and stations in North East London. I also took along my son with his zip card for company. Everything worked fine on the night, but examining my history the next day has highlighted a couple of missing touches,
Contactless charging less than Oyster
I’ve recently had several queries where people were charged less than they expected using a CPC, or even less than they were charged making the same journeys with Oyster at a different time. The reason is the different way that capping is calculated when using CPCs. There’s a new page which tries to explain the … Read more
Southwark and Blackfriars
On Saturday afternoon I went walking around the City in search of book benches with my son. When we had finished we made our way to the north bank entrance to Blackfriars and only then did we realise that FCC trains weren’t serving London Bridge this weekend. The advertised diversion via Elephant and Castle seemed a bit of a detour so we decided to walk a bit more by crossing the river through Blackfriars, along to Southwark and through there to Waterloo East. This gave me a chance to check out a report that walking through Southwark is always free.
Contactless – Good news and bad
Today has seen good news on the use of contactless payment cards on buses, but confirmation of extremely bad news for the use on trains.
Contactless is coming to Rail
This morning I attended a briefing at TfL about the soon to be launched contactless payments on rail services. Sadly TfL wouldn’t commit to an actual date, but late summer/early autumn seems likely. At the same time as the rail system goes live, the existing bus facility will be merged with it, offering full capping … Read more
Contactless Pilot (June)
My participation in the contactless pilot has been severely hampered since the end of May. First my bank decided to issue new cards which meant that I had to go through the process of registering a new card number for the pilot. Then I managed to lose the other card linked to the same account so they had to cancel everything again, even though I still had the card I was using for contactless travel. Interestingly though, when TfL came to charge the amount for travel that day,
Contactless Pilot (end of May)
I’ve decided to stop talking about journeys which have no issues as they are becoming more common. The bottom line is that contactless works, apart from one issue that I’ll come to later on. I’ll still be testing edge conditions, sometimes inadvertantly, and these I’ll document on here.
So, the big test this week was exceeding the maximum journey time.
Contactless Pilot Days 3-9
Oh dear, I seem to have got behind updating this. The good news is that there aren’t any show-stopping problems so far. Comments are always welcome and will be fed back to TfL if relevant. It’s now getting more exciting as I’ve been asked to download an app and record details of my experiences as I travel. The app has loaded and I’ve set it up, so I’m ready to go. But first, the last few days …