Oyster, the Olympics and HS1

Wow, have the authorities managed to screw things up over the headline Javelin services to Stratford International.  Ordinarily the HS1 line between St Pancras and Gravesend or Ashford via Stratford and Ebbsfleet is a premium service.  As such, travelcards and Oyster cards are not valid on the services and there are no Oyster readers on the gatelines.  But London 2012 is the public transport games and needs to be as simple as possible. 

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£4.60 error at Paddington?

In the last week both BBC London and the Evening Standard have run stories about passengers being charged £4.60 to walk through part of Paddington station.  The reporter from the Evening Standard even phoned me up and talked through what was happening.  I suggested to him that this was a simple Same Station Exit, but sadly that didn’t explicitly make it into the article.  More alarmingly, TfL staff didn’t seem to know what was going on and promised to investigate what was happening.  In an effort to understand the issue clearly I went to Paddington myself last Thursday evening.

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Journey history time wrong

I noticed yesterday that the times reported on the journey history screen are all out by an hour since the clocks went forward last Sunday.  The times shown are a further hour ahead so it looks like something is compensating for summer time when it doesn’t need to.  The Oyster system clock is correct so … Read more

Same station re-entry problems

Several visitors have reported problems when touching out and back in again at the same station.  The system tries to combine the two journeys into one, often resulting in a pair of incomplete journeys when you get back to your starting station.  But if your journey included an OSI en-route then you may well end up out of the system altogether and be given a penalty fare!

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New OSI list from Jan 2012

I have received a new list of OSIs which is dated January 2012.  Not much has changed, but there are new OSIs between Aldgate and Tower Gateway, the two Edgware Road stations and different gatelines at Farringdon and Oxford Circus.  The temporary ones between Blackfriars NR and alternate District line stations are still active at … Read more

Journey history – 2nd update

The next stage of the journey history modifications has just gone live.  The old, very difficult to understand, version has been discontinued in favour of an option to expand details for every journey.  You no longer need to have bought online credit to access journey history and you can also see touches on pink validators … Read more

Wimbledon Improvements

I visited Wimbledon again briefly yesterday.  While sitting on the tram waiting for it to leave I noticed that they’ve stuck additional signage on the sides of the validators facing the steps.  One says only to be used for National Rail journeys while the other says only to be used for tram journeys.  Credit where … Read more