In a day over two months time the OEP will be no more, but this is not stopping South Eastern from making a fast buck. They are blatantly targeting people who are about to have the correct fare for their journey deducted from the PAYG balance on their card. And these are people with travelcards stored on their Oyster card, often expensive annual ones. The phrase “biting the hand that feeds you” springs to mind here.
A Visit To Finsbury Park
Other travel during the day had almost applied an off-peak cap to my card so I took the opportunity to investigate reports of problems, both current and future, at Finsbury Park. Before I outline the full story though, the important message here is that at the moment you do NOT need to touch out or in if interchanging between Underground and National Rail. In fact, if you try to touch out you will hit serious problems.
As usual I started my journey at Crayford.
OEPs to be scrapped
Following a summit at City Hall with the Mayor, TfL and the London TOCs a number of improvements to travel within London have been announced. The best one is that the Oyster Extension Permit will be killed off from 22nd May 2011, just over 16 months since it’s introduction. Other measures include
London Orbital Railway Complete
Just for a change I thought I’d write about some general rail news. This week saw the opening of the missing link in the London Orbital Railway. Note, this isn’t the one that TfL will want you to know about because this one isn’t entirely coloured orange. We’ll have to wait until the end of next year for that version. However, in the meantime
Get new card with £3 deposit
As part of the fares revision last month, TfL increased the deposit on new Oyster cards from £3 to £5. This is what you’ll pay online, at Oyster ticket stops and at station ticket offices. The deposit is refundable of course, but only when you surrender the card. However, at many underground stations there are … Read more
Cannon Street to Mansion House
I have just been made aware about an update to the OSI list dating back to last November. There is one new OSI between Cannon Street NR and Mansion House LU. Sadly there still isn’t an OSI between Cannon Street and Bank which is a much more popular route. The one they’ve added is only … Read more
Another Refund
My own personal use of Oyster has been ticking along quite nicely of late. I check journey history regularly and get statements from time to time to keep records for posterity. You can imagine my surprise
Important change to OEPs
Note: This post is now irrelevant as Oyster Extension Permits have been abolished.
I’ve just become aware that there has been a very serious change to the way OEPs are handled. It definitely affects Southeastern and may well affect other operators as well. Originally the system was set up so that if you didn’t set an OEP but nevertheless touched in within your zones and touched out outside your zones then the system would work out what you should pay and deduct that, exactly like it does on the TfL operated Underground, Overground and DLR. However, now it seems that exit gates have been programmed
Changes for 2011
Over the last few weeks details of several changes to the Oyster charging structure have been announced. The biggest changes are obviously the actual fares and you can now see what effect the review will have on your fare on the single fare finder on the TfL website. Some of the other changes are summarised below:
New OSIs (inc Bank-Cannon St)
In late October I was provided with a new list of OSIs which had come from the ATOC fare manual rather than my usual source at TfL. It looked like there were some useful new OSIs, including the long awaited Bank to Cannon Street interchange. Later I received my usual update from TfL which showed that the ATOC list was rather inaccurate with most of it’s changes.