Cash Tube fares to rise to £4

[joevsimp]

I've only been in london for 3 years and the rise in prices on public transport has been pretty huge already. 3 years ago by bus pass cost me £8 per week, it's now £13.50 (single bus fares were 70p, now £1.50) - which I still think is bloody brilliant value, but proportionately it's a big old rise.

I am also a luddite

tou can use the oyster on busses aswell and it's only 80p

 

[chio]

I'd imagine that's the reasoning behind it - let's just rip off the tourists constantly, let's improve our countries standing re: overpriced and crappy services... and the more people using Oyster the less staff needed...

I live miles and miles from London, very rarely visit but I have a pre-paid Oyster in a drawer for when I do. It's not been used in a couple of years but I think it's still got a fiver on, so when I get to London I don't have to piss about with cash tickets.

 

[joevsimp]

yes of course, bewildered and jetlagged in new city, with a big suitcase...

the metrocard for the NY subway is the nads

$2 each for any journey!

pleasantly suprised that in a country where almost every service is privately run that NY's public transport is publicly run and actually works

 

[Juice Terry]

They need to make it univerally available and accepted on the overground before I'll buy into it.

My home station, overground in zone 4 has no oyster facilities for either buying or getting tickets checked/scanned.

I arrive into central London at Waterloo which has no automatic ticket gates at the barriers. They rely on the human inpectors to scan all the Oyster cards manually with the hand held things which causes big delays and confusion getting through the barriers in rush hour.

Basically coming into London on any SW/SE commuter route, Oyster cards are a fucking waste of time and a pain in the arse. Its a joke really when you consider how many hundreds of thousands come into London this way everyday.

 

[Muddled]

Stupid question, but if you only use Oyster on buses, where do you top it up - can you do it in newagents and stuff, presumably?

 

[pembrokestephen]

Stupid question, but if you only use Oyster on buses, where do you top it up - can you do it in newagents and stuff, presumably?

Yes, some places do let you top up there. I don't think it's all Travelcard newsagents, though...

 

[pembrokestephen]

Why not use a machine when you get here...?

Well, that's what I do - go into a newsagent's and add a tenner on. But it's an additional hassle: I don't have that much time to make side-trips when I'm coming up to London, as I arrive lateish on Mon evening, am at uni all day Tuesday and it's a mad dash back to Pembrokeshire on Tuesday evening so as not to miss the last train home...

 

[catrina]

It cost 1 euro and 30 cents to go 45 miles from Lisbon to Cascais. How the hell does it cost TfL 7 euro to transport me 1 mile?

 

[milesy]

tou can use the oyster on busses aswell and it's only 80p

for my journey to and from work that will stick work out more expensive than getting a weekly bus pass. i do four bus journeys a day - at 80p each that will be £3.20, adding up to £16 over five days. more if i want to travel at weekends. a weekly bus pass costs £13.50 at the moment. why switch to oyster?

 

[pootle]

a weekly bus pass costs £13.50 at the moment. why switch to oyster?

You can put a weekly bus pass on an oyster...you don't need to use the pre-pay system..

 

[milesy]

why get an oyster when i can still get a paper bus pass?!?

 

[salem]

My latest pet annoyance about the oystercard is that its obviously becoming very popular but the result is there is always a huge queue for the oyster compatiable ticket machines (of which there is often only one compared with 3 cash only ones!)

This is compounded again by the fact that people take ages to use them. If I had a pound for the everytime I've come close to ripping the persons card and cash out of their hand and doing it for them I might have enough for a cash return on the tube. As it is I generally meekly point out how to do it .

My only refuge, the card only ones everyone was afraid to use, are now being manned by staff showing people how to use them and are just as bad now

 

[jayeola]

wonder how long *all* fares go up again. prolly by about jan, eh?

 

[pembrokestephen]

It cost 1 euro and 30 cents to go 45 miles from Lisbon to Cascais. How the hell does it cost TfL 7 euro to transport me 1 mile?

Ah. The mistake you make there is in thinking that the amount we get charged is related in any way to the cost of getting us there.

A natural assumption for anyone from a normal country, where they don't run urban mass transit systems as some kind of Make Money Fast franchise type deal, to make, though

 

[EastEnder]

My latest pet annoyance about the oystercard is that its obviously becoming very popular but the result is there is always a huge queue for the oyster compatiable ticket machines (of which there is often only one compared with 3 cash only ones!)

This is compounded again by the fact that people take ages to use them. If I had a pound for the everytime I've come close to ripping the persons card and cash out of their hand and doing it for them I might have enough for a cash return on the tube. As it is I generally meekly point out how to do it .

No doubt as the cash based methods get phased out, the Oyster card paypoints will proliferate.

And don't forget - people are, in general, hopelessly stupid. But they'll learn, it'll just take some of them a painfully long time.....

As far as big queues go, in the Oyster card's defence - at least you can top up your pre-pay or travel card in advance, you don't actually need to wait until it runs out and battle with the unwashed masses during Monday morning rush hour. I tend to, when I remember, renew my monthly pass a few days beforehand, in the evening on the way home from work - when I almost never have to queue.

 

[milesy]

i can get my paper buss pass in advance if i like. it's quite exciting.

 

[jæd]

I tend to, when I remember, renew my monthly pass a few days beforehand, in the evening on the way home from work - when I almost never have to queue.

You can set it up so that it you get an email when its due to be renewed. Save bags of time instead of queuing...!

 

[joevsimp]

for my journey to and from work that will stick work out more expensive than getting a weekly bus pass. i do four bus journeys a day - at 80p each that will be £3.20, adding up to £16 over five days. more if i want to travel at weekends. a weekly bus pass costs £13.50 at the moment. why switch to oyster?

ok i thought you meant it was 13.50 at 1.50 a time

 

[Muddled]

My latest pet annoyance about the oystercard is that its obviously becoming very popular but the result is there is always a huge queue for the oyster compatiable ticket machines (of which there is often only one compared with 3 cash only ones!)

If you go to one of the main stations like Oxford Circus they've literally got a dozen or more cash-only machines (which are usually unused) and 2-3 which can be used for topping up your Oyster, which always have a snaking queue.

It's all very well saying you can buy online or in advance, but living on a national rail service I can't 'recharge' my oyster at my home station and I can't predict a tube station I regularly use in order to use the auto-top up.

 

[gunneradt]

no oyster integration with national rail - ridiculous. Maybe someone can explain why our transport system is at least twice as expensive as everybody else's. Would love it if people started getting back in their cars - just what this crazy policy deserves.

 

[EastEnder]

It's all very well saying you can buy online or in advance, but living on a national rail service I can't 'recharge' my oyster at my home station and I can't predict a tube station I regularly use in order to use the auto-top up.

For once in a blue moon, it's not LU's fault - it's the national rail operating companies' fault. Red Ken's being trying to get all the London based & surrounding (i.e. all commuter belt) stations Oyster'd up, but the train operating companies are whinging about the installation costs.

I agree it's a pain - I can get pretty much anywhere within greater London on the same card, but have to switch to old fashioned tickets as soon as I leave the reassuring veil of smog.

 

[PacificOcean]

My annoyence with Oyster is that you can't tell from looking at it wether the travelcard has run out on it.

 

[gunneradt]

no use if you need a receipt for a journey either.

 

[Ms Ordinary]

AFAIK you can still buy daily travelcards - still probably the best bet for tourists & occasional visitors who'll be using the tube for a few journeys in one day, or if one of your journeys will be overland.

 

[Crispy]

the metrocard for the NY subway is the nads

$2 each for any journey!

pleasantly suprised that in a country where almost every service is privately run that NY's public transport is publicly run and actually works

And the man who made it work was hired by ken to make the tube work, but prescott didn't like the idea, so stomped on his plans.

 

[chio]

I don't see why people object to this system so much down there. It's got to be better than the way they run it in Manchester, especially with the cash-only ticket machines on tram platforms that are broken half the time. I don't use transport there daily to justify a travelcard, but I do use it quite regularly so being able to top up a pay-as-you-go card on the bus in Manchester would be dead useful and stop me having to pay cash and hold all the travelcard people up!

I agree £4 is scandalous for a single tube journey, but when there's an easier and cheaper alternative available surely everyone should be moving over to it? Like I say, I keep an Oyster in the drawer for my rare visits to the capital...

 

[Crispy]

no use if you need a receipt for a journey either.

Go to a touch screen oyster ticket machine and you can print off your last 10 journeys.

 

[gunneradt]

Why not be able to print it out from your computer then?

 

[EastEnder]

Why not be able to print it out from your computer then?

Simple: fraud.

 

[lighterthief]

Simple: fraud.

Good point.