Oyster and National Rail

January 2nd 2010 was the day that Oyster became accepted on almost all National Rail services in Greater London, making cashless pay-as-you-go a reality London-wide.  It should now be really simple, but in reality it is about as complicated as it could possibly be. There are three different fares structures depending on whether your route accepted Oyster before November 2009 or not, and if not whether your journey mixes National Rail and TfL rail and includes zone 1; while children sometimes travel free and sometimes have to pay.

This site has been set up to try and explain how the system works in an alternative fashion to the official TfL site.  It also exposes the alternative approach that families can take where Oyster is not the cheapest option. Plus I will highlight areas where the system is not working and list improvements that I feel need to be made.

The pages listed in the left sidebar allow you to navigate through the main information areas of the site.  Below this introduction is a latest news blog, which includes my own personal diary of experiences using Oyster cards with my family.  Please feel free to add comments to both blog posts and pages, especially if you spot something you think might be wrong.

I’ve recently discovered a potential saving when making return journeys on National Rail in the afternoon peak where the journey starts or finishes in zone 6.  Full details are on the When not to use Oyster page.  It turns out that I’ve been overpaying for my regular trip from Crayford to Sidcup for the kids’ band practices.

Last night the number of comments on the site passed the 1000 mark.  Many of them are my replies, but it’s still a significant milestone.  I’d like to thank all my visitors for their support and comments and I hope everyone has a good Christmas. Don’t forget that the fares go up on January 2nd, so if you are considering investing in an annual season you can get 2011 prices as long as the ticket starts on or before January 1st.

TfL have added the new fares to their website, but they’ve made a couple of errors.  The first one is a useability issue; rather than have the new fares on special pages linked to from the current live pages, they have instead copied the current fares onto special pages and made the new fares live.  I guess it’s not too bad given that you’ll think you’ve got a bargain when you’re charged less, but they really ought to keep the current fares in the default place.

The other error is far more serious. Read the rest of this entry »

The Oyster website will be unavailable between 2100 on Friday 2nd December and 1300 on Sunday 4th December for essential maintenance work. During this time the helpdesk will not have access to customer data either.

Now that Tottenham Court Road has re-opened on the Northern line, and interchange is once more possible with the Central line, the temporary OSIs between Goodge Street, Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road have been removed.

I tend to avoid getting too involved in the politics and the fare changes on this site, but earlier this week Ken Livingstone dangled a frankly huge carrot in front of potential voters in the suburbs, promising to resurrect the much missed “avoiding zone 1″ travelcard if he is elected Mayor next year.  The story can be read Read the rest of this entry »

I’m beginning to get a little annoyed about this now.  Someone seems to have forgotten to tell the fares manager that you can take direct trains from Crayford and Bexley to Woolwich Arsenal via Slade Green, and thus take the DLR under the river to Canning Town, West Ham and Stratford.  This means that there is no earthly Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Malcolm who spotted that TfL have added some more stations to the list of early starts to the off-peak daily price cap.  They are stations north of Hatch End, but NOT Watford Junction.  Remember that although the off-peak cap applies early at all these stations, peak fares are still charged when touch in is before 09:30.  Full details are on the Peak or Off-peak page.

I thought it was time for another snippet from my own Oyster travels.  Today I had to get into Farringdon for a meeting.  With no services there or at Barbican I decided to use the bus from Southwark Jubilee line station.  This meant that I had to exit Waterloo East via the Southwark connection and walk straight through the Underground station without travelling.  There is a special setting Read the rest of this entry »

I have added a new section in the left sidebar called Latest Comments.  This gives a snippet of the last eight comments (not posted by me) from anywhere on the site.  I have ignored my comments as they are usually responses to questions raised and thus best read with the previous comment.