Oyster and National Rail

We have today published our fare tables with the 2019 details. The caps and travelcards page has also been updated for next year. All pages can be found on the Fares Guide page. I am waiting on the zonal range data from TfL before being able to provide access to the fare finder for next year.

Now that the new entrance to Bank Station, within the Bloomberg building on Walbrook, has opened, TfL have added a new OSI between Bank and Cannon Street LU.  The OSI still works with any entrance to Bank station, but the Walbrook exit is far and away the nearest.  This entrance takes you down to the Waterloo and City line platforms and has access to the rest of the station from there.

The details have been added to my OSI list, and to the map page for Bank to Cannon Street.

The first stage of weekly capping on Oyster cards is almost here. From next Monday, 17th December, bus and tram fares will count towards a weekly as well as a daily cap. Just like contactless the weekly cap will apply to journeys made between Monday and Sunday. If you reach the bus and tram cap every day this means that on the 5th day you will be charged less as you will have reached the weekly bus and tram pass price, the same as the weekly cap.

Note: This only applies to blue adult Oyster cards. Concessions should continue to buy the weekly bus and tram pass to take advantage of the discounted rates.

At the moment rail fares (inc tube and dlr) will still only cap on a daily basis on Oyster. TfL hope to roll out the next stage in the spring of 2019.

The bus weekly capping was supposed to have started today, 10th October, but the problems caused by the recent O2 network outtage have necessitated a short delay.

Obviously in a system as large as Oyster there are going to be occasional malfunctions.  Many of them, while annoying, will not have serious repercussions.  If a gate stops working it will usually be blocked out of use, but what happens if the error doesn’t affect the actual gate function?  I have become aware of three instances recently where Oyster data has been compromised in some way.

Back in the summer a single gate at London Bridge failed to update the date.  Anyone using PAYG exiting through that gate ended up with two incomplete journeys, one ending on the previous day and one starting at their origin on that day.  Read the rest of this entry »

A new OSI was activated between gatelines at Tottenham Court Road towards the end of September.  There’s a 10 minute allowance either way.  The OSI List has been updated (including the change history).

TfL have decided to remove the OSI between Cannon Street NR and Mansion House LU.  This was added some time ago when reconstruction work at Cannon Street resulted in closure of the LU station.  They say that analysis of journeys shows very few people use this OSI compared to the thousands using the NR-LU OSI at Cannon Street itself.  I’ve removed this OSI from the list here.

TfL have very kindly provided data showing how many journeys make use of each OSI in the system. The data was recorded over a four week period in June/July 2018. Unsurprisingly the most popular ones are interchanges between National Rail terminals and Underground stations.  There are some surprises, including the accessible route OSI at Woodford which wasn’t used at all.  I’m also curious as to why so many people still walk between Hackney Downs and Central when there is a footbridge within the paid areas linking the two stations.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve received clarification from TfL that they have indeed added a new OSI between the above two stations.  This means that you can now avoid Notting Hill Gate when changing between Circle/District Lines and the Central Line.

A little later than planned, I’m delighted to announce our new mobile friendly Oyster Fare Finder. The links on this site have been updated to use it within the site, but you can also access it directly at https://oysterfares.com/off/. The functionality is very similar to the old version, but on the first screen you now choose which type of Oyster card you want to see fares for. At the top of the results page there is a new button for “amend” so you can check a different card type or just change one of the stations.

The major difference between this and the TfL version is that we still display the zonal coverage of the fares. This can be useful when working out what the default route is likely to be, but also clarifies which zones are required on a travelcard to make the journey, or which daily cap might apply. There are some cases where the default route doesn’t necessarily use the expected zones. Examples include Finsbury Park to Hackney Downs and Mottingham to Woolwich Arsenal.

The old version showing all the fares for each card type is still available on the fares guide page, in the menu on the right hand side.

Today is 15 years since Oyster was first launched on London buses and the Underground, 30th June 2003. In the early days it was just for single journeys with no daily capping.

Watch out for a celebratory launch of our new fare finder tool later this weekend.