Thursday, November 22, 2007

Oyster cards

Something else I've wanted to blog about. Now I am back at work full time but only in the office three days a week, my once cherished gold card is but a distant memory. I now have a prepay Oyster card which is absolutely fab for the bus and tube and of course does price capping, discounts and is generally the bees knees.

But, and you know this is coming, I am going to have a moan. The lack of Oyster functionality on SE Trains is causing me a big headache. I don't think (though I'm not brilliant at unravelling fares policies so I might be wrong) it's actually costing me money but it is a pain in the neck - I usually go to work on the bus as I go in early enough for the traffic not to be a nightmare. But, at hometime it's busy so the tube then train and walk is the order of the day. And this is where it gets problematic. Every day I have to buy a single ticket for the train part of my journey - and all because the TOCs couldn't (or wouldn't) get their acts together and join in with Oyster prepay.

By the time they have got their acts together, I will be redundant and in all likelihood commuter journeys in to London will be a distant memory in themselves. Ho hum.

2 comments:

Andrew Brown said...

Apparently we have to wait until January 2009 for Oyster pay as you go to reach all overground stations.

Clare Griffiths said...

Yeah - bit of a pain. Thinking about it, my issue could be solved with something like a carnet ticket of single tickets for the train to Hither Green. Would be nice if SE Trains made this kind of thing available.