Is the Oyster system now closed to new extensions?

[miklcct]

Potters Bar and Radlett are the last stations to be added into the Oyster system in 2019, since then new stations are only added to the contactless system only.

Is the Oyster system now officially closed to new extensions, that it will no longer expand further than the current boundary?

 

[Surreytraveller]

I believe that any further extensions to the Oystercard will only be possible if they make use of the existing zones

 

[SynthD]

The card-based system can only deal with 16 zones. I’ve seen it sometimes said that the backend-based system can do at least 99 zones but others disputed that.

 

[plugwash]

Potters Bar and Radlett are the last stations to be added into the Oyster system in 2019, since then new stations are only added to the contactless system only.

Is the Oyster system now officially closed to new extensions, that it will no longer expand further than the current boundary?

AIUI the issue is that they have run out of zones. So new stations can only be added if they are in existing zones (or if they are excluded from capping like heathrow express and souteastern high speed ) and that presents a revenue issue for outward expansion.

New stations within the existing zones have been added to oyster in the last couple of years. The number depend on what exactly you count as a seperate station. There are

completely new stations with new names: Nine elms, Battersea power statition, Barking Riverside and Woolwich.
stations sharing the name of an existing station but not directly connected to it: Canary Warf
new areas of existing stations that show up as seperate entries in the fare finder: Most of the rest of the elizibeth line core.

I would assume that at least the GWML part of old oak common will also be added in due course.

I belive the eventual plan is to move everything to backend processing, which should remove the limitation, but potentially at the cost of introducing other problems.

What I don't get is why they don't just use retroactive capping, like they already do for weekly capping.

 

[MikeWh]

Is the Oyster system now officially closed to new extensions, that it will no longer expand further than the current boundary?

Officially is possibly the wrong word, but to all intents and purposes it is.

The Oyster system works in zones which are treated as concentric circles around London. For each passenger type (adult, 11-15 etc) there can be different single fares for similar zone coverage, but there is only one set of caps (daily anytime, daily off-peak and weekly anytime). Thus any TOC wishing to add a station beyond zones 1-6 would have to be happy with the cap already set at whichever zone would be chosen. If their travelcard prices are less than the appropriate caps then they may be happy to allow people to be potentially charged more (as happens with C2C Grays area stations), but not less. Caps up to zone 1-9 are set by TfL, zone 10 is LNWR, zones 11-12 are GA and zones 13-14 should be GTR but the zone 12 caps exceed those that GTR really want to charge. It's a mess created by DfT coercing TfL to make the system do something it wasn't designed for.

The other issue is with the concentric circles. It's one thing to charge the same fare for a zone 6-1 journey as for a zone 6-1-6 journey, but another entirely to charge the same for a zone 14-1 journey as a zone 14-1-14 journey. Thus GWR (who price the EL fares beyond zone 6) might be happy for Slough to be zone 9* but they might not be happy with the fare to Brentwood being the same as the fare to Tottenham Court Road.

This is a topic which I keep meaning to go into more detail on my site, but haven't got round to yet.

*Spoiler: used as an example, but reality is that fares beyond West Drayton rapidly exceed zone 9 caps.

 

[Wallsendmag]

I doubt that Oyster will be expanding the focus is on Contactless now

 

[JonathanH]

the zone 12 caps exceed those that GTR really want to charge

In what way? While I recognise that a off-peak day travelcard from Redhill is £17.30 and the off-peak Oyster cap is £22.40, I have always thought that simply reflects the additional validity (eg Zone 1-9 and multiple trips from Redhill) included in the daily cap and the fact that the travelcard is 'underpriced'.

Isn't this sort of 'alignment' of fares exactly what we are going to see when the London fare structure is extended outside the existing area?

 

[busestrains]

The card-based system can only deal with 16 zones. I’ve seen it sometimes said that the backend-based system can do at least 99 zones but others disputed that.

Am i correct in think there is currently 14 zones? If so they could surely add two new zones in the future if necessary?

 

[miklcct]

Am i correct in think there is currently 14 zones? If so they could surely add two new zones in the future if necessary?

Zone 15 was reserved for the Elizabeth line out to Reading but didn't get used.

 

[JonathanH]

Zone 15 was reserved for the Elizabeth line out to Reading but didn't get used.

Somewhat difficult to see how it would have been used without the stations in from Reading going into existing zones.

It would for instance have meant Maidenhead being in the same zone as Redhill.

 

[Taunton]

The other issue is with the concentric circles. It's one thing to charge the same fare for a zone 6-1 journey as for a zone 6-1-6 journey, but another entirely to charge the same for a zone 14-1 journey as a zone 14-1-14 journey. Thus GWR (who price the EL fares beyond zone 6) might be happy for Slough to be zone 9* but they might not be happy with the fare to Brentwood being the same as the fare to Tottenham Court Road.

I've some background in this, but it was commonly accepted that the 14-1-14 journeys, to take your example, and similar outer-centre-outer journeys, are such a small proportion of the overall volume that, where there's actually quite a high fare anyway for going into zone 1 anyway, as in London, that it wasn't worth troubling over. It's similar to the London flat fare on a bus - sure, on a long route that doesn't give extra revenue, but such end-end passengers on bus routes are few and far between.

 

[JonathanH]

Thus GWR (who price the EL fares beyond zone 6) might be happy for Slough to be zone 9* but they might not be happy with the fare to Brentwood being the same as the fare to Tottenham Court Road.

To be pedantic, in a strange quirk, Slough to Brentwood is actually priced by Greater Anglia, but you are right that GWR have an interest.

 

[Gerald Fiennes]

Well, Oyster is essentially a mid-70s techniology, ie. a stored value system in which funds are essentially held on the card and have to be withdrawn and validated as such.. Contactless is much more flexible as all the processing is done in the backoffice, not on the card itself, and there very few systems limitations.

So demand is now heavily on contactless, just as is the case with the vast majority of small payments in the non-rail world.

The issue then is what point TfL is brave enough to say that Oyster is going to close and to set up a mechanism for returning all funds, presumably over many years, stored on all those Oyster cards in drawers all over the world ....

When contactless is 98% of transactions? 99%?

 

[JonathanH]

Contactless is much more flexible as all the processing is done in the backoffice, not on the card itself, and there very few systems limitations.

Not flexible enough yet to allow for railcard discounts, children etc because of the issues with proving eligibility. The fraud loss risk with Contactless offering these discounts is considerable.

 

[duncanp]

Well, Oyster is essentially a mid-70s techniology, ie. a stored value system in which funds are essentially held on the card and have to be withdrawn and validated as such.. Contactless is much more flexible as all the processing is done in the backoffice, not on the card itself, and there very few systems limitations.

So demand is now heavily on contactless, just as is the case with the vast majority of small payments in the non-rail world.

The issue then is what point TfL is brave enough to say that Oyster is going to close and to set up a mechanism for returning all funds, presumably over many years, stored on all those Oyster cards in drawers all over the world ....

When contactless is 98% of transactions? 99%?

The problem is that there will always be some people who do not have a contactless bank card, for one reason or another.

If TfL wish to get rid of the Oyster card, they will have to find a solution for those who do not have a contactless bank card, who will otherwise be excluded from the transport network.

Considering the number of people who use TfL, 1% or 2% of travellers is still a substantial amount of people.

 

[AM9]

I was just typing in a question about railcards when the above two posts popped up. So, giver there is a fraudulent discount issue with railcards, is this seriously being addressed, or it there an agenda to hope that such discounts fade away as they are in the 'too difficult' box so let's drive them out?

 

[Haywain]

I was just typing in a question about railcards when the above two posts popped up. So, giver there is a fraudulent discount issue with railcards, is this seriously being addressed, or it there an agenda to hope that such discounts fade away as they are in the 'too difficult' box so let's drive them out?

I would say that extensions to conactless payment to a wider area will see more effort made to find a solution.

 

[AM9]

I would say that extensions to conactless payment to a wider area will see more effort made to find a solution.

Sounds good, so the main outstanding problem would be day travelcards?

 

[Haywain]

Sounds good, so the main outstanding problem would be day travelcards?

Daily capping deals with that.

 

[AM9]

Daily capping deals with that.

So how does that work with an outboundary travelcard equivalent with contactless capping?

 

[greatkingrat]

The issue then is what point TfL is brave enough to say that Oyster is going to close and to set up a mechanism for returning all funds, presumably over many years, stored on all those Oyster cards in drawers all over the world ....

It could be a useful solution to TfL's funding problems. Presumably at the moment they have a pot of money representing all the outstanding Oyster balances that they can't use. If they said you have 12 months to get a refund or the balance expires then a lot of people wouldn't bother and TfL could spend the outstanding cash.

 

[Watershed]

It could be a useful solution to TfL's funding problems. Presumably at the moment they have a pot of money representing all the outstanding Oyster balances that they can't use. If they said you have 12 months to get a refund or the balance expires then a lot of people wouldn't bother and TfL could spend the outstanding cash.

They could say that but they would be in breach of contract, because the Oyster conditions that people signed up to do not state an expiry date for credit.

 

[miklcct]

The fraud loss risk with Contactless offering these discounts is considerable.

Other places, e.g. Stockholm, have implemented it already so there isn't a technological barrier.

 

[35B]

They could say that but they would be in breach of contract, because the Oyster conditions that people signed up to do not state an expiry date for credit.

Something that could be dealt with by a unilateral change of terms and conditions letter, with deadline for claiming a refund.

 

[Watershed]

Something that could be dealt with by a unilateral change of terms and conditions letter, with deadline for claiming a refund.

It's difficult to see how such a unilateral change could be deemed as accepted, if the cardholder doesn't use their Oyster again.

 

[Starmill]

It's difficult to see how such a unilateral change could be deemed as accepted, if the cardholder doesn't use their Oyster again.

And also astonishingly difficult to see how those conditions could be communicated by letter to everyone involved...

 

[AM9]

How about a new issue of oyster cards with an appropriate free replacement period. That would ensure that most of those that weren't replaced were long-term dormant. The terms for the replacement cards could then include a time-out period. It might even be worth giving an option of a refund for unused value on the card of a replacement wasn't wanted.

 

[SynthD]

How about a new issue of oyster cards with an appropriate free replacement period. That would ensure that most of those that weren't replaced were long-term dormant. The terms for the replacement cards could then include a time-out period. It might even be worth giving an option of a refund for unused value on the card of a replacement wasn't wanted.

They did that a few years ago, to flush out the oldest ones (marked with a D iirc). That effort may unlock some backend ability that relies on the current cards, I’m unclear.

 

[Starmill]

First-generation Oyster cards are still out there, albeit in very tiny proportion now, and as far as I am aware they still work.

 

[swt_passenger]

They did that a few years ago, to flush out the oldest ones (marked with a D iirc). That effort may unlock some backend ability that relies on the current cards, I’m unclear.

Isn’t it that the older (first gen) cards are NOT marked with the D? I think the first gen cards are not fully compatible with the TfL App live travel history or something?