Oyster is it fit for purpose?

[LMS 4F]

i have never had an Oyster card, I live in Yorkshire, and my visits to London have been infrequent of late. However from what I have read on this forum and have seen in the recent TV programmes leads me to ask whether Oyster is fit for purpose.
It is obvious that there is large scale fare evasion taking place and despite the best efforts of TFL many people are getting away with it on a regular basis.
There are also lots of people getting caught by the complexity of the system, particularly where they travel across zones.
I can see the advantage of people being able to touch in and out getting people through promptly. There is also the money spent on the system but if TFL were starting again tomorrow would they us this or a similar system again?

 

[Energy]

Its currently supplied by cubic (apart from the contactless and mobile payment system which was developed by TfL although is used by cubic), previously it included other companies as well but cubic are currently rolling out OMNY in new york, maybe if it was today they would look like that, I agree the zones system can be a little confusing

 

[30907]

I don't see how you can avoid some sort of zonal system for London, and concentric ones are the simplest.
A German-style system (Hamburg, Berlin) would
- integrate NR fully
- abolish pink readers
- have no barriers
- have seriously high penalty fares
- but still live with high levels of fare evasion.
Other parts of Germany have matrix-type zones which are at least as complex.

I don't know enough about Oyster to comment on its technical faults.

 

[Bald Rick]

i have never had an Oyster card, I live in Yorkshire, and my visits to London have been infrequent of late. However from what I have read on this forum and have seen in the recent TV programmes leads me to ask whether Oyster is fit for purpose.
It is obvious that there is large scale fare evasion taking place and despite the best efforts of TFL many people are getting away with it on a regular basis.
There are also lots of people getting caught by the complexity of the system, particularly where they travel across zones.
I can see the advantage of people being able to touch in and out getting people through promptly. There is also the money spent on the system but if TFL were starting again tomorrow would they us this or a similar system again?

There clearly isn’t ‘large scale’ evasion.

What would be your alternative proposal?

 

[JonathanH]

Other parts of Germany have matrix-type zones which are at least as complex.

London desparately needs a German style matrix zone structure to balance the books. The circular zonal structure makes orbital journeys too cheap. At the same time it unfairly assumes all people travel into the centre and doesn't allow multiple journeys to be made in the suburbs as cheaply as they can be made in the centre.

 

[swt_passenger]

There clearly isn’t ‘large scale’ evasion.

In the order of 5 million people use it daily and the vast majority will never even see revenue protection staff. It would be interesting to know the percentage of “problem” journeys is compared to any others...

 

[JKF]

When I lived in London, using several trains about once a week I’d probably encounter a revenue protection officer about every other week, most often on the DLR. I’d say on at least 10% of journeys, so they weren’t that uncommon.

I did get caught out a few times by not completing a journey within a set time - usually when travelling with my son and having to stop for a nappy change somewhere or negotiate slow and busy lifts with a pushchair, not sure the allocated time was fair taking this into account and must affect disabled passengers even more. I didn’t always get round to appealing when this happened, or couldn’t get through on the phone lines quickly.

 

[markymark2000]

The Oyster system is good for some things but not others. If you are unfamiliar with the system, you can get caught out easily.

As for the evasion, quite a bit of it is on the buses with people using all door boarding. If the NB4L was scrapped and we went back to front door boarding, rear alighting, that would reduce a lot of the bus evasion.
Then you need barriers at stations to be active for longer. Quite a few people I have seen on the TV programmes say that they know when the barriers will be open so they abuse that fact.

You will always have some fare evasion, it's a case of tackling the easiest methods of fare evasion.

 

[LMS 4F]

One persons fare evasion is surely everyone else's higher fare or tax to make up the shortfall. There has always been fare dodging and always will be, short of a system that no one could support or afford. It is the complexity of the system that seems to me to be at fault, with multiple different Oyster cards, 6 fare zones and then network rail on top of this.
Perhaps instead of zones one fare across the whole system, set lower would cut out cross zone abuse.
As for buses in some cities some services are free, this encourages use and there is obviously no evasion. Not all the system could be free but in some area a trial maybe worthwhile.
I based my original comment , large scale evasion, on the TV programmes. Any figure must be a guess but it would be nice to know what the official guess by TFL actually is.

 

[TubeMapCentral]

Zonal systems only work really well for passengers when the fares are too heavily subsidised for anomalies to matter. TfL effectively runs Zone 1 as a punitive zone, cf Paris where the city inside the Peripherique covers an area the equivalent of Zone 2 and 1/2 in London (RER is zoned but not the Metro). London has too many zones, and then creating easements complicates them still further. Also note that on a per mile basis, travelling east-West can often be more expensive than travelling north-south.