(For those of you who don't know, Oyster is a card based system on the London transport network, where you charge up your card with pre-pay or season ticket and its deducted automatically as you travel)
The Oyster system has only really impacted on my life recently, since I've only just started spending more time in London again after a couple of years away.
What do people think of it? Useful time-and-money saving technology, or worrying extension of monitoring and control?
Here's my views:
Pros:
1) Saves money - granted, its only 20p or something on an underground single.
2)Less hassle - so long as you charge up your card, you never have to worry about getting a ticket, and solves the common problem of "do i buy a travel card or a single" when you're not sure what the rest of the day/night holds in store for you. Now you just merrily go through the barriers, safe in the knowledge that the cheapest ticket(s) will be deducted from your card (although see cons below...)
Cons:
1) Who's watching? - as I understand it, your oyster card keeps a record of every journey you make. Who has access to this information? What might it be used for?
2) Alleged "price capping" - Oyster is supposed never to charge you more than the cost of a travelcard for the zones you travel in. I'm not to happy about trusting this to the system, however. Often when I come to charge up my Oyster I think that I might have been over charged on my last journey - but since it's never more than a quid, I usually don't think to much about it. It's just this insidious kind of error that troubles me.
On the other end, my girlfriend recently went to charge up her Oyster at a window in a tube station, and when she did, she was told that she had been undercharged on her last journey, and would have to pay an extra 40p. Doesn't seem like a lot, but what the fuck? Isn't the whole point that it should work out the correct fares itself? She couldnt really dispute the charge - without keeping a detalied record of your journeys, who could, and even if she had I imagine she would've been told that the infallible computer system was in the right, and she was in the wrong.
3) Regimented timings etc - one day travelcards are valid up til 4.30am the next morning on the night bus. It used to be the case that you could jump on the night bus usually quite a bit after 4.30, wave your travelcard and get on no trouble. Now, after 4.30 precisely, you get charged another £1 or whatever it is. One unfortunate extra from having a machine in charge of the ticketing rather than the driver.
Basically, I'm somewhat suspicious of the whole system, as I think one should be when asked to place one's trust in a computer controlled network such as this. Am I too paranoid?
The Oyster system has only really impacted on my life recently, since I've only just started spending more time in London again after a couple of years away.
What do people think of it? Useful time-and-money saving technology, or worrying extension of monitoring and control?
Here's my views:
Pros:
1) Saves money - granted, its only 20p or something on an underground single.
2)Less hassle - so long as you charge up your card, you never have to worry about getting a ticket, and solves the common problem of "do i buy a travel card or a single" when you're not sure what the rest of the day/night holds in store for you. Now you just merrily go through the barriers, safe in the knowledge that the cheapest ticket(s) will be deducted from your card (although see cons below...)
Cons:
1) Who's watching? - as I understand it, your oyster card keeps a record of every journey you make. Who has access to this information? What might it be used for?
2) Alleged "price capping" - Oyster is supposed never to charge you more than the cost of a travelcard for the zones you travel in. I'm not to happy about trusting this to the system, however. Often when I come to charge up my Oyster I think that I might have been over charged on my last journey - but since it's never more than a quid, I usually don't think to much about it. It's just this insidious kind of error that troubles me.
On the other end, my girlfriend recently went to charge up her Oyster at a window in a tube station, and when she did, she was told that she had been undercharged on her last journey, and would have to pay an extra 40p. Doesn't seem like a lot, but what the fuck? Isn't the whole point that it should work out the correct fares itself? She couldnt really dispute the charge - without keeping a detalied record of your journeys, who could, and even if she had I imagine she would've been told that the infallible computer system was in the right, and she was in the wrong.
3) Regimented timings etc - one day travelcards are valid up til 4.30am the next morning on the night bus. It used to be the case that you could jump on the night bus usually quite a bit after 4.30, wave your travelcard and get on no trouble. Now, after 4.30 precisely, you get charged another £1 or whatever it is. One unfortunate extra from having a machine in charge of the ticketing rather than the driver.
Basically, I'm somewhat suspicious of the whole system, as I think one should be when asked to place one's trust in a computer controlled network such as this. Am I too paranoid?