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Contactless on the underground

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Chrisbolton

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Hi there,

Probably really obvious, I just wanted to check -

I am arriving in Euston a week Friday, catching the tube to South Kensington, then from South Kensington to Victoria. A Day card is £12.00, however Oyster is £6.40 - is this the same price for contactless?
 
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PeterC

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IIRC the only difference is that contactless has weekly as well as daily capping.
 

Chrisbolton

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Im only there for the day.

Im at the Royal Albert Hall (Dave Gilmour). Its supposed to start at 7.45, say it finishes at 10.30, will I have enough time to get to Victoria Coach Station? Mine leaves at 11.45, though I have booked another for 1am just incase (Only like £5 each to Manchester)
 

yorkie

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Royal Albert Hall to Victoria Coach Station is approx 30-35min walk, or 20mins by bus (including time to walk to/from bus stops, but if a lot of people are exiting at the same time, allow extra time!).

If you are desperate to get the Underground, you can walk to South Kensington, but it won't be much quicker than walking the whole way to be worthwhile (unless you have reduced mobility)

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/R...08830b2c4e8!2m2!1d-0.1483905!2d51.4938357!3e3
 

MikeWh

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Hi there,

Probably really obvious, I just wanted to check -

I am arriving in Euston a week Friday, catching the tube to South Kensington, then from South Kensington to Victoria. A Day card is £12.00, however Oyster is £6.40 - is this the same price for contactless?

£6.40 is the daily cap for zones 1-2 and applies both to Oyster and contactless. However, a tube single fare is £2.40 so you should only be charged £4.80 for the day.
 

Chrisbolton

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Im easy either way really, its just that I know my phone will have totally died by then and am not familiar at all with London - sure I will be able to draw a small map or something though.

Probably another daft question but do all the streets have pavements or are some more faster roads?
 

Hadders

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It takes approximately 10 minutes to walk from the Royal Albert Hall to South Kensington Underground Station which is straight along Exhibition Road. From there it's a 4 minute journey to Victoria on the Circle/District Line.

I was at a late night Proms Concert last week. At 2335 I was still inside the Royal Albert Hall. I exited on the 'wrong side' of the Hall for the Underground station but after a rather brisk walk to South Kensington managed to make it to Finsbury Park with 3 minutes to spare before the 0011 departure :D
 
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maniacmartin

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One other major difference between Oyster and contactless bank case if you can load some National Rail railcards onto Oyster at Underground and some National Rail ticket offices, which gives a discount on off-peak fares. You cannot do this with contactless.
 
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If you plan on using an American Express contactless card, have a backup card as well. I wasn't able to use Amex yesterday, but the barriers accepted my Visa (tied to the same account as the Amex) just fine.
 

Camden

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Im easy either way really, its just that I know my phone will have totally died by then and am not familiar at all with London - sure I will be able to draw a small map or something though.

Probably another daft question but do all the streets have pavements or are some more faster roads?
You're talking Central London, so you're not going to come up against something like the M60 if that's what you mean?

If you're planning on walking, then fire up google maps and switch into Street View and virtually walk the route. That should help you a lot when you're then there for real.
 

Clip

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There are also street maps on and around there which will help you find where you need to go should you decide to walk to Victoria.
 

telstarbox

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I'd get the Underground because although the walk isn't that long, it's a bit fiddly if you don't know the area.

The coach station is 5-10 minutes walk from the Underground station. If you want food or drink for the journey there's more choice in the railway station than in the coach station.
 
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Chrisbolton

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Thanks for the replies everyone

Thats what I was thinking, its only like a mile and half but almost seems to zig-zag across the whole area.
 

Clip

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Thanks for the replies everyone

Thats what I was thinking, its only like a mile and half but almost seems to zig-zag across the whole area.

Be warned though - I was at a late night proms the other week too and by the time we got to the tube station we had to wait around 10 mins or so for the tube to come to get to vic as the service was running down so do factor that in depending what time you finish as well as any delays there may be due to incidents that may occur.
 

quarella

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Bit of help answering a friend please as I have an Oyster and do not use contactless for other transactions. He used contactless last week on an out and back journey so tap in/tap out X 2. He says that his card is limited to 5 contactless transactions per day. Should he be travelling around would his next tap in reach that limit? Is this a feature of contactless cards? Seems a little odd with capping. Thanks in advance.
 

Clip

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Bit of help answering a friend please as I have an Oyster and do not use contactless for other transactions. He used contactless last week on an out and back journey so tap in/tap out X 2. He says that his card is limited to 5 contactless transactions per day. Should he be travelling around would his next tap in reach that limit? Is this a feature of contactless cards? Seems a little odd with capping. Thanks in advance.

I do believe that it resets if they do a non contactless transaction.
 

Paul Kelly

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Bit of help answering a friend please as I have an Oyster and do not use contactless for other transactions. He used contactless last week on an out and back journey so tap in/tap out X 2. He says that his card is limited to 5 contactless transactions per day. Should he be travelling around would his next tap in reach that limit? Is this a feature of contactless cards? Seems a little odd with capping. Thanks in advance.

This helpful post from island explains how it works: http://www.railforums.co.uk/showpost.php?p=1802241&postcount=16 (In summary, if I understand correctly, no, each touch shouldn't count as a separate contactless transaction; only the first one counts towards the limit of daily contactless transactions). As an aside, "touching" a "contactless" card is really quite an oxymoron.
 

edwin_m

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Maybe it's so named because it doesn't need electrical contact like a chip, not because it doesn't need contact of any kind?
 

swt_passenger

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Bit of help answering a friend please as I have an Oyster and do not use contactless for other transactions. He used contactless last week on an out and back journey so tap in/tap out X 2. He says that his card is limited to 5 contactless transactions per day. Should he be travelling around would his next tap in reach that limit? Is this a feature of contactless cards? Seems a little odd with capping. Thanks in advance.

TfL have specific arrangements for contactless cards that (AIUI from previous discussions) are something of a special case.

Each tap in or out doesn't cause a transaction, TfL only present one daily transaction to the bank, it is done following any capping calculation that is due.
 

MikeWh

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This helpful post from island explains how it works: http://www.railforums.co.uk/showpost.php?p=1802241&postcount=16 (In summary, if I understand correctly, no, each touch shouldn't count as a separate contactless transaction; only the first one counts towards the limit of daily contactless transactions). As an aside, "touching" a "contactless" card is really quite an oxymoron.

Not even the first touch counts as a contactless transaction in terms of any limit, AIUI.
 

swt_passenger

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Found a written description of the Transit Transaction Model (TTM) used for contactless, it is different to the retail systems:

Definition of the Transit Transaction Model (TTM)

4.15 The TTM is a new Contactless payment model established by TfL in collaboration with Visa, MasterCard and American Express. It has been designed to support operational constraints of transit environments and joins the worlds of transit and payment together. The TTM is now mandated on all card issuers worldwide by Mastercard and Amex and in Europe by Visa Europe. TfL’s implementation of the TTM is the first and so far the only example of this, which makes TfL’s intellectual property on this particularly valuable.

4.16 The need for a TTM arose as the way Contactless cards are used in the retail environment is not suitable for the transit environment due to two critical differences between retail and transit. First, the value of the payment is not known in transit at the time of using a Contactless card on rail; it only becomes known when a journey has been completed, with two or more touches of a Contactless card. Second, the methods to control risk in the retail environment require the card to default to Chip and Pin from time to time, which cannot be supported in the high intensity transit environment.

http://content.tfl.gov.uk/aac-20141217-part-1-item12-contactless-payments.pdf

This seems to support the view that a TfL ticket barrier will never ask for a PIN, as in the retail use, which is logical as there are no PIN readers present. Which is what we thought, but useful to see it explicitly explained in such terms. The only time a contactless card won't let you in seems to be if it has been hotlisted (the 'Deny List').
 
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Be3G

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My anecdotal evidence certainly supports the idea that TfL's CPC implementation is entirely separate to the standard retail methods requiring occasional authentication. I have a CPC which is used almost exclusively for my London travel; it only sees a cash machine or shop card reader probably twice per year. Yet I make many bus journeys each week with nary a problem, aside from the odd glitch with the bus readers preventing anyone's CPC from working.

(P.S. I'm suitably impressed by the seemingly large number of late-night Prommers we have here! They can be a bit niche but well worth going to.)
 
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