That's just misguided guesses. The contract is to support contactless bank cards. They might also have their own "new Oyster" in the future, but I don't see the reason to store railcard info on the card when the processing will all be done back-office as well.
You are conflating two different projects the rollout of TFL contactless to stations in the south east and a separate project by TfL to reduce their Oyster support costs by replacing the old but 'intelligent' Oyster with a 'dumb token' contactless smart card. TfL are leveraging the developments required for the DfT rollout such as railcard acceptance to further the overall development of their contactless system.
I've recently done this, and it works easily. However, I have one KeyGo card. Are there different issues when I have three different visa cards registered to my Tfl contactless account? Personally I would have thought that as long as the billing is done at the backend once a day, then I would just need the railcard registered to my TfL account and that would take the railcard into account when billing me on whichever card I've used that day.
The contract is not to support just bank cards. Intact the service specification for project oval requires TfL to develop a solution for those that do not have bank cards
I guess if it was paper tickets a solution would not need to be developed.Paper tickets?
There has yet to be a public announcement beyond the map in the consultation, merely educated guesswork.
Not quite, because you can see your 'today's journeys' on the TFL website with estimated cost within an hour or so. But you are correct in that it is not known if the card is valid and it will come out of the bank until the final processing has been done overnight.
Then there are very few stations left on the line! Not covering those will cause more problems than are otherwise being avoided
The boundaries have been revised outwards in few cases since the initial proposal in the public draft, Alton is now included.
The fuss is that it is not checked at the point of use.
This can be easily detected:
Oyster allows checks at point of use to be done, though they don't seem frequent as I have not been asked to show my railcard (other than to add the discount to the card in the first place) ever on the TfL network. Though maybe if I lived in london and was commuting I would have been asked for it
I've had my 18-25 linked to my Oyster card for nearly 3 years and have never had it checked, ever. Neither has my partner who has had theirs linked for 2 years, and they use the trains more than I do.
The fact that railcards are not checked most of the time on Oyster is immaterial. The DfT want the ability to check, and will not sign off on a system that doesn't allow them to do so.
Both of these issues (which are highly marginal, in any event) would be resolved if the existing hotlist/blocked database were expanded to include details of the Railcards applied to particular cards. It's not rocket science and I'm struggling to understand why people keep suggesting that this is a huge blocker to the rollout of Railcards on contactless! All it takes is a bit of funding - but that money has not been forthcoming yet.
Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own countryIndeed.
Some time ago I proposed a system on here for barcode based e-ticketing.
It was rubbished on the grounds of insufficient security.
A year or two later and an e-ticketing system was implemented that was very close to what was proposed but was slightly less secure...
Rail commuters set to benefit from ‘tap and go’ ticketing
Easier and potentially cheaper rail travel could be coming to Kent as part of a national smart ticketing roll-out.www.kentonline.co.uk
I thought it was going to roll out in 2024? Was it announced to be delayed until March 2025?
