The Scoop

Will Boris's credit card deal repeat Oyster mistakes?

Darryl Chamberlain | Thursday 24 February, 2011 12:32

Boris Johnson thinks it’s “tip top news” – but will his scheme to allow people to use contactless credit cards on buses and Tubes push him into the same trap his predecessor fell into?

It’s been four years since Ken Livingstone backed a deal to allow Barclaycard to embed Oyster chips into their credit cards.

Now the current mayor has announced that Oyster readers will be upgraded to allow all contactless credit cards to be used for travel on Transport for London services – starting with London’s buses, whose ticket machines will be converted by the Olympics.

But London’s mainline rail users are shut out of this deal – just like they were with Oyster when that launched in 2003.

On the National Rail network, only TfL’s own London Overground system will take credit cards. With many Overground stations served by different rail companies, and much of London only reachable by National Rail, the system looks set to cause the same confusion that Oyster did before it finally went London-wide in 2010.

Indeed, after being elected in 2008, Boris used the issue as a stick to beat “zone one mayor” Ken with.

TfL says “discussions are under way” with the National Rail companies who run services in London. But those companies extracted a big price to allow Oyster to be used on their trains, including different fare scales, the notorious extension permit for people travelling out of their zones, as well as making TfL cough up £32m for installing Oyster equipment.

(In the case of Southeastern, that included £447,000 to pay for ticket gates at Lewisham and Waterloo East which are left wide open every evening anyway.)

TfL will be hoping the companies are more willing to take part this time.

Transport watchdog London Travelwatch has noticed the anomaly, calling it “very disappointing”.

“We know only too well the confusion caused for passengers when Oyster was unavailable on rail, and this should not be allowed to happen again,” it said. “London has an integrated transport network, and tickets must be integrated too.”

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