Thousands go free on Tube as Oyster breaks down again

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Emergency messages were flashed to all 280 stations telling staff to open the automatic ticket barriers and allow passengers through. The system-went down at 6am when Oyster card readers were not able to read prepay cards. Engineers immediately began trying to find the problem but the gates stayed open throughout the morning peak period.

The failure stunned Tube bosses who had confidently predicted there would be no more problems after the Oyster failure two weeks ago.

More than 60,000 passengers had their cards corrupted when they used them on Saturday 12 July and thousands were allowed to travel free to prevent chaos on the Monday after.

On that occasion, a software problem with automatic readers wiped the cards and passengers were charged the maximum of £4 for each trip they made.

London Underground then promised to refund all monies and an investigation was launched into the meltdown.

Gerry Doherty, General Secretary of the Tube union TSSA said: "I cannot believe this has happened again. Passenger confidence in the Oyster card system was seriously damaged last week and now even more so with this second failure".

London Underground said it thought today's problem only affected Tube passengers. Even so, technicians were checking mainline rail, Docklands Light Railway and bus networks.

It is understood the problem is different from last time in that the readers only failed to recognise pre-pay cards rather than wiping everything clean, but LU was unable to say that was definitely the case.

Yvonne Dwamena, 22, was going from Barking to High Street Kensington. She said: "It's a bit pathetic that it's happening again." Tube bosses could not say when the problem would be fixed.