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Card tricks
Evening Standard comment01.10.07
It is cheering for London's commuters that passengers on the mainline railway system will finally be able to use pre-paid Oystercards.
The rail companies have, at last, agreed to find £20million for new technology which will allow the cards to be used on all commuter rail services as well as buses and Tubes by 2009 - with some stations upgraded into the system within months.
The rail companies have dragged their heels too long. But this is an important step towards the integrated public transport system we have been waiting for.
Reader views (2)
This news hints at significant progress. There is not much more detail than we knew at the end of January, when Chiltern, c2c and ONE had agreed to go early. All that is new is that "early" will be January 2008. Some of us want to see the roll-out timetable for the rest. There are still some TOCs that bring up "no results" to a search of their websites for Oystercard.
- Alan Griffiths, Forest Gate, London
Great news! I have a season ticket on Oyster that doesn't include zone 1 as my regular commute doesn't go through zone 1. However, once or twice a week I travel into zone 1 in the evening from a national rail station. I have to "artificially" break the journey and make sure I join the tube network outside zone 1 so as to only pay for zone 1 (via Oyster PAYG) once. If I were to travel to the London terminal, I would have to pay for a paper extension from the zone 2 boundary and still pay the Oyster PAYG for zone 1 for my onward tube journey. Thankfully this will no longer be the case from 2009.
- Nigel, London, UK
