For example. This week, I signed up for a major IT-based initiative and bought an Oyster card. This is a brand new scheme for travel on London's public transport network -- a contactless smart card that holds all your details and gives you access to the underground and overground trains, buses and trams that hold the capital together. Before Oyster, you bought a season ticket that had a magnetic stripe on the back and printing on the front: bus drivers and ticket inspectors read the front bit, automatic entry gates scanned the back bit, and between them they let you on.
Now, you just wave your Oyster in the vicinity of a big yellow sensor on buses and at stations and off you go. The whole scheme is knitted together by computers: you can do clever things like pay for your journeys over the Internet, recharge your card at kiosks and, er, feel smug as you sail through ticket barriers without taking your card out of its holder. A great leap forward for commuterkind, or so it's been sold.
The trouble is, the card has no printing. Anyone who wants to know what's in the card and doesn't have a reader -- like a lot of people at train stations, or people you need to talk to about your lost card over the telephone -- is not going to be able to help you. So, whenever you buy or recharge an Oyster card, you also get a little printed slip the exact same size and shape as an old fashioned ticket which confirms what you've paid for. This you have to show or read out over the telephone when you're buying an extra journey or explaining that you've lost your card: obviously, if you need it to cope with a lost card, you mustn't keep it with the card itself. But if you need it to buy an extended journey, you must have it to hand together with the Oyster. So you have to have it about your person, just not in the same holder. Woe betide you if you lose it. And more woe if you lose the Oyster. That's two things to lose instead of one, for no noticeable benefit. You see why I'm a bit puzzled.
The same feeling of befuddlement hit me a few months back, when I upgraded my old-style driving licence for a brand-new computerised one. The old one was a large sheet of paper carrying all manner of information -- what I was allowed to drive, when the licence ran out, evidence of naughtiness concerning speeding, and all that sort of thing. The new one is a credit-card sized piece of plastic with my digitised picture on, but no room for much of the rest of the information. That comes on a separate piece of paper called the counterpart. Which -- ah, you're ahead of me here -- you must keep separately from the main licence, except for when you mustn't. Hiring a car? You need the counterpart, so the hirer can check you're not some manic speed freak just one breath away from disqualification. Need to prove to the police that you're duly authorised to operate the automobile in which you've just been stopped? The card will do. Two things to lose instead of one.
Talkback
Just read Rupert's piece on the new Oyster Card...
What is all the hassle with the new Oyster Card on London Transport? I live in Germany and here the scheme is much simpler.
1. You purchase your monthly/season ticket
2. You put it in your wallet
3. When it expires you remove it from your wallet and throw it away.
3.a. If you are unlucky, you might be asked once or twice during the tickets lifetime to show it to the Inspector - around a €50 fine if you don't have a valid ticket.
You don't need to show the ticket to get on a bus/tram/S-Bahn/U-Bahn. It just sits in your pocket/handbag.
There are no ticket gates to go through.
If you buy a single journey card or day card, you must use the old puch system (there is a time-stamper in every station, usually near the ticket machine) which puts the time, date and station number on the card (this allows you to, for example, buy 20 day cards at the same time and use them when you want).
What wonderful piece of technology is this? I hear you ask. Wireless? High powered Electronic Sensors? Nothing so high tech. The tickets are printed on paper, there is a little hologram strip running across it to prove it is a genuine ticket, but that's it.
How does it work? HONOUR!
Crazy? It sounds like a daft antiquated English notion to me, but here it works. People buy there tickets and use the trains without the hassle of big queues to get in and out of the stations.
It is free access to whoever wants it... You can get on the platform and say goodbye to your sweetheart, be standing on the platform when they arrive, no worries.
You need a lot less staff and machinery as well, so it is very economical to run. You just need some ticket inspectors to randomly ride on trains and buses etc. and inspect the tickets.
Sure some people try to break the system and ride for free and if you are lucky, you can get away with it. Sometimes I've travelled the whole month without seeing an inspector, other times, I've seen one on every vehicle on a journey.
Still, the unions would probably be up in arms about the changes in the UK, freedom for the commuters, more efficient, cheaper and cost effective service requiring less staff? Nope, can't have that! ;-)
München, for example has more stops than London Transport (underground and trams, don't know about buses) and covers a larger area. The cost of a monthly card is about 48€. The trains are modern, clean and fairly punctual - even with between 1-2m of snow on the lines/roads over night, they didn't run more than 10 min late last winter.
One of the key facts in this article is wrong. You don't need anything other than the oyster card itself to travel around London whether or not you have your ticket inspected or you want to extend it. The 'record card,' as it is called, is purely for your benefit.
I agree that it is an oversight that some of the people who nead to be able to read the information on the oyster card cannot, but it is one from which the consumer benefits - the fact that a number of train companies, for example, have failed to invest in the technology to read the cards, means that any oyster card is effectively valid on their services.