Why is Oyster and Contactless not nationwide?

I was involved in the very early discussions about Oyster (then the Prestige Project) with the TOCs via ATOC. I had an able ex BR person to help me. From day one none of the TOCs believed Oyster would ever happen. They saw no business case for them. They thought it was a massive trojan horse for TfL / LU / LT (this was late 90s hence the multiple organisations) to steal "their" revenue and their passengers. They also took the view that LU / LT had to pay for anything and everything they might have to change. They were also very fearful of a technology and supplier "lock in" given the direction that Rail Settlement Plan was taking about technology replacement on NR. Now I may have been the worst advocate in the world (I don't think I was) but with that attitude you can see why things took so damn long. In essence they folded their arms and stuck their heads in the sand at the same time. Of course, LU / LT did proceed with Prestige and later the Oyster Card was born. By this time I was off the project but my successors struggled just as badly with the TOCs. Of course with the Mayor at the time making political announcements they sensed that there was a lot of money to be got at if they carried on refusing. On this point they were right and TfL ended up forking out millions. A further irony is that once Oyster was in place the TOCs raked in loads of money because people had access to a convenient form of ticketing and used trains more. Furthermore, the TOCs have been able to follow TfL's lead in reducing ticket office coverage as sales have moved off system. Contactless will push this trend even more. It is worth noting that the TOCs initially refused to join in with Contactless but about 3 days of damaging, critical comment in the London media forced them to back down and join in pretty quickly after TfL's formal launch of the facility on their rail services. How times change.

Behind all of this nonsense we had the DfT who don't like things that are "not invented here" being foisted on them. They also disliked the "closed system" nature of Oyster and wanted their own "open" system with the ability for multiple suppliers to provide compliant kit against a nationwide spec. And so we got ITSO. This has stumbled along for years and it was the decision to put the national concessionary fare schemes on to ITSO that gave any sort of "volume" for the ITSO product and related compliant technology. Later the DfT funded equipment changes on the TfL Oyster network to allow ITSO spec cards holding valid products to work on the TfL network (principally TOC issued smartcards with Travelcard seasons loaded). Problem is that ITSO is slower than Oyster and cumbersome. Having travelled on several buses outside London recently the dwell times, even with a lot of smartcard holders, are appalling.

The DfT has also failed to establish any sort of meaningful vision or strategy for smart ticketing. The debacle over South East Flexible Ticketing (in another thread) shows this. In essence you have an industry and ownership structure that deliberately prevents rational, national strategies for things like smartcards or mobile ticketing or contactless. In theory a lot of the technology is to common standards but if you can't get TOCs to work across boundaries, agree national product IDs or anything else then company level smart ticketing on what is a *network* is doomed to fail. To add insult to injury it was TfL who developed the inhouse solution for accepting contactless bank cards for travel. That must really stick in the throat of the DfT - those "communists" (now run by a Labour Mayor) at TfL doing customer friendly technology developments *in house*. Heaven help us. Even worse TfL have struck a deal to licence their contactless transport payment technology meaning anyone can have it deployed provided TfL get a slice of the action.

To be fair for a moment there are genuine issues over whether Oyster can work when fares become very expensive. The whole relationship between deposits / card balances / fares for PAYG would become skewed very quickly. Furthermore TfL themselves are trying very hard to get out of Oyster as quickly as they can but they face some issues in so doing, many are political which are the hardest ones to deal with. Not everyone has or can obtain a bank account complete with cards linked to their accounts. It is unacceptable to the London Assembly for any sections of society to be forced out of access to London's public transport network so having a residual level of basic Oyster products than can be run using cash is an essential. I think Oyster (or something similar) could work in regional form in many places in the UK where fare levels are at reasonable levels and product choices can legitimately be simpler - singles, daily caps, some form of season ticket. It all starts to fall apart when you get class / product differentiation in the market place plus reservations / advance tickets etc etc. No one would want a product that only ever charged you the ordinary fare when you could get a much lower fare by going to a machine.

In essence there are really two major rail products - urban / short distance traffic with simple ticketing needs which Oyster can cope with. The second is Inter City / interrurban / long distance rural where fares are much higher and more complex and where a dense retailing network (for buying smartcards and loading value or tickets) may not be available or viable. You have to ask if there is any point at all in providing a smart ticket product for this second market given all the complexity in fares and nuances in product structure that the public like if they feel they get a bargain fare by booking ahead. The same issue applies to mobile or app ticketing - all you are doing is making a bit of tech replace a piece of card with a stripe on the back. Now I may be a luddite but I don't really see the point of putting expensive tickets on a piece of tech where the battery may run out. I can see the point of smart ticketing in that urban context but even here ITSO is a mess because few PTEs have got it work properly and even the large bus groups make nationally branded cards locked to regions so a Stagecoach smart ticket for Cambridge won't work in Manchester or Newcastle or Exeter. Ditto for Go Ahead "The Key" products.

To unlock a lot of this mess you really need different industry structures or some form of massive financial incentive or pressure to force a more rational approach. Unfortunately the bus industry is now in national decline and I can't see anything that will reverse this or create sufficient pressure to reform on bus ticketing. Grayling won't change the TOC structure as he's preoccupied with Network Rail issues plus the DfT have effectively washed their hands of any ITSO "integration" having royally wasted tens of millions of pounds to deliver nowt. A centrist controlling approach to technology is also anathema to someone like Grayling. The public regularly moan about rail fares and ticketing but their moans never have sufficient political resonance to create "panic" in government or at the ballot box so nothing will happen via that avenue. Until we get someone with a bit of vision and some power to bash heads I can't see anything happening.

So, in short, it's down to useless industry structures, disbelief, lack of money / will, technology lock-in concerns, dislike of TfL, political intransigence / incompetence. A heady mix.

You can use Oyster to get to Epsom races. Although Epsom station itself doesn't have Oyster, both stations serving the racecourse (Tattenham Corner and Epsom Downs) are Oysterised. Both stations are served by Southern, not SWT.

If you saw people at Waterloo going to the races, they were probably going to Ascot, which is a long way outside the Oyster area. (SWT doesn't even accept Oyster at Kempton Park!)

South West Trains run services from Waterloo to Epsom station in the town, about two miles from the racecourse and Go Ahead run shuttle buses from the station on race days. The previous station Ewell West is Zone 6 so you could go there or any of the other station on the way such as Wimbledon on an Oyster and get an extension rather than queuing up at Waterloo.

If it was Ascot then the last Zone 6 station on the line is Feltham, five stops away, you could go there or somewhere like Richmond on an Oyster and get an extension

I understand your comment about PAYG couldn't work with anytime journeys charging more than £200 --

but surely it should have been rolled out to the Network SouthEast Area by now?

You can also buy tickets on the National Rail website from Zone 6 to stations outside the zonal structure and pick them up from the machines on the concourse at Waterloo.

So use Oyster to get to/from Zone 6.

Thing is even within the NSE area, walk on anytime fares are still expensive, plus there is the complication of first class provision on many services which Oyster cannot cope with in any way.

Weymouth - Waterloo costs £63.00 for an anytime single standard class and £104.60 first class

Dover - Victoria costs £46.20 for an anytime single standard class and £58.90 for first class

Peterborough - Kings Cross costs £31.80 for an anytime single and £50.90 for first class

Kings Lyn - Kings Cross costs £38.50 for an anytime single standard class and £59.70 for first class

Thus even if you restrict Oyster to ex NSE TOCs and remove all first class provision to make it possible then you could be looking at taking out £50 quid when people swipe in which is significantly higher than TfL take.

I thought that for ordinary ticketing the trunk Intercity TOC's see solutions such as print-at-home as far more appropriate than Oyster or other smart cards.

Its not just a monetary value issue. Its also about reassuring passengers that they are on the correct train (if their tickets are specific timed trains only) and seat reservations. Passengers like paper information that is easy to read, this includes reserved seat information.

Simon