New Thameslink Key ITSO Travelcards.

This has been the case for around six months now; any ITSO card *should* be able to be read on the POMs, although in practice it's limited to just the London TOCs.

Can take a bit of detective work to work out what's actually on the card though, as it won't display it in a particularly 'pretty' way like it does with Oyster products - I'll try and remember to grab a pic when I'm next passing a POM.

One of the reasons for this is to allow station staff to interrogate the validity of such smart cards if they don't work on the gates (A wider problem than it should be, with the dreaded error code 57), as they can't be read by the handheld MOVie device (but can be read by the newer RID).

ITSO - Integrated Transport Smartcard Organisation
POM - Passenger Operated Machine
TOC - Train Operating Company
MOVie - Mobile Oyster Viewer
RID - Revenue Inspection Device

With prepaid period Travelcards loaded on Oystercards there is no need to touch in / out at both ends of the journey if the journey is fully within its zones of validity.

I'll quote two examples of what I mean. When I worked near Waterloo Station I often used the Waterloo and City Line and did not touch in or out on the wall mounted free-standing card readers at Waterloo. Another example is that when train spotting this freed me from the journey time restrictions which apply when using Oystercards in PAYG mode.


The point of this message is to ask whether the same applies with Travelcards on ITSO cards?

Or is it that prepaid period Travelcards loaded on on ITSO cards impose the same journey time restrictions (and financial penalties) on the passengers carrying the smart card as PAYG on Oyster?

Simon

Thanks Jack.

I tend to use Travelcards on Oyster in the same way as I used to use paper Travelcards* - for which there was no facility to have the card validated at stations that did not have electronic ticket gates or where my journey combined several prepaid tickets (eg: to Brighton) and I stayed on the train at the boundary station.

(*except when I have 2-4 monthlies and use pink card readers, this being something that was not needed for paper ticketing) 

It is so rare that instances can be counted on one hand where I've actually made a journey that extended to a station outside the zonal validity of my Travelcard and therefore needed to pay extra via payg . 

At present I do not have an ITSO compatible smart card but since I may one day it is good to know the finer details of how Travelcards on ITSO work.

I thought that at least one of the TOC's which uses ITSO smart cards did offer a PAYG facility; it is my understanding that this is something that the majority of provincial passengers who know of such things very much want.

I suppose the issue for the transport operators is how to make monetary value stored in a single electronic purse available for the card holder to spend no matter what local journey they are making where-ever they are in the country... eg: whether travelling by bus in Brighton, Thameslink train in southern England, tram in Croydon, Underground in London, kerb guided bus in Luton, Subway in Glasgow, funicular railway in Bridgnorth, Metrolink in Manchester or Metro in Tyneside.

Simon