TfL Rail to operate services to Reading from December

I was aware of the Oyster vs Contactless issue (i.e. having to likely go contactless only) a while ago. It is tactically interesting that this decision, presumably with City Hall's endorsement, has emerged now - well before the annual blood letting / political row over fare increases etc. I assume City Hall have decided to get the political fall out sorted sooner rather than later because I can imagine there will be quite a row about a breach of a long standing Mayoral commitment that Oyster and Contactless would be "equal" and would apply throughout Crossrail.

I must confess that the more I think about the lack of Oyster, west of West Drayton, the more bizarre I find it. I know there are genuine technical constraints here and an obvious desire to push contactless but having no Oyster (incl railcard discounts) facilities is surely going to cause issues. We also have the lack of an ITSO based PAYG scheme on GWR and even an apparent reluctance to commit to the existing GWR Smart scheme working on Crossrail. I fear we will see some monumental confusion as to what tickets work where post Jan 2020 that will cause issues for revenue protection staff / penalty fares. I assume stations will have to have Oyster style validators or readers on the gates but they will only recognise contactless (and possibly GWR) cards but not Oyster. Quite how the public are going to fathom all this out is a bit beyond me. Brookmans Park is the first "contactless only" station and is only designated by a small symbol on the Rail and Tube Map that shows zones plus how far Oyster stretches.

I think the plan is (was?) to convert the Oyster system to a dumbcard where the card is just a unique identifier for the record in a back-office database that holds all the information about balance, journeys, discounts, etc. There is no reason, in principle, why a contactless card could be used as an identifier (unless there is issue with banking regulations). From a technology and front-of-house systems point of view there would need to be an easy way to easily transfer the record from one card to another, and the capacity to do this. Assuming a person holds both old and new cards in their hand, then technologically it would be easy to do over the phone or in person at a station. It becomes trickier when cards have been lost or stolen, but this is probably not insurmountable if there is a link between an account and person whose identify can be verified.

In terms of capacity, Google tells me that in March last year there were 6.4 million unregistered oyster cards in use and that 70% of oyster cards are not registered. That translates to about 9.1 million Oyster cards in use. In June 2018 approximately 51% of journeys not using paper tickets used Oyster, so let's say that circa 18 million different cards were used. I haven't been able to find out how long contactless bank cards are valid for on average, so let's say it's three years (as that's how long all mine have been valid for). 3 years is 36 months, and if the expiry dates are evenly distributed that means about 500,000 cards will need renewing each month. Expiry is always the end of the month so renewal will be significantly unevenly distributed towards the last week of each month. That's a lot for a system to handle.

Is the limit with Oyster card zones something to do with the chip inside the Oyster cards or something to do with the server side software?

Will staff passes be valid on Crossrail when TfL takes over?

but not on fast trains

Revenue protection staff I presume, although there is nothing to physically prevent it.

The Staff Bulletin indicated that barriers beyond West Drayton would not be operated by Staff/Retired Passes:

“

To ensure the change is introduced smoothly, contactless ticketing will come into effect in line with the annual fares revision on 2 January 2020. Between 15 December 2019 and 2 January 2020, existing ticketing arrangements will apply. TfL zones do not apply to stations beyond West Drayton, but for the first time customers will be able to use pay as you go with contactless across the route. If you travel using your TfL pass you will need to take your ID card.“

My response was about enforcement of staff passes not being valid on fast trains to/from Reading.

Will 9 car trains run this route from 15th? Surely all stations except the bay at H&H can take them?

How many units have now been converted to 7 car to make this possible? Seems to be a lot on the Shenfield line right now.

I know that, currently, Gold Card benefits are not available with contactless bank cards, only with Oyster. With the extension of TfL Rail to Reading and the lack of Oyster ticketing, does this become a problem that TfL are going to need to solve more quickly?

Indeed, surely there has been at least the outline of a plan of how to deal with railcards of all types and non-Oyster travel for Crossrail? We should, after all, have been having the benefits of Crossrail for quite some time now...

Thanks goldenarrow

Can we expect a full conversion to CL345s in the east any time soon?

I notice that there's no Reading maps on the trains so I'm assuming the fleets are separate.

What's holding back the 9 car trains from running to Reading anyway?

What platform extensions are still outstanding, or is that now complete on the west side?