Some of you might be familiar with London's Oystercard - an RFID card that can be used to pay for trips on London Underground. Great technology, but it's had a few slips along the way. ThisisLondon reports on the latest:
The Oyster smartcard used by hundreds of thousands of commuters is at the centre of a new transport fiasco, it can be revealed today.
As part of the new fares structure, bus fares for Oyster pre-pay users were to rise from 70p to £1 for journeys made between 6.30-9.30am on weekdays. All other bus journeys using pre-pay would rise to 80p - a 40p saving on the new £1.20 cash fare that came in on Sunday.
But the revelation is the latest in a series of glitches to hit the smartcard, introduced at a cost of more than £1.2billion more than a year ago.
The problem has arisen because the Oyster card readers on buses are unable to tell the time - meaning they cannot differentiate between peak and off-peak fares. Automated software is now being installed across the capital's fleet of 7,000 buses to address the problem.
Take it all with a pinch of salt (ThisIsLondon is the web version of the notoriously anti Ken Livingstone Evening Standard newspaper), but in situations like this you just have to think... did NOBODY think there was going to be a problem?
