By Tim Ferguson, 25 July 2008 10:46
NEWS
London's Oyster travel smart card system has failed for the second time in a fortnight with many commuters enjoying a free trip to work during rush hour on Friday morning.
The system has failed at all London Underground stations and ticket gates have been opened to limit disruption while the problem was resolved.
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Passengers who are charged the maximum £4 fare as a result of not being able to use their card at the start or end of their journey will be automatically refunded. Oyster cards have not been disabled as a result of the problem.
A Transport for London (TfL) spokesperson said the problem is believed to be the result of incorrect data tables being sent out by the Oyster card contractor, Transys.
The problem was resolved by mid-morning with card readers progressively coming back online.
The TfL spokesperson said: "We apologise for any inconvenience caused to our passengers."
TfL suffered another Oyster outage on 14 July. Unlike today's problem, some cards were disabled with around 65,000 travellers having to replace their cards.
Comments
There are 2 comments. Join the discussion
1. Karen Challinor
funny that, cash never suffers an outage
it still works if the power fails
it's not quite as quick but it's always dependable
2. David Quinn
Although the Oyster Card system works on a day to day basis it does have a number of problems. I have found at least six. My wife's card opens the gates but ALWAYS flashes up seek assisance despite the card being replaced twice. Her journey history will not display on the website whereas mine will. One of her old cards shows on the website and cannot be deleted. What's more the record for the old card shows it having £28 credit which was actually transferred to the new card - so LT think they owe us (and probably a lot of other people) a debt which they don't.