[Gllug] ist that right that the Oyster card got RFID on it?

[John Winters]

> On 1/16/07, John G Walker <johngwalker at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> > Ah well, now there's a point.  Why are the cash fares so expensive
>> > now?
>>
>> Because they have to employ people to collect and process them. Oyster
>> cards are all about replacing workers with machines.
>
> Errr... no. Oyster cards are intended to replace paper tickets. Paper
> tickets have been issued and read by machines on the tube for many
> years now, with no need to for human intervention.

It's not the tickets which incur the expense - it's handling the cash.

The current ticket machines have to be emptied of cash, which then has to
be transported, counted, resolved and banked.

If you make it all electronic you save yourselves a vast amount of work. 
It's the same reason that public phones migrated from coin-in-the-slot to
cards.  A card-driven phone never needs to be emptied.

John



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