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

[John G Walker]

On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:38:42 +0000 "- Tethys" <tethys at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 1/16/07, John Winters <john at sinodun.org.uk> wrote:
> 
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Errr... correct. The current ticket machines being the ones that most
> people use to top up their Oyster cards, usually with cash. So the
> cost of doing it is still there. Slightly reduced, perhaps, to account
> for people paying by card[1], and the fact that people top up in
> larger quantities in one go. But you still need staff to fill/empty
> the machines, count, transport and bank the cash, etc. That's not
> going to go away, with or without Oyster.
> 

They're hoping it will go away with Oyster. They're encouraging people
to register their cards for automatic top-up. Under this system, as you
go into a tube station, if your Oyster card has less than five pounds on
it, it is topped up by an amount that you have agreed to, using a card
that you have agreed to. No human being involved. And very little in the
way of expense: in economists' terms, the marginal transaction cost
has become almost zero,

-- 
 All the best,
 John
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