Richard Wilson

For many Stroud Greeners today will be the first back at work after the Christmas break, and time to dust off the oster card and get commuting.  The good news is that the oyster machines at Harringay have been switched on at last and oyster pre-pay can now be used.  This is long overdue -Transport for London (TfL) and First Capital Connect (FCC) have been wrangling over its implementation for years.  Lynne Featherstone helped push things along with a campaign launched in 2008 to get them to commit to a date (see picture and Lynne’s website posts).

However, the bad news is that if like me you have a travelcard on your oyster and want to use pre-pay to go beyond your travelcard zones, then TfL and FCC have designed a fiendishly complicated system to make it almost impossible.  Apparently you’ll have to load something called an ‘oyster extension permit’ on to your card just before you travel (details of TfL website here).   So, if you have a zone 1-3 travelcard and want to travel from Harringay Station out to say New Southgate in zone 4 you’d need to get a permit.  However, it doesn’t look like you can actually get the permit at Harringay  Station.  Instead you would have to go to a shop with Oyster facilities, which defeats the object of oyster by making it less convenient than buying a paper ticket!

To me it looks like oyster fares are still being designed around the needs of the train companies and TfL rather than the needs passengers.