London Takes The Great Leap Forward
From today on all public transport in London, you can use your UK contactless payment card as a ticket. Full details are on the BBC’s web site. Certain mobile phones can also be used.
Some are predicting it’ll all end in tears, but I suspect passengers will take one of two routes; carry on as now with Oyster or a Freedom Pass, or embrace the new technology with enthusiasm and a correct level of mistrust. After all, there doesn’t seem to have been any reports of problems since London’s buses went cashless a few months ago.
As a Freedom Pass user, it won’t effect me directly. But I always carry an Oyster card for the cable car, visitors or emergencies. But there may come a time, when I can leave this out of my wallet.
London is setting a standard here and surely, this should be implemented all over the UK as soon as possible. But I can’t help feeling that some authorities will invent their own totally incompatible systems.
After all, the best way to hack off a visitor to the UK, who perhaps wants to visit people and places in several areas, is to present them in every place with a different ticketing system.
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The Anonymous Widower 
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