Do you own an Oyster card? Have you ever travelled via one of London’s busy mainline rail stations during rush hour and joined a queue of travellers all waiting to get their cards scanned? Well you needn’t have bothered. The whole Oyster card reader thing is a great big joke, and this post will keep a running tally of just how much of a big joke it is.

Before getting too carried away, or receiving too many flames, I should state that both my partner and I hold valid zones 1-4 season travelcards.

It all started several months ago when we started a new contract out in Brentford. This meant travelling from Woolwich Arsenal to Waterloo East, walking to Waterloo, and then taking a train to Brentford.

Each day we’d use the readers on the barriers at Woolwich to get the train, and at Waterloo East, go past the ticket inspectors with their card readers to get to Waterloo. These inspectors are ill-trained and ill-equipped to deal with the large number of Oyster card holders. Between them, they seem to only have 2 card readers to deal with virtually a whole deluge of passengers passing them by.

It’s the same story at the gates to get on the train to Brentford, although with less people. The staff are just as uninterested, however, casually talking amongst themselves, and not really paying too much attention to what the card readers report.

It all came to a head last week, when a ticket inspector on the train asked for my card. I gave it to him to scan, and the machine showed a red light and the text “No Oyster Card Present”. He kept at it for about 30 seconds, taking the card out of the wallet, but no luck. It was only when I offered to show him the paper accompaniment that he left me alone. He didn’t actually look at the paper. The same thing happened to my partner who was travelling with me. The inspector insisted his machine was not broken, and poo-pooed my idea that his battery might be flat.

Well – this got me thinking. If his reader wasn’t working or detecting either of our cards, were any?

Over the next few days, I looked at the card readers as I and other passengers went through the checks at Waterloo East and Waterloo, both in the morning and evening. Not one of the readers I saw did anything other than show a red light and say “No Oyster Card Present”. This of course was out of the cards that were scanned – a lot of the time the inspectors just didn’t bother scanning people. I also noticed that they only bothered pulling people over who didn’t proffer their tickers. If you did, half the time they didn’t bother to scan them.

So we decided to start an experiment.

Last Wednesday (November 28th), we both removed our Oyster cards from their wallets, so the wallet contained only the paper slip and photo ID. We did, of course, still travel with the card.

Each day we are inspected 3 times – twice in the morning (once going from Waterloo East to Waterloo, once going from the concourse at Waterloo to the platform), and once in the evening (getting off the train) – while there are inspectors at Waterloo East in the evening, they don’t seem interested in people getting onto trains, only those getting off.

So that’s at least 6 scans per day between my partner and I (sometimes there are spot checks at Brentford or on the train). Since the 28th, we’ve been scanned 58 times. Out of those, very, very rarely have either of us been stopped (on those occasions we produced the card that had mysteriously ‘fallen out of the wallet’, and all was well).

So, the running tally: Us: 56, TfL: 2

So, Ken… if you’re reading this, how about getting:

1) Some Oyster card readers that work,

2) Some ticket inspectors who actually care about doing their job properly in a professional manner, rather than ignoring a lot of the people who walk past,

3) More inspectors at Waterloo East, or perhaps some ticket barriers

After all, if at least some portion of the ticket prices is to counter the revenue lost by fare dodgers, it would only be right to catch more of them to try and keep prices lower.

Of course, any fare dodgers reading this will know all they have to do is have a real Oyster card wallet, and just proffer it to be read, and all will be well. Perhaps this is social engineering at its best?