Before TFL stopped cash on the buses, they should have put in place more ways to top up!

[devilwithabluedresson]

There is a retail area where I live that is next to a dual carriageway. Very unfriendly for walkers, its a miserable walk down a noisy road with very fast cars passing you.

It is huge, probably about a mile from end to end. I walked there this morning and hoped to get home by bus. Anyway, it turned out I couldnt top up my oyster at any of the shops there. Not Morrisons, Sainsburys, M&S, nowhere. I checked my iphone and it showed the nearest top up stop to be 1 mile away in any direction! I understand you get 1 more ride home, but I wasnt sure if I had already used that and I wasn't prepared to wait 20 minutes for a bus just to find I was turfed off.

It was no biggie, I decided to walk home as I actually live about a mile away. But it did highlight some huge problems with this No Cash thing which I pondered on the walk back :

• Not everyone has iphones to check where the nearest top up stop
• Not everyone can actually walk 1 mile to the nearest top up stop
• There is no way to check your credit, or that you have used your 'last ride home' unless you have a smart phone (and know how to use it!) Not everybody does.
• If I'd had my oyster and my cashcard in the same wallet and it was lost or stolen, I would have no means to get on the bus at all.
• Someone with mobility issues could effectively get stuck at a place like this and have to hope a bus driver would take pity on them to get home. Even if they had the cash to travel!

Anyway so I was thinking how about a top up facility on the cash points in Sainsburys/Morrisons/M&S. That would be easily solve a lot of these points! AIBU?

I agree that location plays a huge part in this. This particular retail park just has absolutely nowhere to top up.

Thats my point really - that TFL should have looked in to areas like mine where to top up you have to walk long distances (and then back again of course, to catch that particular bus that goes where I need it to) BEFORE they took away the cash option.

I also only use buses and am a great distance from a tube station. So auto top up is out for me. I think I will just have to a) carry as many oysters as I can so that if I use my last journey I have other options b) put £50 on it every month so that I am never short.

In the end you either go cashless or you don't and if you do there is never going to be a perfect moment to do it. TfL gave months of notice, but there were always going to be some types who weren't ready.

I use a mainline train then the bus. Prior to that I only used the bus - auto top up is not much use to me, even though I come to central London very often.

I have also had issues with auto-top up that I have not been able to collect then 'blocking' any further online top up on that card. You cannot collect any online top up on buses. So I do have to physically top up by going to a machine, even when I don't need to use the tube.

It is not an unreasonable plan to go cashless, but I can see it is tricky for groups of people.

The only saving grace of the new system is the 'one free journey'.

TfL gave months of notice, but there were always going to be some types who weren't ready.

It's not about not being "ready" - what a patronising thing to say!

It's more about living somewhere where there are not many places available to top up, not living close enough to a station to make online top up viable, not always having enough spare cash to top up the minimum amount (is it £10?).

Tfl should make it more inclusive by increasing the number of available top up points. And they should also let you top up a lower amount - why can't you top up just £1.40? You shouldn't have to be able to spare £10 just to pay a bus fare of £1.40!

I used to work in a very disadvantaged area of outer London, in a community healthcare setting. Often people didn't attend their appointments because they didn't have the money for the bus fare on that day. I don't work there now, but I can imagine that the number of people not attending must be even worse now, if instead of finding £1.40 and walking to the bus stop, they have to find £10, walk to the top up point, walk back to the bus stop...

And needing to go to a tube station to top up is shit if you live south of the river and a long, long way from the tube network.

Bryonyc online pay as you go top up has a minimum of £5.

Auto top up, when I looked into setting it up, showed £20 and £40 as the only options to set it at. [when your credit balance goes below £10]

At top up points in shops, you can top up by any amount starting from 10p.

Oh really, Knee, that's not so bad then.

So the real problem is just lack of top up points in non-Central areas, and not knowing where they are - or do they give the address of the nearest ones on the bus stop? They should do if not.

As far as Im aware, they do not give locations of top up points on bus stops.

Shops that do oyster top up have a big sign in the window, you can get a list of ones near where you are if you go on tfl website. If you are not online you just have to walk until you find a shop that does it!

Most of the outlets that do it near me close at about 10pm the latest, so after that time you are out of luck.