Timetable confusion on B&GO

TfL (or LOROL) made a right pig's ear of the Christmas timetable on the B&GO:

The TfL journey planner was showing the normal weekday service interval of 20 minutes and flagging up "engineering work" (there was engineering work on the North London Line not affecting the B&GO)

The National Rail journey planner was showing the 20 minute service and a 30 minute service (not the one actually being run!) together - making a 10 minute interval here and there.

The service being run was (and will be) half hourly, leaving Barking at 8 and 38 minutes past - the timings from a few years ago.

I'm told the platform displays were wrong - I'm not sure about the announcements.

The daily e-mail from TfL mentioned the Overground twice: once to say a modified Saturday service was running and once to say a special timetable was running.

Thanks to the B&GO user group for printing out correct timetables and spending boxing day posting them at the stations.

This is really very rubbish. Everyone knows when Christmas is - THURSDAY 25 December 2008 is the next Christmas Day. TfL/LOROL have got nearly a year to plan AND PUBLICISE next year's timetable.

Fastticket machine mishandles credit card

Buying a walk-up ticket from a fastticket machine at Barking, I put in my credit card and received a long message telling me it wasn't acceptable and to use the (human) ticket office. I had to go through the whole transaction again and pay with a debit card as the software didn't allow me to try another card at the point where the credit card option failed.

Rainham joins Oyster PAYG

From 2008 Rainham (Essex) joins the Oyster PAYG scheme for journeys between it and Fenchurch Street via Barking,

50p admin charge for fast ticket printing

The trainline has introduced a 50p charge for printing out (at a fast ticket machine) tickets ordered on line. There's no self printing of tickets (or at least it's very limited) and of course the fast ticket reference can't be used directly (like on airlines), so the charge seems to be a disincentive to use the system. Railcard holders can get a zone 1-6 one day travelcard foe £4.80 (2007 prices) - the 50p charge is equivalent to a mark up of over 10%.

London Overground Stations can issue Oyster cards

At least this page says they can:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/oysteronline/6369.aspx

Police cycle security advice

Cyclists who park up in Barking Town Centre will have noticed the security advice from the police. The signs could do with being rather more durable - even permanent. They point out that free security marking is availble from the police. I don't think this ois the old-style punching the postcode into the frame - I expect it's etching a security number and logging that and bike details on a database - http://www.bikeregister.com/ is the police preferred one.

Pickering Road Cycle Track

I've just ridden along it - no parked cars at all. Quite amazing - especially for a Sunday. Long may it remain