Slashdot Mirror
Oyster Card Hack To Be Released, In Good Time
DangerFace writes "A little while ago some Dutch researchers cracked the Oyster card, meaning they could get free public transport around London. The company that makes the cards, NXP, sought and got an injunction to stop the exploit being published, but that has now been overruled by a Dutch judge. The lovely Dutch blokes are holding off from releasing the hack for the time being, to give NXP time to secure their systems."
The People don't have a right to free public transportation in London? Somethin' oughtta be done!
http://file.sunshinepress.org:54445/milfaire-classic-2008.pdf
http://www.wikileaks.org/leak/milfaire-classic-2008.pdf
http://cryptome.org/mifare-classic.pdf
but the Universities advocates cracked their shell and the judge clam-ped down on them ...
sorry ...
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
According to Wikipedia, the same tech is used by Atlanta, DC Metro, the L, and the T.
While I have mixed feelings about the publishing of exploits, this line hits the nail on the head:
This is an important lesson to companies like Diebold.
Yuk-yuk, I'm here all week... try the veal!
Once the London Underground is extended to Holland there will be anarchy!!1!
If the bus isn't full and you otherwise wouldn't have paid, then what's the problem?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
So let me get this straight.
1. Researchers discover hole in Oystercard implementation.
2. Oystercard operator ignores warnings from researchers.
3. Oystercard operater takes researchers to court instead of working to fix identified vulnerabilities.
4. Injunction granted.
5. Injunction overturned.
5. Researchers continue to give Oystercard operator time to fix their system, in addition to the time they had prior to the court action.
Were I in their situation I would have publically released information on the hack the moment the injunction was overturned. If vendors of ANY type of system want to fuck with people who show every intention of trying to HELP them, they deserve everything they get.
I'm not surprised we Dutch are trying (and apparently succeeding) to hack public transportation systems facilities if you look at the current pricing of our own system. Provides for a good motivation. But the most recent exploit was also the main reason why the introduction of the so-called chipcard is delayed again. Which in turn leads to more development, therefor more costs and thus the prices increase ;)
Information wants to be free.
Luckily, so does public transport.
--Q
The London public transit system sees payment for services as damage and routes around it. Or something like that.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
Wear and tear. Worse gas mileage. The attitude of freeloading, or better yet, stealing, and that it "doesn't matter." Also the matter that this is something that would get WIDESPREAD in a city like London. We wouldn't be talking the occasional computer nerd - hacked cards would make their way into PLENTY of hands, and every hoodie-with-ASBOS-and-ringtones would be getting "free" rides.
Read the first pdf you've posted. It's not the same.
This is a perfect example of how hacking can benefit the greater good. While it would be great to ride Dutch trains for free, it's obviously not sustainable and therefore I don't mind paying for services I receive. It is rather frustrating however to see companies attack the hackers that have found this weakness. Fixing the weakness will obviously cost money and time, but that is far superior to months of unscrupulous individuals taking free train rides all over the country. The students could have easily distributed this to their friends and community members quietly and cost the rail system thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) in free trips before it was discovered.
The rail company may have been duly diligent in their security assessment of the system, but obviously missed this problem. In this case, the students have provided a very valuable service for FREE. This can potentially improve the overall quality of the rail system. Obviously the rail company needs to spend capital to repair the flaw in the system, but that is superior to discovering and repairing the flaw after thousands of free trips have already been lost. In this case, the money lost in free trips can be reinvested into the service to improve it, rather than just flushed down the drain.
If companies can change their opinion of hackers that voluntarily point out security flaws to be more positive and less adversarial, everyone can potentially benefit.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
The sidewalks are great for walking on. At no cost!
Stop the brainwash
every hoodie-with-ASBOS-and-ringtones would be getting "free" rides.
And who will supply them, hm? Think of the money you could make!
Chavettes need rides, too, you know....
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Its a pity that Cherie Blair didn't know this one.
Does anyone know if the accidental wiping of 1000's of Oyster Cards a couple of weeks ago was linked to this? Just curious...
The cost of using public transport in London borders on the ridiculous. It's around US$2 to go 200 yards on a bus with an Oyster card. If you haven't got a card, it's over US$4.
They've cut all the bus routes into a quarter of the length they used to be - meaning that you have to take 4 times as many buses to complete your journey, at 4 times the price and a much longer journey time.
London's bus companies have been privatised. Does this mean that any efficiency savings are passed on to the passenger? I won't bother to answer that one... just have a surf around and see how much subsidy they're getting.
You'd think, then, that local taxes in London would be real cheap. Oh dear me no, that would be a wrong assumption. One pays local tax (Council Tax) to the borough in which one lives, and then a further tax to the Mayor of London's Office. The *average* charge across outer London for this year is nearly US$3000 per annum.
In London, there is no such thing as a free ride.
An AC posted it above, but he was lame enough to quote the vendor's response without commentary!
http://pwnie-awards.org/2008/awards.html#lamestvendor
The response from Transport of London to the news of successful cloning of Oyster cards includes this priceless comment:
This was not a hack of the Oyster system. It was a single instance of a card being manipulated.
I've noticed that TranSys terminals have appeared along Caltrain here in the San Francisco Bay Area in the past couple of weeks. I wonder if this means Caltrain is moving to the system - and also if they are using a version with the same flaws?
This post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
What kind of living arrangements gets you a tax rate of about 3000 USD/yr in London?
In upstate NY, that would be about the rate for a modest 1400 sqft home on .1 acre.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Amen brother, not to mention that its extortion plain and simple. U pay double for using cash (perfectly legal tender) as uve said but of course this has nothing to do with RFID's tracking abilities (future abilities). Isnt it great to live in the UK. RFID, CCTV on every street, secret courts, secret laws, Un-elected leaders and lets not forget the extremly insidious attempt at restricting movement (both public transport and driving a car are insanely expensive).
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
The cost of using public transport in London borders on the ridiculous. It's around US$2 to go 200 yards on a bus with an Oyster card. If you haven't got a card, it's over US$4.
To add to that, the minimum tube price (even for a single stop) is £1.50 with an Oyster card, and £4 without (so about $3 and $8).
They keep increasing the price of the non-Oyster fare, so they can advertise the Oyster card as getting cheaper!
a haxor with skillz über-1337
wanted to ride london's fleet
but rather than paying
he found himself saying
"h4ck1n9 0y573r w0u1d b3 50 v3ry n347!"
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
And then there's the Tube. A single journey within Zone 1 costs four pounds. This could be as short as 100 metres if you're stupid enough to travel between Charing Cross and Embankment.
And who's stupid enough to do that when you could buy an Oyster card and save a packet? Why, tourists, of course. And tourists don't vote. So they gouge 'em.
And in NJ, that would be about the annual rate for a cardboard box on an average suburban streetcorner.
. but then, London does have the distinction of being the only city in the world wherein you can see the air you breathe ;-)
Sorry. You must either be colour blind to shades of brown or have never been to LA :-|
It seems really apt to include a link to this. I waited for a long time to be able to link this on /.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
So Dutch researchers cracked the public transportation pass for London? Boy they're gonna be pretty down when they'll realise they need to travel all the way to London just to get free public transportation.
Fortunately being Dutch they'll surely find a place to forget about all of this within a walking distance.
You just got troll'd!
IIRC, using oyster it's 90p for a single bus journey. But your bus travel is capped at 3GBP (about $6)
Likewise, tube travel. In central London it's 1.50GBP per journey but the cap (for zones 1 and 2) is 4.80GBP. Also the bus travel counts towards this. So, if you're staying outside central London as a tourist then get a bus into the centre, travel about the centre by bus and tube and then just get a bus back to your hotel and your travel will be capped at a maximum of 4.80GBP (so long as you always touch in and out on the tube)
You can also buy a travelcard. This will be 50p more than the capped oyster fare but there's no risk of forgetting to touch in or out.
I typically use foot and bicycle in central London (because it's quicker) but provided you don't pay cash fares and use oyster or a travel card, I think the pricing for public transport is actually pretty good. Due to the fixed per journey price there are some extortionate per mile charges:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=11804929658401494669,51.511495,-0.128425&saddr=A400%2FCharing+Cross+Rd+%4051.511495,+-0.128425&daddr=51.512776,-0.124133&mra=dme&mrcr=0&mrsp=1&sz=16&doflg=ptm&sll=51.51065,-0.127115&sspn=0.005863,0.012724&ie=UTF8&z=16
would be about 12GBP/mile cash fare if you took the tube rather than walked it and about 4.50GBP/mile using Oyster but you quickly reach the cap.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
I don't want to play the evangelist here but it could easily be argued that a system based on source code that is open to constant peer review probably wouldn't have been in this long without the hack being discovered much earlier, mayube even before it went in in the first place. Oh, and before the "Linux fanboi" replies start flooding in, please remember that Open Source software runs equally as well in Windows and other OSes also.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Wear and tear. Worse gas mileage. The attitude of freeloading, or better yet, stealing, and that it "doesn't matter."
In london, if you choose to drive, you're going to be dealing with congestion charges, too.
See the first 2 or 3 minutes of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q88CQdndNWw
at £25 (pounds, if the ascii doesn't work), you're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 PER DAY JUST TO DRIVE into Ken Livingston's traffic jams, BEFORE $6/gal gas and BEFORE wear and tear on your car.
~Wx
sig?
Why go by public transport at all? If my car isn't in use, and you wouldn't otherwise buy one, why not borrow it? I won't mind cleaning it, repairing it and filling it up with gas. Settle into my house when you get back, I'm not using it right now, I'm too busy at work, earning money to pay pay my way in life.
This is a wake-up call.
The issue is public transit financing; hardasses who want the public to pay more than their fair share (public transit benefits ***EVERYONE***, including motorists, and most importantly motorists who see decreased congestion; as well as employers who can have their workforce brought on site cheaply, so they don't have to pay exorbitant salaries so the workforce has to be able to afford a car - look no further to see the reasons why jobs are going to China) will only drive fares up, and thus the incentives to cheat (where I live, I cheat all the time; illegally, of course, but in a way that's effectively very hard to catch - it would take a cop to tail me all the time).
With reasonable fares, the incentive to cheat is simply not there.
(But transit can't be free; you need a fare to insure systems don't load up with homeless winoes).
It's like music: with $20 CDs, everyone downloads. Not so when they cost $2.
If the bus isn't full and you otherwise wouldn't have paid, then what's the problem?
Sometimes it's hard to tell if people are posting ironically, but I'm going to go ahead an answer as though you were serious.
The philosophical reason you don't take free rides on buses is that paying your bus fare is a Kantian categorical imperative. The ability to take a free ride on a bus presupposes the existence of a bus service, but were everybody to ride for free, the bus service would cease to run, negating the possibility of a free ride.
Actually, the real reason is a lot simpler: You're getting something of value, so you have an obligation to give something of value in return. Only parasites and slavers fail to abide by this principle. Which would you like to be?
-- Note to Mods: There is a good reason there's no "-1 Disagree" option. --
You've obviously never been anywhere else in the UK. London's bus fares are very cheap, and saying the routes are 1/4 the length is just FUD - even if you do have to get 4 buses, it won't cost 4x as much, since a daily fare is capped at £3 (i.e. once you've made 3 journeys you don't pay any more that day). If I want the same here in Oxford it would cost me well over £10 ($20). ...oh, and why exactly would you *expect* having a complicated mess of privatised companies to be any cheaper than one company which is accountable to the public, not it's shareholders?
Cardboard box - we used to dream of a cardboard box. When I were a lad....
and no, it's not Monty Python - it's At Last The 1948 Show.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
I think the same could be done for any municipal bus service. If you go a very short distance, you'll end up paying a lot per mile. In Ottawa, the closest stops I could think of quickly are about .1 miles apart. If you pay cash fair, it's $3. That works out to $30 per mile. However on the same $3, you can travel 25 miles. Which works out to 12 cents per mile.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
What does that have to do with freeloaders on a bus that would otherwise have been travelling down the route anyway?
Congestion charges have been in place in London for a few years now. It's a bit cheaper if you get a long term pass or live inside the congestion zone. Thankfully I live at the other end of the UK so it doesn't bother me!
I don't particularly agree with all these crazy taxes posing as 'green' taxes either (even tiny cars with small engines and low emissions are taxed heavily if they have 4 wheel drive), but I don't think it has anything to do with what they were talking about!
which is totally what she said
Horseshit.
If you get on a bus and travel 200 yards with an Oyster Card it does cost 90p(about US$90). However you don't because for most people it's quicker to walk. For longer distance bus trips it costs... 90p. If you travel enough in one day on a Pay As You Go Oyster it maxes out at the cost of the cheapest travelcard for the journeys you have made. Thus you get the cheapest possible tickets without thinking about it. Compare this approach to that of mobile phone companies... The price is competitive with most other cities in the UK. Thus if you made lots of 200 yard journeys every day it wouldn't cost anywhere near 90p a ride.
I've certainly not noticed the distance of bus routes getting any shorter. Generally long distance journeys(>1.5miles) are made by Tube, DLR or Train. The Mayor of London tax is included as part of the Council Tax. House prices around outer London are very high, as some of the areas are really nice compared with some of the grottier inner city areas, thus their Council Tax is higher. Public transport in London is far better than it is in most UK cities. To find better you need to go to a city that has had predominantly Labour councils for the last few decades. A lot of the recent improvements in London are funded by the Congestion Charge.
For a free ride, get a bike...
Minor point, but the congestion charge is £8. Ken Livingstone did indeed propose a £25 charge for the "most polluting" cars (basically anything with an engine displacing over 3 litres or more than 4 years old), but that became one of the main issues in the mayoral elections earlier this year, where Ken was deservedly beaten. The new mayor, Boris Johnson, binned those plans almost as soon as he took office.
-- Note to Mods: There is a good reason there's no "-1 Disagree" option. --
the extremly insidious attempt at restricting movement
It's not an attempt at restricting movement. If people really did stop travelling then the fuel tax would probably come down as the government realises what a stupid mistake it has made getting rid of such a good source of income.
And as for the rest of the stuff, at least we don't always make a big deal about freedom and democracy like I remember americans used to a decade ago. If those secret courts and secret laws were properly secret you wouldn't know about them either. As for unelected leaders, fair enough :p I'm not particularly paranoid if the government knows where I am and what I'm doing. It's when they start imposing crazy curfews and rules that I'll have a problem (having said that, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7498865.stm , but at least it's a 'voluntary' curfew..)
which is totally what she said
The cost of using public transport in London borders on the ridiculous. It's around US$2 to go 200 yards on a bus with an Oyster card. If you haven't got a card, it's over US$4. ...
In London, there is no such thing as a free ride.
The cost of prostitutes in London borders on the ridiculous. It's around US$200 to go for a half-hour with a good pimp. If you don't know a pimp, it's over US$400.
This is how I justify forcing myself on street-walkers. I mean, if nobody's using them and I wouldn't have paid anyway, what's the harm?
Let's see... Offensively insightful? Offensively funny? Or just plain flamebait?
I used to frequent the BART light rail system in the San Fransisco bay area. Fees for that system were based on distance traveled, not solely number of trips IIRC. So, short hops were cheap and going from Berkley to SF cost a little more (still not much - it was pretty reasonable).
This was back in the early 90's - Things may have changed since then.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,62040565,00.htm
When they say 'none have been discovered' its not clear if that includes the Dutch hack. While Im sure there are probably ways around that too in the future and that saying this is partly to play down the impact of 'omg free travel!' I would imagine that an organisation like TFL with the resources they've got they probably can do such scans every evening or in transit. It's interesting regardless to see how this plays out...
jaymz
"You're getting something of value, so you have an obligation to give something of value in return"
Yet when you replace 'bus ride' with 'music', 'films', 'software', I think you will find many who say that getting something for free is a-ok and it's the developer/publisher's fault for being in a business in which bits can be copied for zero or near-zero cost by the copier.
See also:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=619989&cid=24265233
Sorry i should have said im a Londoner born and bred and i love this city, it has so much to offer but its is being slowly strangled by the way its run these days.
"If people really did stop travelling then the fuel tax would probably come down as the government realises what a stupid mistake it has made getting rid of such a good source of income.
"
I seriously doubt it, we have one of the highest fuel duties in europe and it is killing many industries in this country (haulage being the most obvious but far from the only victim), this in turn is damaging the economy and reducing the money into the treasurys coffers yet that dont seem to care in the slightest.
"having said that, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7498865.stm , but at least it's a 'voluntary' curfew..)".......for now
besides there is no such thing as a voluntary curfew, only that which they will tell you is vountary....untill it isnt.
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
The reason the bus routes have had their length cut has been forced on Tfl by an EU directive. This is happening all over the country not only in London.
One evample was the X64 from Guildford to Winchester.
now it runs as the X64 from Guildford to Alton. Whereupon, everyone gets off. The driver changes the service number to X65. Everybody gets back on and off to winchester the charabang goes.
There is a maximum amount you can pay on an OyserCard in any one day. To quote the Tfl web site
Daily price capping automatically calculates the cheapest fare for the journeys you make in a single day
?This means that once to reach the amount of a daily travelcard for the zones you have covered you won't be charged any more.
I don't work for Tfl and do not support the congestion Carge or Low Emissions Zone.
Horseshit.
it does cost 90p(about US$90).
I hate it when I oversleep and the entire US economy collapses...
[UID-HeinzIntel]
A point to bear in mind.
If you are using an Oyster card on the buses the charge is capped at £3.00 per day no matter how many bus trips you take.
Oh and do you expect local taxes to be just used to subsidise mass transport? Who pays for all the other services that local authorities provide?
... these cards are widely used in physical access control systems: determining who is allowed into buildings or parts thereof. As one of the researchers explained today, part of the delay is to allow extra physical security to be deployed at sensitive locations. I don't think anyone has started to calculate the potential cost of all this, though there are probably one or two lawyers ordering yacht catalogues...
The London system is also based on distance, but most tourists don't venture further out than the central zone, which is big enough that most of what tourists come to see is contained within it.
You can travel from just outside the central zone to Heathrow Airport (at the end of the line) for £1.80 (£1 after 7pm or at the weekend). The same journey but from the central zone would cost £3.50 (£2 off-peak), but then, the train will full in the central zone and half empty soon after it's left it.
Most of the stations in the central zone are very congested (all the ones you might have heard of -- King's Cross, Leicester Square, Westminster, Piccadilly Circus) and charging £1.50 to go between them reduces the number of people doing pointless things, like taking a train for a 500 metres journey (quicker to walk!).
The very weak $ is making that seem very expensive to an American, but bear in mind that a cheeseburger at McDonalds is £1.20 here as the transport is quite reasonable. Regular users get weekly/monthly passes.
They are not. They are paying what is asked. It is up to the bus company (and municipality if subsidized) to ask what is appropriate.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Yes, but ... most people today equate "hero" with "got something for nothing". The thieves and parasites manage to "get something for nothing" and as long as it doesn't appear to have a direct cost to them, people are willing to say "good job!"
Obviously with public transit the trains are going to run whether or not there are any riders. Therefore, an extra rider costs nothing. Therefore there is nothing lost by having a free rider so it isn't "theft" but simply uncompensated use of a service. Much like copyright infringement is.
Sorry, but after you spend 20 years or so teaching children all through school that it is their absolute right to download whatever they can find on the Internet for free - regardless of where it came from - you are going to have people defending this sort of behavior. It is a natural consequence.
Looks like she already had one...
I seriously doubt it, we have one of the highest fuel duties in europe and it is killing many industries in this country (haulage being the most obvious but far from the only victim)
I've heard that a lot in the media, but it's not really true. The pound has been falling against the euro, so the price of petrol is pretty comparable now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_usage_and_pricing says we're in position 7.
open source, free as in transportation?
They are entitled to free bus travel anyway, so what difference is it going to make?
London's bus service is not privatised, unlike the rest of the country.
The bus companies get paid a rate per mile for driving the buses by Transport for London, and all the fare money goes directly to TFL.
Private companies can't run buses in London unless it is long distance routes to other parts of the country, or to another country, such as the ones National Express and all the various Polish bus companies run.
Even worse is the £8 ($16) to go one stop on the Underground.
http://www.roadtransport.com/Articles/2007/09/14/128465/the-emotive-issue-of-fuel-duty.html
the Industry would disagree
And its gone crazy since 2007.
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
Horseshit.
it does cost 90p(about US$90).
I hate it when I oversleep and the entire US economy collapses...
So do we! We were counting on you to hold the malaise at bay, but, no... you had to get your beauty rest instead...
Obviously, you've not seen me first thing in the morning. Beauty rest?! It's more like ugly sleep!
[UID-HeinzIntel]
This should be called "shucking" instead of hacking.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Only parasites and slavers fail to abide by this principle.
And old people too. They don't pay, they get a free bus pass. Oh wait, you're saying they're the parasites, right? And the bus drivers must be the slavers, because they don't pay either? Wait, wait, I'm getting confused... you can't have slavers without slaves - that makes US the slaves! God help us all...
Oh yes there is such a thing as a free ride in London. You would be amazed what a large fraction of all bus riders are paying nothing. All old folk, school kids, and disabled travel free. When they equalized the ages between men and women for free old age bus passes, they brought men's down to 60. Very nice for me, but sometimes I feel guilty sprinting to catch the bus and then flashing an old-timer's free pass! Seriously though, the whole of transport policy in London is deeply corrupt, with hidden subsidies going in all sorts of directions, some socially desirable, but very often acting as a powerful financial engine to transfer resources from poor to rich. If this Oyster card crack serves to make a few more people aware of the problems, it can only do good.
Read carefully: the UK has the cheapest oil in Europe, and the highest fuel duty. That doesn't mean we have the highest price at the pump.
As I see it, I'd rather freight was moved by rail (like in Switzerland). And I'm happy for the hauliers to pass on any increase in fuel costs in the mean time.
Even worse is the £8 ($16) to go one stop on the Underground.
Get it right at least -- it's £4 without an Oyster card, not eight.
You realise that London is trying to reduce car usage and a possible effect might be to reduce traffic congestion and pollution. Why drive when you can get a free bus?
back in the mid 80's sheffield had a fairly unique bus service with 5p adult fares the result was packed buses going into and out of the city center and free flowing traffic. often you would have to wait 10 minutes for a bus since the first 3 that came were full.
unfortunately Margret thatcher deregulated the buses and privatized them resulting in higher fares more and mostly empty buses and the return of traffic jams to Sheffield streets.
While free rides might be wrong after all its theft of service, for london it could be a very good thing. reducing pollution and congestion.
Incidentally pensioners (65 60 years +) tend to get a free bus pass in most of the uk so already there are some existing free rides.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Yeah, right.
I don't WOMBAT in the SMOKE too often, it's too much of a WOMBAT. But for the last several years, when I've WOMBATted in a hole in the ground, I've used an Oyster card registered to Osama Bin Laden, and only ever topped up by paying cash.
==============
Codes :
WOMBAT = Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time.
SMOKE = not an acronym, unfortunately. London, where the zoological specimens live inside the cages, to protect them from the city's inhabitants.
Many people travel as OSAMA, without challenge ; some are imaginative; while there is a coin-only way to charge-up the card, I'll continue to do so.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Way to go on finding the nastiest possible interpretation of what I said.
For what it's worth, old people *do not* ride for free. It's just that their tickets are paid for by the government instead of the old people themselves. And the reason this is so is that the government has, over the lifetime of any given old person, taken quite a lot of money away from them in taxes, and covering transport costs is one of the ways they make up for it.
Something of value in exchange for something of value, see?
-- Note to Mods: There is a good reason there's no "-1 Disagree" option. --
Bus travel in London is cheap. It costs 90p for any bus ride, short or long, which compared to other English cities and most European ones is cheap. The Underground on the other hand is not (around £2). I very rarely have to take more than one bus journey, your suggestion of 4 bus journeys is ludicrous.
Tourists can get an Oyster card too. Actually all my friends that come to visit get one. There's a £3 deposit which you can get back at the end of your visit but that's it. The requirement for a London address (which was easily circumvented anyway) doesn't exist any longer.
Parasites, slavers, and users of open-source software
The open source community is in big trouble if people with your mentality exist in significant numbers.
The point you're missing is: value != money.
As I understand it, the open-source philosophy is this: I do some work, and I make it available to you for free. I have now provided you with something of value. You now have my source code, so if you can find a way to improve it, you do so and send the improvements back to me, completing a fair exchange. But maybe your skills lie in a different area, and you can't contribute anything back to me directly. No problem, chances are there's *something* you can do that will be valuable to someone, who in turn can do something for someone else, who can do something for someone else, and so on and so on until eventually I get something of value back.
That's why there's an open-source community. In theory, everybody contributes and everybody benefits. But if you think that using open-source software implies no obligation to at least try to put something back in, OSS is doomed.
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It costs 90p per journey (around US$1 - I haven't bothered to check the rate this week) *if you have an Oyster Card* ... if you don't, it's GBP2 as I mentioned.
As for my suggestion of 4 buses being ludicrous, perhaps I could refer you to http://www.busesatwork.co.uk/ which gives a comprehensive breakdown (pun intended) of London bus routes over the years and how they've been tampered with.
You could, if you wanted, try the old route 37 (Peckham to Hounslow West) using the current bus services on http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/ which will give you a number of possible journeys - but none of them with less than 4 buses. It's not my suggestion that's ludicrous - it's London's transport services.
That's the *average* local tax for outer London. The Council Tax is separated into several bands according to the value of your home. I deliberately didn't use inner London as it would include some very pricey residences indeed.
I'm originally from London but I live in Portsmouth, and have lived in a number of places around the UK. Please see my reply above about the new lengths of bus routes - they've been butchered over the years.
Of course, you're right... the fare is capped at GBP3 if you have an Oyster Card. If you don't, it isn't.
I'm not sure whether this is the appropriate place to delve into why some people don't choose to have an Oyster, but one reason is that some people don't like the idea of TFL being able to build up a database of where they've been at any particular moment (whether it's for marketing purposes or anything more sinister - and can I say at this point that this is simply something I've gleaned from various conversations, I'm NOT a conspiracy theorist!!).
And two reasons why I'd *expect* it to be cheaper:
(1) The GLA is supposed to have put out tenders to ensure the best value for the ratepayers' buck.
(2) The clue is in the name: it's supposed to be *public* transport.
I'd force myself one of those nice women in the hotel lobbies. But then, I do take a lot of taxis.
The cost of using public transport in London borders on the ridiculous. It's around US$2 to go 200 yards on a bus with an Oyster card. If you haven't got a card, it's over US$4.
Whilst this is true, you'd have to be pretty damn lazy to take a bus for a 200yd journey. What the parent doesn't point out is that it's the same price to take the same bus from one side of the city to the other.
I pay 93GBP (~180USD) a month for unlimited travel in zones 1 and 2 on any form of public transport I want to take, from the rush hour tube to the night bus home at 4am, all using the same prepaid oyster card.
Personally, I think that's a bargain and stunningly convenient. And if you're not a londoner and don't want to get a months travel, you can get an anonymous oyster card and just stick a tenner on it at any station so there's no reason not to have one.
Just my prepaid 2 cents. I'm actually rather impressed with the transport here.
Warning: May contain nuts
Just curious - why haven't the researchers been prosecuted for theft?
Here in Swansea, the buses are very expensive for a single or return trip, but the all day fare is about £3. A little over a year ago, it was £2.30 - it's gone up by almost 50% (I can't remember the exact price now, it's £3 and some pence, but I'm not sure how many pence). For two people, it's now often cheaper to take a taxi than a bus. Most of the time I now walk instead of taking a bus, since it doesn't take much longer (ten minutes waiting for the bus plus ten minutes sitting on the bus, or about 25 minutes walking to get to the city centre from my house) is much cheaper. I also don't buy as much in town as I used to - if I can get something delivered then I will and only buy things in town that I don't mind carrying up the hill. I wonder if the council and the local shops know how much the increased cost of public transport is costing them.
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Read Carefully, i said "I seriously doubt it, we have one of the highest fuel duties in europe"
then you said
"the UK has the cheapest oil in Europe, and the highest fuel duty"
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
A lot of the tourists are from European countries where the underground train systems tend to be cheaper so they assume it'll be cheap in the UK too. Then they get gouged. I even *warned* a colleague of mine how expensive it was but he didn't want to listen to me, then came back 'SHOCKED I tell you' about how he got ripped off paying four pounds for a ticket, and telling everyone over and over, 'four pounds!' ... hey I said get an oyster card ... so sometimes stupid deserves what it gets.
You conveniently forget that you subsidise it in taxes anyway.