Oyster crash threatens transport chaos

LONDON COMMUTERS may wake up to travel chaos today [Monday 14^th] after a glitch caused the capital’s Oyster electronic payment card system to collapse.

The servers went down for roughly five hours on Saturday morning. This meant that passengers on London’s Tube, tram and Docklands Light Railways were allowed to travel for free.

The situation was more confused on London’s buses as some drivers had left the garage before the problem was identified. Only later did they start letting passengers on for free.

One driver told the INQ he knew of several colleagues who kept accepting Oyster cards way after the official deadline.

However, the glitch may have rendered certain cards inoperable. The cards' data may become corrupted or they fail to work.

"A small number of Freedom Pass and Young Persons Oyster card holders may have been affected," a spokesperson for Transport for London (TFL) said.

These cards will be accepted until their owners have had time to swap them for working cards.

In the meantime, those passengers who believe their Oyster cards were overcharged while the problem persisted are being urged to visits their local transport office to ask for a refund.

Given that Monday morning is always a busy day for passengers buying weekly tickets, the situation could well lead to large queues at London Underground stations.

TranSys is the EDS-led consortium responsible for delivering the Oyster system for TFL but it hasn’t commented officially at this time. µ