Fact Sheer

Project Overview

London's Oyster card is the jewel in the crown of an integrated smartcard ticketing and revenue collection system designed, implemented, managed and marketed by the TranSys consortium on behalf of Transport for London (TfL).

The contract for the project, titled PRESTIGE, was awarded in 1998 to the TranSys consortium which has invested £192 million in it. The principal partners of the consortium are Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS).

Why was Oyster introduced?

The contract is designed to deliver a number of defined business objectives for TfL. These are:

• Timetable efficiencies and reduced queuing times
  • reduced congestion in Tube stations: Oyster allows 40 people per minute to pass through gates, 15 more than with magnetic stripe tickets
  • timetable efficiencies: Oyster makes bus boarding three times faster
• Fraud reduction
  • PRESTIGE enables smartcards which are being used fraudulently to be disabled, a process called 'hotlisting'. This is estimated to have resulted in annual savings of up to £2m
• Range and convenience of payment options

  PRESTIGE has extended the range and options for ticket purchase making it easier and more convenient for customers to buy their tickets. This has helped reduce ticket hall congestion, improved the flow of customers through stations and improved the purchase experience as a whole. Improvements include:

  • Multi-functional touchscreen ticket machines at Tube stations offering a variety of payment options including using either cash and credit / debit cards
  • A network of over 4,000 local ticket outlets branded 'Ticket Stops', expanded from 1,875
  • Internet and telephone ticket purchase, with automatic top-up of the customer's Oyster card at gate readers of a nominated Tube, DLR or National Rail station within 24 hours of purchase
• Future service planning
  • Through PRESTIGE TranSys has equipped TfL with unprecedented levels of relevant and reliable data on journey and sales trends which they can use to accurately plan future services

What is Oyster?

Oyster is a smartcard which can hold up to three season tickets and pay as you go – stored value for single journeys – at any one time. Oyster is valid on all bus, Tube, DLR and Tramlink services, and selected National Rail services.

Oyster cards are more durable than magnetic stripe tickets and are reusable - they are simply topped up when an old season ticket expires or when stored value runs low. This combination makes Oyster more adaptable to the individual ticketing needs of customers.

Oyster has enabled the introduction of a number of innovations benefiting the consumer. Daily Price Capping, introduced in February 2005, means that customers using pay as you go on their Oyster cards no longer need to work out the best value ticket for the journeys they are making that day. Unlimited journeys made using pay as you go will always costs less that the equivalent price of a (paper) One Day Travelcard. Another innovation, Auto top-up, means that customers using pay as you go can have their card automatically topped up with either £20 or £40 whenever the balance falls below £5.

How does Oyster work?

Oyster is an example of a radio-frequency identification (RFID) application in the mass transit environment. The most visible elements of the system for the consumer are the contactless smart card and the yellow electronic readers situated on station gates, buses and on ticket purchasing terminals. These electronic readers are linked to a central system which manages journey and revenue data.

The card is a 1kb Philips Mifare card and contains a microchip and coiled antenna, activated by a magnetic field around the ticket reader. As the card is touched on the yellow reader and passes through the magnetic field, the antenna produces an electric current with just enough voltage to power the microchip, which then sends its stored data to the reader as radio-frequency waves.

A typical Oyster transaction takes 200 milliseconds. During this time the card is read, the presence of a valid season ticket is identified or, for customers using pay as you go, the correct fare is calculated from a possible 1.83 million fare combinations, and then data is written back to the card. The software and communication protocols cater for the customer removing his card from the field before the transaction is completed – without corrupting the data on the card.

Why 'Oyster'?

Getting the right name for the card was very important. It needed to be distinctive and memorable whilst being unpretentious and simple enough for people to memorise and pronounce easily. It also had to be a name with which everyone, both staff and customers alike, could identify.

The name 'Oyster' was selected as the brand because the term, its meaning, sounds and associations were felt to reflect the core values necessary for the smartcard:

• Security and value (Oyster shell and pearl)
• Innovative name (reflecting the ticketing revolution)
• Plain English (a clear and easy to use name for all Londoners)
• Longevity (timeless not trendy)
• London heritage

The brand was developed by TranSys as part of its overall responsibility for the marketing of Oyster. The development process required extensive consumer research that involved Underground and bus staff and a cross-section of the travelling public.