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The Southern Railway Key ticket



West Hoathly Seagull

Honorary Ruffian
Aug 26, 2003
3,540
Sharpthorne/SW11
I'm a London commuter, travelling from Three Bridges to London Victoria. For this I buy a monthly ticket - I don't know how long my current work will last and secondly, I used to buy three-monthlies and found that after a while the magnetic strip was knackered and I'd have to get the ticket replaced. I also have a London flat, and sometimes go from Clapham Junction to Vauxhall to join the Tube (for various reasons I'm not currently using the flat). Up to now I've had no problem - that journey is on the line of route and therefore valid. The other night though, my ticket didn't work it, while still working fine at TB and LV. I tried to get it changed, but the clerk said his system wouldn't allow him to do it, and said it had been wrongly issued as a Key ticket.

To me, this Key thing is only any use if you can use it across the network (or within your line of journey if a STH), but Clapham Junction and Vauxhall are South West Trains stations and therefore you can't use it there. Whenever I change my ticket I ask if it will get rolled out for other companies' services, and the reply has always been, "we think so, we just don't know when". However, last night the TB clerk said he wouldn't bother with it, and to stick with paper tickets, as it was a complete shambles. In my view, they should have just extended the Oyster card out to suburban services, but some know-it-all at the Department for Transport decided to go for a completely different system. I was just wondering whether any NSC'ers use this thing, and if so, how have you found it?
 

Beach Hut

Brighton Bhuna Boy
Jul 5, 2003
71,891
Living In a Box
The problem is each TOC has their own ITSO Card scheme - Southern has theirs and SWT have theirs.

To top that there is Oyster which does extend to some zonal railway stations so the summary of a shambles is about right as nothing interfaces with each other.
 

HawkTheSeagull

New member
Jan 31, 2012
9,122
Eastbourne
Its good, but only South of Gatwick really - until it gets integrated with Oyster in the London area and other train companies - it will be a bit crap. All train companies will soon have their own cards too, 1 integrated system across the entire country might happen eventually though.

Oyster wouldnt have gone outside of London because it is a TFL ticket.
 

blue'n'white

Well-known member
Oct 5, 2005
3,080
2nd runway at Gatwick
I'm between schemes as it were as the Oyster extends down to Coulsdon South only and I get the train from Redhill which is slap back in the middle of schemes.
 

seagullsovergrimsby

#cpfctinpotclub
Aug 21, 2005
43,690
Crap Town
The problem is each TOC has their own ITSO Card scheme - Southern has theirs and SWT have theirs.

To top that there is Oyster which does extend to some zonal railway stations so the summary of a shambles is about right as nothing interfaces with each other.

TfL want to replace Oyster in the next couple of years with contactless "wave and pay" to minimise costs. Passengers (customers ?) will be able to use debit/credit cards , smartphones or the smartcard successor to Oyster.
 


middletoenail

Well-known member
Jul 2, 2008
3,570
Hong Kong
TfL want to replace Oyster in the next couple of years with contactless "wave and pay" to minimise costs. Passengers (customers ?) will be able to use debit/credit cards , smartphones or the smartcard successor to Oyster.

They could learn a thing from the octopus card which is used in Hong Kong. It's used on pretty much all public transport and supermarkets.
 
I've got a Southern Key card, mainly because it was free and I take an interest in how these thing work (way back, I guess about 15 years ago, I used to go to regular meetings about how electronic ticketing could revolutionise the sale of public transport travel across the southeast, if only ITSO could be developed properly - sadly, it didn't happen).

I don't use my Key to buy season ticket travel, so I don't aim to get the best use of the thing. I do, however, try to use it for one-off journeys and my experience is that - about three times out of four - when I try to buy travel from a ticket machine at a station, I get told that the transaction has failed and I'll have to buy a regular ticket instead. This, of course, means starting the transaction all over again, thereby DOUBLING the time it takes to buy the travel I want.

I'm not impressed. But I do qualify for a huge discount on Car Club membership, because I possess a Key card. That in itself makes it worth having one. But I don't recommend it for actual rail travel.
 


Hamilton

Well-known member
NSC Licker Extraordinaire
Jul 7, 2003
12,364
Brighton
It's bloody pointless at the moment, because it doesn't have a universal application. Would be so easy to fix as well.

Typically, TOCs have designed things from their point of view rather than from the customers/consumers/passengers point of view. They're not alone. 99% of businesses fail to design things from customers point of view - for example, think of a mobile phone company where you and your children have accounts and how they make it so difficult for things to be seamless.

Because the TOCs are so amateur, they think they are bringing a new service to the market and they want to be there first. It's horsesh1t. Passengers are much more switched on. I'd take a key tomorrow if it was as flexible as the way I travel, but it's not.

They also don't bother investing in things properly from the off. They quite literally can't see the writing on the wall. But hey, why bother that hard when you don't have to try that hard to get customers.
 

Super Steve Earle

Well-known member
Feb 23, 2009
8,298
North of Brighton
I've never had or understood an Oyster card nor worked out how to use London buses, so either walk or get travel cards for the tube. Had no idea there was another system I wouldn'understand.
 

beorhthelm

A. Virgo, Football Genius
Jul 21, 2003
35,237
i dont understand why they've even bothered with a system thats not compatible with Oyster, just added confusion and reduced the interest in their offering imo.
 


Gwylan

Well-known member
Jul 5, 2003
31,320
Uffern
What makes the whole thing even more bizarre is that Brighton buses have their own key card so, if you work in London, you could well use three travel cards for your journey to work - a totally bonkers system.

I do have a Southern key card because when flexible season tickets come in, they'll be available on the cards. As I WFH two days a week, a flexible ticket is very attractive to me but I wouldn't have bothered otherwise
 

pasty

A different kind of pasty
Jul 5, 2003
30,152
West, West, West Sussex
What makes the whole thing even more bizarre is that Brighton buses have their own key card so, if you work in London, you could well use three travel cards for your journey to work - a totally bonkers system.

I do have a Southern key card because when flexible season tickets come in, they'll be available on the cards. As I WFH two days a week, a flexible ticket is very attractive to me but I wouldn't have bothered otherwise

Completely this. I use a bus in Brighton to get to the station, train to London, tube to Tottenham, and another train to the office. Until they can bring an electronic ticket that does all four modes, I stick with my paper travel card and plusbus tickets which do. My annual travel card ticket operates the barriers at Brighton, Victoria, all tube stations, and Tottenham Hale mainline station and is accepted on all London buses as well. I only need the extra plusbus ticket for B&H buses.
 

theboybilly

Well-known member
It's bloody pointless at the moment, because it doesn't have a universal application. Would be so easy to fix as well.

Typically, TOCs have designed things from their point of view rather than from the customers/consumers/passengers point of view. They're not alone. 99% of businesses fail to design things from customers point of view - for example, think of a mobile phone company where you and your children have accounts and how they make it so difficult for things to be seamless.

Because the TOCs are so amateur, they think they are bringing a new service to the market and they want to be there first. It's horsesh1t. Passengers are much more switched on. I'd take a key tomorrow if it was as flexible as the way I travel, but it's not.

They also don't bother investing in things properly from the off. They quite literally can't see the writing on the wall. But hey, why bother that hard when you don't have to try that hard to get customers.

I get mine through being a Southern employee. I've not really tested The Key to the full as I only use it to get from Shoreham to Victoria or Brighton. Southern rave about how cutting edge this technology is and how wonderful 'they' are to be bringing this to the travelling masses. I'd like to know more of your opinion of this ticketing system and how they 'literally can't see the writing on the wall'. It would be nice to stick it to a smug manager now and again because I agree they are so very amateur.
 


i dont understand why they've even bothered with a system thats not compatible with Oyster, just added confusion and reduced the interest in their offering imo.
I mentioned the meetings I used to go to about 15 years ago. They started off with the intention of agreeing a universal system for the whole of the southeast (including London) that covered bus, tube and rail services. The lack of vision shown, in particular, by the out-of-London bus companies and Essex and Kent County Councils was the biggest problem - so what happened was that London Underground and London Buses just went ahead and introduced a system (Oyster) that was designed to work for them.
 

CheeseRolls

Well-known member
NSC Licker Extraordinaire
Jan 27, 2009
5,905
Shoreham Beach
I've never had or understood an Oyster card nor worked out how to use London buses, so either walk or get travel cards for the tube. Had no idea there was another system I wouldn'understand.

I find Oyster very convenient. I think I still have about £30 on my card, which has been there for quite some time, so TFL get to bank my money, but I am happy with this trade off. Queuing at ticket machines during the tourist season, is a bloody nightmare, best avoided at any cost. As for buses, it always pays to have a basic understanding of how these work in London. Some journeys are quicker and they are especially useful, when there is a problem on the underground.

The Southern key makes sense in terms of replacing those magnetic gold cards, that never last a year, but as an integrated solution, I reckon it is pretty poor. It would be interesting to know what percentage of journeys use these cards, I reckon it will be pretty low.
 

mikeyjh

Well-known member
Dec 17, 2008
4,472
Llanymawddwy
The Southern key makes sense in terms of replacing those magnetic gold cards, that never last a year, but as an integrated solution, I reckon it is pretty poor. It would be interesting to know what percentage of journeys use these cards, I reckon it will be pretty low.

I use the key regularly, I think it's great, really convenient to book online and just breeze through the station, also much easier having the receipt online when visiting London on business.... But yes, I don't think it's a got a big take up, the ticket inspectors do tend to respond with a look of surprise when I get it out :D
 

father_and_son

Well-known member
Jan 23, 2012
4,646
Under the Police Box
I'm not impressed. But I do qualify for a huge discount on Car Club membership, because I possess a Key card. That in itself makes it worth having one. But I don't recommend it for actual rail travel.


Possibly the most damning description of a contactless travel pass there can be ... use it to get a completely unrelated benefit but for god's sake, don't use it for the primary purpose. That's like getting a credit card just to cut coke with and never spending with it!
 


Badger

NOT the Honey Badger
NSC Licker Extraordinaire
May 8, 2007
12,734
Toronto
I've got a Southern Key card, mainly because it was free and I take an interest in how these thing work (way back, I guess about 15 years ago, I used to go to regular meetings about how electronic ticketing could revolutionise the sale of public transport travel across the southeast, if only ITSO could be developed properly - sadly, it didn't happen).

I don't use my Key to buy season ticket travel, so I don't aim to get the best use of the thing. I do, however, try to use it for one-off journeys and my experience is that - about three times out of four - when I try to buy travel from a ticket machine at a station, I get told that the transaction has failed and I'll have to buy a regular ticket instead. This, of course, means starting the transaction all over again, thereby DOUBLING the time it takes to buy the travel I want.

I'm not impressed. But I do qualify for a huge discount on Car Club membership, because I possess a Key card. That in itself makes it worth having one. But I don't recommend it for actual rail travel.

I have tried to use my Key once for a short journey by loading a ticket online a couple of hours before leaving home, when I went to use it on the ticket barriers it didn't work and the bloke told me it hadn't been loaded yet. I ended up having to buy a paper ticket because I didn't have time to go to the ticket office and sort it out. Surely they can improve the system by loading tickets almost instantly, there's the same issue with Oyster cards where you have to wait until the next day before you can activate an online top-up.

I commute to London Bridge every day and it apparently works there which would make renewing my season ticket a lot easier. I don't do this because it only works at London Bridge and Victoria so when the trains are screwed up or I go out and end up at Blackfriars or St Pancras it won't work, effectively giving me a lesser season ticket for the same price.
 

mikeyjh

Well-known member
Dec 17, 2008
4,472
Llanymawddwy
I have tried to use my Key once for a short journey by loading a ticket online a couple of hours before leaving home, when I went to use it on the ticket barriers it didn't work and the bloke told me it hadn't been loaded yet. I ended up having to buy a paper ticket because I didn't have time to go to the ticket office and sort it out. Surely they can improve the system by loading tickets almost instantly, there's the same issue with Oyster cards where you have to wait until the next day before you can activate an online top-up.

That is very frustrating but for future reference, if that happens again, go to the machine and hit the 'Buy Smartcard ticket' or whatever it is, tap your card and it will load up there and then.....
 

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