Paper travelcards to be phased out next month
TRAVELCARDS for seven days or longer will soon only be available on Oyster cards, as Transport for London announced yesterday it will no longer sell paper tickets at London Overground ticket offices.
The change, which will be introduced on 15 September, is in line with the withdrawal of paper season ticket Travelcards from all London Underground ticket offices in 2005.
Current tickets will still be accepted until they expire, and daily travelcards and point-to-point tickets will continue to be available in paper form.
The move is expected to drive an increase in sales of the Oyster card, which was first introduced in 2003. Since then, over 60m have been issued.
“Paper season travelcards have not been available at Tube ticket offices for a number of years now and so it makes sense to bring London Overground into line with our operations on the rest of the network,” said Shashi Verma, TfL’s director of customer experience.
“Oyster is already the ticket of choice for more than 85 per cent of our customers,” she added.
Meanwhile, TfL has said ethical water company Belu will distribute 43,500 free bottles of water to commuters on the Tube during the warm weather.