The Oyster card network for London public transport
crashed in the early hours of this morning after a failure in the
IT monitoring system.
Transport for London said that problems with its 24-hour IT
monitoring system resulted in the disabling of its Oyster card
electronic scanning system. About 2.2 million people use the Oyster
card system each day.
A spokeswoman for Transport for London said a problem occurred
with the IT systems monitoring application at 4.30am on 10
March.
"There was a four-hour turnaround - by 8.30am we had identified
and started rectifying the cause of the problem.
"We are currently working to rectify the problem," said the
spokeswoman.
"There are no delays to passengers; they just show their Oyster
card at the gate, and there are signs up to indicate this."
At 10am, TfL said 90% of the Oyster network was back up.
"Now we are working out how to avoid this happening again in the
future," said the spokeswoman.
The Oyster smartcard stores a passenger’s season ticket or
pay-as-you-go information, and is recognised by card readers across
London, at London Underground and Docklands Light Railway stations,
on buses and at tram stops.
Last week Transport for London announced that Oyster card users
may soon be able to buy newspapers, milk and car parking with their
smartcards.