please empty your brain below

I guess that people at Wood Lane who need a ticket office can always walk to White City.

My local station, Wivenhoe (used by around 500 people a day) would put all of these opening hours to shame. On the other hand, as a NR station, in theory people might want a complicated ticket to Inverness via Birmingham or something like that.

Which makes me wonder, Will LUL ever join the 21st century and have a fully integrated ticket system with NR. My father lives in Amersham and it is an absolute pain trying to book a ticket so that I can arrive on Friday and depart on Monday. I usually book to Great Missenden instead.

With all their ticket offices opened at vastly reduced hours, this would make it much harder to introduce an expanded national ticketing system "can't do that guv, staffing costs would be too great".

Hi, the ticket machine at my local station didn't sell kids travel cards etc last time my son tried, I guess to guard against fraud. (They have Zip Oysters but occasionally forget them; also I sometimes need to get one for a visitor/friend who is tagging along.)I wonder how proposed cuts will affect this.

I wonder how the DLR copes without ticket sellers and staff to help poor bewildered passengers get around the place?

I love the fact LU are helping people get fit, it was great seeing so many people walking today.

There was a lot of huffing and puffing from tired people (or those that had inhaled too many petrol fumes) but I think they city will be sleeping well tonight.


Wood Lane was indeed done that way because of White City. I remember reading it in the official planning outline of the station before it was built. When the new Heathrow T5 was built, they put in a ticket off because there is not another tube station 30 seconds walk away...

Actually the DLR works remarkably well without any ticket offices. When will London Underground staff get real? They are just shooting themselves in the foot and irritating millions of people in the process.

The real problem here is the unions, whose only justification for existence these days is to organise strikes. When *will* they (and their striking members) understand the economics of the real world?

Selling 6 tickets an hour is not a good justification for keeping a ticket office open. In many foreign cities I've visited as a tourist, you have no option but to buy their equivalent of an Oyster Card, from a number of designated places. Why can't tourists/occasional tube users here do that? (Apart form anything else, the fares are a lot cheaper!)

Interesting piece on how much the unions cost the taxpayer here. I do hope the governmint are looking at cutting their funding, in these austere times...



I am not sure where all of this will end, apart from more cuts. I fear that many people would like to strike or show their displeasure with the way their bosses are treating them, but are too scared of losing their job in this climate.

Is it the general move towards a more DIY society?

Strikes are an excellent example of a DIY society.

BlueWitch: I see you cite the Taxpayers Alliance in support of your views. Its a very very right wing organisation that would like to see Unions banned. I'm a taxpayer, and they don't represent my views.

If you have ever belonged to a Union you will know they do far more than strike - in fact strikes are very rare in the UK. Not least, they give working people just a small hope of balancing the power of the city (the real economics of the mad house, and which costs the taxpayer BILLIONS).

I'm a bit concerned about the use of the word "cuts" throughout the reporting of this piece. What about making travelling on the Tube more enjoyable by getting machines to do jobs that take machines (like selling tickets) and humans to do things that only humans can do, like helping you through the barriers or being on hand if someone needs help on the platform. It would make us more appreciative of the many staff who work hard to run our Tube system and make their jobs a little more stimulating than sitting behind a counter all day.

Having to buy an Oyster Card if you only visit London once every couple of years (like most tourists do) is a hassle and might even put some people off. Why not give people the choice on how to pay for their travel?

Also, one of the reasons ticket offices are not used that much is because of the £5 minimum topup, meaning long queues at ticket machines that in the case of my local station, Walthamstow Central, cause problems for people who need to get past the machine to access the bus station and one of the three exits. The machines often don't recognise my debit card as well.

I've got a fair bit of sympathy with the strikers, although I do hope the strike's effects don't go on into Wednesday.



logistical - I cannot agree that strikes are DIY. They are highly orchestrated manipulation of people (both members and consumers) by a few overpaid officials justifying their own existence in a world that no longer lives in the 1960s and 1970s. You clearly do not like the TPA - but, but, they do a lot of fact-finding and expose a lot of governmint wastage. Their statistics are better informed than many of the 'official' ones, and their commentators generally seem to me to be a lot brighter than most 'career politicians'. Unions have little or no place in the modern world, where members have to follow the union line or be ostracised by their colleagues. Unfortunately, many people in low-paid jobs feel they have to belong to a union, and just follow the party line like sheep, because otherwise they are ostracised by fellow workers. And several of the comments above show how many people today just do not understand the economics of the modern business world.

I've only used a tube ticket office once in the last year and that was to have my Oyster card replaced after it stopped working.

On National Rail services (which I use a lot more often) the only thing I typically use the ticket office for is a monthly season ticket renewal but thankfully a year or two ago the machines were given this functionality so now I normally use the machine for this as well. It's usually much faster as well (oddly using the ticket office involves the staff swiping a bar code and various pointing and clicking with a mouse, which you don't need to do on the machine). At the end of the day whilst I do feel sorry for those who may lose their jobs I value my time and I'm not going to join a queue to use the staffed ticket office if I know I can purchase my ticket from one of the machines and there is no queue, or a shorter queue, to use the machines compared with the ticket office.

"I wonder how the DLR copes without ticket sellers and staff to help poor bewildered passengers get around the place?"
@IanVisits: They don't bother paying...

I imagine this is also to do with the fact that people in the ticket office are more senior, have more money-based responsibilities than those at the gateline and elsewhere.

Customers don't need an office to sort things out - they need the problem sorted. That can be done by a qualified person with the correct technology. Any National Rail ticket can be bought from conductors walking up and down trains.

Obviously having a person locked away in a ticket office provides less safety than someone mingling in public areas.

The problem is that the person in the ticket office is comfortable there, they have more experience - so they know how to deal with a wider variety of problems. That's part of the station staff career path. I guess people having to wonder around a windy station are incentivised by knowing that with experience and training, they may be promoted into the warm, mostly-quiet ticket office.

The negotiations should deal with the perceived demotion office staff feel when the office is closed and they are re-assigned to 'more lowly' tasks.

A special hat might do the trick.

BW wrote "Unfortunately, many people in low-paid jobs feel they have to belong to a union, and just follow the party line like sheep, because otherwise they are ostracised by fellow workers".

I don't think "sheep" actions are restricted to just low paid workers. Following the party line comes in many formats.

Perhaps that applies to you as well. I know it applies to me with certain issues.



Same type of proposal as we have on the table here in NYC at the moment, incidentally. I think the safety issue is a smokescreen, personally, but it may wind up carrying the day (in favor of the Transit Workers Union) in the end.

No wonder TFL aren't publicising the reductions proposed!

At least we get double-deckers back on the 25 today!

@ Mr Tingey. As I have spent several hours volunteering to provide customer info and help at Walthamstow Central today I can confidently say that the station staff who turned up and were *not* on strike were perfectly decent and helpful people. Please don't make sweeping statements based on two problems a year!

@ BW - sorry but the taxpayers alliance are a nasty right wing lobby group that wouldn't recognise a valid statistic if it walked up and kicked them in the shin. I have read some of their articles on transport and their "analysis" is laughable and fundamentally incorrect. As someone else commented - I am a taxpayer and they most certainly do *not* represent my views. Why newspapers and the BBC give them any credence by quoting their "findings" is beyond me.

@ Blue Witch:

1. Okay, what do YOU (and the grubby Evening Standard) propose the staff do to try and protect their livlihoods?

2. Unions are about so much more than strikes, if you want to get a taste of life without them go to yesterdays Washington post and read some ofd the "Labor" (sic) Day editorials.

One day YOU may need collective employment protection.

CF

There is more than enough employment law protection in this country these days to make unions redundant. People who work in small firms don't have the luxury of unions to hide behind, and they manage OK - BUT they have to do a decent day's work and understand their employers' difficulties in hard times.

If people in heavily unionised industries don't like their jobs, or the changes that any organisation has to implement to stay competitive and within budget, then I'm sure there are plenty of others waiting to take their jobs when they leave. But they won't leave, because their lives are far too cushy, and they often have lovely pension schemes which almost no-one in the real world (non-public companies) does these days.

I think a lot of people need to understand the economics of the business world rather better than they do. I guess having a spouse who has worked in senior positions for years and years, and being self-employed, and a past union rep (local and county level) gives me more insight than most, but everyone has to balance their own household budget, and running a business is no different. Oh, I forgot, look at the mess so many people are now in thanks to credit... If they don't understand micro-economics, how can they understand macro-economics?

And me, a sheep? Never. That's why I am self-employed :)

Voluntary little platoons run on democratic lines... surely unions are an example of the Big Society in action?

Ticket offices can go the way of wireless operators, switchboard girls and lift men...

They are not needed. Oyster and autotopup have done me fine since I set it up, I can't remember the last time I needed to use one.

The few odd tickets you can't buy (1-9 travel card with young persons, for example) need to be either added to the machines or eliminated (of course, you can already use YP card with Oyster).

Gated stations should have staff, but they should be out helping people.

So, has anyone actually added up the man-hours saved by the ticket office changes and compared them to the job loss figures? They claim that these changes free staff up from being stuck in a box so they can be of more assistance around the station; if so, why redundancies? Don't dress up sacking people as 'redeploying them elsewhere in the system'. We're not idiots.
I watched a text-book assistance of a visually impaired person with a guide dog the other day. All done by-the book according to the ACOP laid down by LUL. One member of staff at the top of the escalator, one at the bottom, and one assisting the VIP up the closed escalator. And that has to be done whilst there are people on the gateline, passing trains through platforms, doing security checks... I know staff who are dragged off meal breaks to do VIP assists. They don't have to; they are entitled to their breaks, but they know that if something goes wrong because there are not enough staff to follow the ACOP, they will all get in trouble. Not only that, some of them actually do it because they care.

I support the strikers. LUL are trying to pull a fast one here. If they can loose 800 ticket office staff, they can equally loose 200 upper-level managers who get paid four times as much and make the same savings. But would that really happen?

Apologies to DG and other readers for responding to a post and then triggering a rant by way of reply.

Note to self - don't bother replying in future.

PC - don't worry. Anyone can trigger Greg, he's like a coiled spring of rantiness. Just be glad you didn't mention the word 'Olympics' too.

There are plenty of transport systems in the world that either have no ticket offices, no drivers, or in some cases, run themselves with no humans getting involved at all.

They seem OK. Doesn't necessarily mean there is a high level of crime, a high level of accidents, nor a low level of ridership with lots of confused tourists.

We're just a bit backward, that's all.











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