please empty your brain below |
I think it's perfectly sensible. There will be a need to solve issues like Gold Cards, refunds and other things, but how many other mass transit systems these days have ticket offices?
I just hope they spend a bit of money making any new ticket machines a little more user friendly. |
I heard this morning on the news that Amazon have an eye on buying up all that space the ticket offices used to put their Lockers in. So you can pick up your order on the way home from work
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The NationalRail ticket office at Liverpool Street can issue Oyster season tickets, and can apply the GoldCard discount onto the Oyster. (Though they might need to be prompted to get the manual out, as some of the staff clearly don't do it often).
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Ironically, when I heard this I thought - yay, now they'll finally have to sort that silly Gold card discount bug once and for all.
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So a Mayor promises to keep Routemasters, and then gets rid of them.
So a Mayor promises to keep ticket offices, and then gets rid of them. Just following your lead, dg..... |
I'm sure there's a long list of things they need to tackle. Off the top of my head there's also redeeming refund vouchers (almost impossible unless you go to an office) and also getting the form you need if you forget your Travelcard, buy a paper ticket and then want to reclaim it.
Neither unsolvable but needs doing. Will be interesting to see if this becomes an election issue but notably they're aiming to get this out way before the election, presumably to stop a future Mayor reversing the decision. Personally I can see where they're coming from, but the extent of the closures seems way over the top. Major stations need more than someone wandering around with an iPad. Still I'd say one thing is guaranteed. Strikes will be coming. |
Well we used to have ticket checkers at station entrances and exits, they have all gone, replaced by machines.
Once you checked in at a desk with an airline, now it is mainly on-line or via a machine. Supermarkets have customer operated automatic check-outs. Banks would like us to do everything on-line and close branches. In Paris the metro is becoming driver-less, Boris has plans for that here too. I doubt if I will miss the ticket office on the underground network, as long as there are some staff about. I do find the ticket office useful at National Rail stations where there are far more destinations. If Amazon do not grab the space maybe they could be rented to newspaper shops and still top up Oysters etc. Hope that the redundant staff are well taken care of. |
Perhaps Boris could give the redundant ticket office staff jobs as "non- conductors" on his new 2 man operated buses.
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@John ..'In paris the metro is becoming driver-less'
That'll go with the cleaner-less policy then |
Despite the absence of compulsory redundancies we can rest assured that the railway workers' union leader will immediately threaten strikes and "safety concerns". When will RMT begin to consider modernising its public face, maybe bring it out of the 1970's?
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I would be perfectly happy about the ticket office news if the automated machines which are proposed to replace them could replicate all of their functions. They can't. They can't even sell you a season ticket for a duration of longer than one month.
If TfL are serious about this and not just hoping to make a quick buck, their machines need some drastic upgrading. |
I'll miss the ticket offices and their usually helpful staff.
I'll support strikers and strikes, too. |
"Those ever decreasing hours at your local ticket office are a direct response to you not using it so much any more, so when the occupants finally lose their jobs, it's partly your fault."
This is true but I also found that at my local station (South West Trains) I used to buy a monthly season. This could only be renewed at the ticket office and always seemed to take an age (scan the bar code on the photocard, lots of pointing and clicking and eventually a ticket produced). Then when South West Trains introduced the ability to renew monthly tickets at the machine I stopped using the ticket office, because even if there was no queue at the ticket office, I found it quicker to do it myself at the ticket machine then have the staff do it at the ticket office. All you had to do was type in the photocard number and pay by credit card. I don't know why that should be, I suspecr poor software on the computers in the ticket office. |
I think the hilarious thing is that only yesterday dg was saying that they wouldn't close the Waterloo Rd ticket hall and today he is.
Seriously, it isn't a huge problem - if the staff are going to be in the ticket hall they can help unfamiliar people use the machines and everyone else can use their Oyster - and remember, most tourists possess a credit/debit card, so they can use that. I think this is a step in the right direction. |
At one of my local stations (Harrow & Wealdstone), the station is managed by LUL (because the most frequent service is the Bakerloo Line), but also served by National Rail services. It wouldn't surprise me if most tickets sold at the ticket office are for NR destinations. Is there any chance of London Midland taking over the running of the ticket office?
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Oyster cards present all sorts of problems. People coming to London from overseas or from elsewhere in the country may not have a clue how to work the machines. All of us can suffer from forgetting to swipe in or out, cards that get damaged, machines that don't work. These problems can only be sorted out by the ticket office staff or I sometimes online (if you are clever), or by posting your card to some obscure address and waiting weeks for a refund.
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Oh great, more opportunties for them to over charge us and for us to have no means of getting our money back.
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so in the new "non oyster" future...if you are foreign visitor to london and you use your foreign debit card to travel around the tube, then every journey will register as a separate transaction and will incur multiple "foreign currency transaction" charges! eg £2.00 for the journey and £1.50 transaction charge.
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Dave - no. The plan is to batch up the contactless transactions, not to debit your card each time. This is essential for capping to work.
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@Stephen Bird
Wouldn't London Overground rather than London Midland be the company to take over running the ticket office at Harrow & Wealdstone? |
There was a plan to scrap the LOROL service to Harrow & Wealdstone and replace the service with an extended Bakerloo, so no Overground. That would be a bad move, IMHO.
Also, unless they plan to remove cash from the system altogether, i.e. you'll only be able to buy or top up Oyster cards or equivalent using bank cards rather than cash, they will still need all the back office stuff, counting cash, putting it into safes, emptying machines, refilling Oyster dispensers etc. And the ticket office is physically constructed to a different standard because of the safes and cash and paper ticket stock store etc. So Amazon pickup using the ticket offices? Idiotic idea that can and will never happen. |
most ticket offices have various rooms behind, or sometimes below or above, the part the public sees; a room with safes, cash counting machines etc, a staff restroom/mess, cloakroom/toilets, and sometimes other small rooms. some of these might be convertible to Amazon requirements, but every station is different.
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