please empty your brain below
Given what you've consistently/persistently written about TfL and in particular their PR operation, perhaps it's personal and payback time.....

Gordon | 12.02.11 - 8:10 a.m. | #

Just what I was thinking, Gordon :)

Great Aunt Annie | 12.02.11 - 8:46 a.m. | #

Why not ask TfL (as an FOI request, so they have to reply) where you can find the staff at B-by-B at, say, 3pm next Tuesday? Just to put them on the spot.

Timbo | 12.02.11 - 10:36 a.m. | #

Given its location and position within that location, I am amazed that issues like personal safety haven't precluded cuts like this to Bromley-by-Bow.

I've always found this the scariest tube station on the network (and I lived in the vicinity once upon a time).

Is there a phone number for when the automatic ticket machine eats your card/money etc, or for when there is any other issue requiring staff attention?

Blue Witch | Homepage | 12.02.11 - 10:38 a.m. | #

Exactly what I said in comments in your post last week - if the staff are around, I don't ever see them.

This is a problem that's just waiting to bite TfL where it hurts as soon as someone gets raped/stabbed/pushed onto the tracks. It won't matter if having a member of staff would have helped or not, the issue will be that the stations are unstaffed.

I'm off work this coming week, I might have a wander round the western stations - Ravenscourt Pk, etc and see if I can see anyone around, but after what I saw at Turnham Green for years, I think I pretty well already know that answer.

Londonstuff | Homepage | 12.02.11 - 10:55 a.m. | #

Just a matter of time before local yobs catch on and torch the place. Unlike DLR stations, Underground stations are generally not designed to be vandal resistant.

Max Roberts | Homepage | 12.02.11 - 11:20 a.m. | #

So what are the staff doing? My local station (Ealing Common) ticket office was closed but i could still see the guy in the back office ... leaning against the counter, arms folded doing nothing. If they're being paid to do nothing, couldn't they be paId to perhaps help serve a paying customer?

geofftech | Homepage | 12.02.11 - 11:48 a.m. | #

I'm also hoping that this means that the staff are available to answer the Help Points that stations have. (does Bow Road have one dg? have you tried using it?)

Four out of the six times i've ever tried using one, no one has ever answered...

geofftech | Homepage | 12.02.11 - 11:52 a.m. | #

There never was any plan to free up staff to "wander the station and help passengers", it was all lies by TFL. If employees were merely being moved around the same station there wouldn't be any financial saving.

Kim | 12.02.11 - 11:56 a.m. | #

@geofftech - The staff are being paid to do f*** all so that, in a few years time, they can be removed altogether. No doubt Peter Hendy will be quoted saying something like "We can't have public money spent on staff who come to work and do nothing" (as opposed to allegedly reading books or using playstations in the ticket office as he previously opined).

Kim | 12.02.11 - 12:00 p.m. | #

B-by-B is a staffed station. A member of staff is to be found in a back office or having a cigarette break outside the station (on the right towards a bus stop). If you keep on knocking the window of the ticket office the staff might kindly point to you ticket machines without making any eye contact or allowing you to ask a question.

Perhaps this situation originates from staff's personal safety risk assessment - stay well hidden for your own sake.

majlo | 12.02.11 - 12:18 p.m. | #

Why cant the staff just stay in the ticket office, have there been any instances of staff not coming out of the ticket office.

Jay Mizanin | 12.02.11 - 1:02 p.m. | #

@geofftech - Yes, Bow Road does have a Help Point. When you come up the stairs from the eastbound platform, it's on the left wall just after the top of the stairs.

I've only ever seen one person trying to use it, a fairly elderly man with poor English who was getting distressed because no one was answering.

I was pretty hammered at the time, but I have a vague memory of asking him where he needed to go and (I think and hope) managing to communicate via pointing and drawing on his tube map that he needed to go to Mile End and change to the Central line there.

Beth | 12.02.11 - 1:39 p.m. | #

@ Max Roberts "Just a matter of time before local yobs catch on and torch the place. Unlike DLR stations, Underground stations are generally not designed to be vandal resistant."

That's how the Barking - Gospel
Oak line (now in TFL control) ended up a series of unstaffed, open platforms fitted with bus shelters. LU are going down exactly the same route as BR, NSE and Silverlink. They took over the latter in Nov 07 yet are still using agency staff instead of properly-trained full-time LU employees on DC Line stations.

Kim | 12.02.11 - 5:50 p.m. | #

With hours like that I can't see the weekend opening lasting long, either.

Jon Combe | 12.02.11 - 6:12 p.m. | #

It's easy - just close the station. Why are us taxpayers subsidising a station used by Eastend pick-pockets and dole layabouts anyway?

mrs jones | 12.02.11 - 10:20 p.m. | #

I also thought about the safety angle as most stations in Melbourne and Sydney are unstaffed and stabbings / sexual assaults /muggings are pretty common. But the events of 7/7 must also be fading from memory I guess... who will report suspicious untended packages, etc. ???

Antipodean | 13.02.11 - 12:05 a.m. | #

what are the staff doing outside of the ticket opening hours ? You don't pay someone to come in for half an hour on a Sunday, say. Do they go to another station to do another half hour there, and so on ? What is the purpose of them being there for half an hour anyway ??

Paul | 13.02.11 - 10:33 a.m. | #

Well, TFL said they were being "redeployed in customer-facing and reassurance roles" so that must be true, musn't it?

Kim | 13.02.11 - 1:01 p.m. | #

Kim - Agency staff or not, from my experience at Kilburn High Road, at least the member of staff is there and visible on the platforms every night (and I beleive he is a former Ghurka soldier so he could handle himself if required!)

Jon B | 18.02.11 - 8:51 a.m. | #











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