1,200 job losses?

I do feel TC you miss the point regarding public services.

A service is a service. I failed to see when LU decided that they were flush with money so lets gets loads of extra staff, lets spend loads on station staff facilities - it simply did not happen.

At a time when more and more disruption is being created by all the engineering work the pressure put on the staff and the ability to give timely and accurate information has increased. Thus you could claim that productivity has increased, thus strictly from a commercial sense surely station staff should be seeing some bonuses?

Anybody read the Sub yesterday, one page how public sector workers will have a cap on payrises, and on the other how the bankers are getting legal advice on how to avoid the proposed supertax..........

So the binman, nurse, teacher will be having their pay capped, while the industry that actually created this mess gets legal advice and avoids it's responsibilities. Thus when, more than likely, strikes are called in the public sector, the focus will be on the binmen and not the bankers

Anyway bringing this back onto topic (sorry for the rant), booking office days are numbered, it's all down to whether Boris has the backbone to make an unpopular decision. The mass closure of booking offices will happen if not in 2010, it'll be 2011, 2012 or whenever everybody is using Oyster cards. Of course some will remain, as LU acknowledge.

However once the booking offices go, the public will have to accept the call centre option on all problems and they must accept that they may not be able to travel through no fault of their own.

As for the RMTs annoucement. I don't doubt for 1 second it's valid, however job cuts are affecting more than just booking clerks. From what I understand the duty manager trains grade is to experience some massive reductions as it, to a lesser extent, the duty station manager and the group station manager grade. No doubt the news was leaked by somebody affected by these proposals.

However, is there not a rule as there is on the NR network that

IF a passenger wishes to buy a ticket at the station AND the ticket office is shut AND the machine will not sell that ticket THEN they are allowed to travel and instructed to pay at their destination?

Surely this would cover instances where the booking office has shut and the passenger cannot purchase the ticket they require?

Not without (actively) notifying EVERY station on the network that "such-and-such" a station has allowed pax in. Otherwise you'll get to the exit gateline and be charged a full all-zones fare - or even worse, a penalty fare if they think you're out to defraud them.

Unlike NR, LU has no machines which issue 'permit to travel' tickets which allow payment at the other end.

Perhaps a little more 'padding' is needed here...

LU are moving away from selling tickets by outsourcing it to local "ticket stops" - in reality, your local newsagent. They have also introduced new types of self service machines on stations, and made buying on the web possible, in the guise of helping those who don't wish to spend time at a ticket office window.

Now that they have successfully managed to change peoples ticket buying habits, ticket offices are quieter and it's therefore much easier for management to produce stats which back up their closure plans.

Management have been very clever and most us didn't see it coming!!

Only a very few NR stations have such machines. Generally if you get on at a station with no ticketing facilities or only a machine (i.e. most of them) you will be sold a ticket fine. Only if you get on at a large station, or one in a city (e.g. Waverley, Kings Cross) will they bat an eyelid.

In a case where the ticket office is shut, IMO, a passenger should be permitted to travel and instructed to buy the ticket at the other end. If they get to the other end and that ticket office is open, they buy the ticket they wanted and all is well. If the other ticket office is shut, then the passenger is let out and LU lose money - tough, their fault.

In fact, surely they ought to include in advertising that certain tickets can only be purchased at ticket offices? It is rather misleading to suggest to a passenger that "these are the tickets available" - for them to get to the station and be told that they can't buy the ones which were advertised, they have to spend more money, because the ticket office is shut.

I've noticed that since then some (or a lot) of the PERTIS machines have been removed. Neither of my two local stations now have them, although they did when Penalty Fares were first introduced.

You're now expected to use the ticket machine, and if you can't buy the exact ticket you need then to buy one for part of the journey and exchange at an open ticket office as you did with a PERTIS permit.

There is a penalty fare area around Birmingham, and I remember seeing a notice somewhere recently saying that one would be introduced shortly but I can't remember where. Unless it was an extension of the Birmingham area?

While there are barriers at Bristol Temple Meads that are in usually operation most of the day it is not a penalty fare area so there is normally one person trying to sell tickets with a handheld machine to all the commuters who've got off a train so crowded the guard couldn't get anywhere close to them.
If the ticket machine at Yatton is anything to go by, then all of FGW's machines are very unreliable, but the guards realise this. What is sometimes more difficult is persuading them that there was a queue for the single window in the ticket office and it was a case of buy a ticket or catch the train but not both.

I can assure you that that list is not totally correct - Enfield Lock, for one, does not have a PERTIS machine. I have, numerous times, had to tell people to pay at their destination on NR because the ticket office is closed and the ticket machine is not working.

There are two stations on that line I know do have PERTIS machines - (Angel Road & Brimsdown), - and whilst I don't deny there may be others, that list is not 100% correct.




So waiting times at ticket offices are down, yes, very good. This is obviously going to happen when you expand available ticket issuing ffacilities - more places to get tickets, less people queueing at each. However - ticket machines may well be suited to regular commuters who know what they are doing. But are they suited to the tourists? They don't know the system, don't know what tickets to get, and won't really know what they're doing at a machine.
A member of staff in a ticket office can help such a customer, a machine (on its down) can only do what the customer tells it. So what you rather be queueing behind - a tourist at a ticket office window, not knowing what they are asking for, with an MF helping them, or a tourist staring blankly at a ticket machine, not having a clue what they're looking for.
I think I know which would take less time.

That is, of course, if the focus of closing ticket offices is to save customers time... and not money...