Closure of ticket offices and changes to ticketing

www.londonreconnections.com/ has a lot of detail. Its seems in outer London, 1 supervisor for six stations and stations manned with a station assistant or whatever the grade will be called. maybe they will run the station with two staff on a 10 hour shift 4days on 3days off. In my day when I worked alone. You would often stop selling tickets to go to the platform and then often onto a train or down the track as circumstances dictated.

I note Ruislip is classed as type 'Local B' - ie minimum opperational risk. What about Ruislip siding, or will that be covered by Ickenham in the future? Or is Ickenham 'Local A' because of congestion at peak times?

Has anyone considered that even now some people, either from choice or for many other reasons do not have computers, credit cards etc: What are they supposed to do if needing to travel at short notice??

For some of these questions you're going to have to wait for more detail to be announced about how these tasks will be accomplished. Understandably the first information to be announced is the staffing changes at a high level. Later will come the detail of the changes and improvements in technology to deal with customer enquiries better (for example station staff being able to issue refunds via the passenger ticket machines). Nothing is going to change for 12 months so there's plenty of time to get more info.

I think your judgement about Oyster relative to Octopus in HK is a bit unfair. Creative Star, who run Octopus, had a battle to get the necessary regulatory standing to allow their card to be accepted for payment outside of the HK transport network. They were lucky and succeeded but there was no real way that LT (as it was) was going to be able to "defeat" the UK Banking Industry. Yes it would have been lovely to have Oyster to do all sorts of things but you need to consider the political context in the UK and London which was subject to huge change at around the time Oyster was due to launch. There is also the question of whether spending public money to battle the banking industry would have been a good use of public money. The political context in HK also does not bear comparison with the one that applies in London.

I think you are springing to a judgement about ITSO which is not proven in reality - are there any operative multi-modal schemes that are handling the scale of even 10% of TfL's Oyster transactions? I am not aware of anywhere that works like that yet. Many ITSO card applications on buses are tediously slow which would never work in London given the huge volumes carried. The simple point is, that as things stand, Oyster broadly works for an enormous number of people. It's not perfect but then neither are magnetic stripe tickets if they get a bend in them! I don't see ITSO being able to emulate Octopus given the banks have now moved into contactless payments themselves. You can argue about the cost effectiveness of Oyster or the use of a closed, proprietary system if you want to criticise it. However comparison against ITSO puts Oyster very much in the "winner" category rather than "loser" if you ask me.

Indeed, there's also a retailer at Leicester Square which also sells Oyster products.

The newsagent opposite Hornchurch station is still selling Oyster.

But the problem is that newsagent is not open for the full hours that the station is open.

The ticket office at Hornchurch only has very limited opening hours

Try finding a staff member on a Sunday evening, the ticket windows are closed the staff are nowhere to be seen.

The station has no help points.

Newsagents inside stations do not want the ticket office open. When the Metro first came out. It was delivered at 5.am and by 5.10 the newsagent had dumped them down the street. It took months of threats before he stopped.

I think it is more subtle than that. As people take up the contactless payment option, oyster usage will decrease. When it reaches a certain point TFL will say as only so many % of the travelling public use it the cost outweighs the benefit and to save money we will end it.
With oyster gone will there be a need for POM's?

Oyster (or ITSO) technology will still be required for Zip, Oyster 16+ and 60+ and for discount photocards and railcards. Contactless isn't available for those on basic bank accounts or through a credit union.

I should have said full zonal fares.

Railcards will  end up on Bankcards or online accounts linked to a contactless card. What photocards are you talking about? You don't need and no photocard is used with oyster (PTAC?). Credit unions already offer a chip and pin debit card which will probably go wave and pay in the near future. With regards to basic bank accounts I think they may go to a centrally administrated card which you have to apply for or pay for an  ever-increasingly expensive paper ticket
You are right that zip and 16+ will continue but they cost £10 and are processed centrally. Freedom and 60+ are processed centrally and payed for by the mayor(TFL) or local councils.
For the general public and tourists, I strongly feel oyster will be phased out.

Bus and Tram Photocards and Jobcentre+ photocards (formerly the New Deal photocard) are linked to Oyster in the same section where railcards are stored.

There are a couple of issues here. The public trust Oyster and broadly understand it. Many do not like the idea of TfL having direct uncontrolled access to their bank accounts. TfL therefore have a real "hearts and minds" battle on their hands to convince people about using a contactless bank card instead of Oyster. This presupposes that people have a contactless debit or credit card and, as already said, not everyone does for a variety of reasons.

TfL do, as you say, want to convert Oyster so that the cards in people's hands are "dumb" and just trigger transactions at devices that are then reconciled to whatever ticket product is "held" in the new central system. This is a later phase of the Future Ticketing Project yet to be approved / funded.

TfL have also given a commitment to the London Assembly that Oyster will not be withdrawn. I expect there will come a point where TfL is forced by the Mayor to renege on this commitment but only once a "convincing" alternative strategy for those on low incomes, in receipt of concessions etc is in place to try to dispel the political fall out.