Closure of ticket offices and changes to ticketing

What is contactless stance on weekly travelcards or monthly?

So the handheld readers that revenue etc use will have to be linked over the air to the back-room.

An update on Contactless payment - Tfl have announced that the 16th of September will be the launch date for Contactless payments on all TfL services including LU, LO, DLR and Trams.

www.tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2014/july/contactless-payments-set-to-launch

The ticket machines have had a software update at King X, they can be in different languages now.

Staff are at my station measuring, taking pictures etc in readiness for its permanent closure in March. Sad. As our ticket office is quite busy.

They have had options for different languages for several years, unless the number of languages has been expanded.

I have a Tamil friend and we were going somewhere on the underground and he went to top up his card and he selected Tamil and it was a very bad translation, as if someone had just gone through a dictionary and done it word for word. Almost any Tamil speaker could have checked and corrected it. I expect a lot of the other languages are similar.

Was that on the updated software?

The range of tickets available on the smaller Fewfare machines has been increased with new touchscreen displays.

At my station, the ticket office has closed, no additional ticket machines, so a worse service is provided. Inside the ticket office, Two of the three ticket desks and associated equipment, ie ticket office machines, has been removed. No tenant. No one wanted the space as a retail unit.

I'm not convinced about the night tube. I imagine it will be busy for a couple of months due to novelty value and over the festive period. However I am doubtful there will be enough demand to justify the scale of service being suggested. The night buses work because they not only deal with the leisure flows from the centre but also deal with night / early morning workers, suburban night time flows etc. Some bits of the night tube may also do bits of that but I can't see floods of low paid workers transferring to the night tube service. They can't afford to use the daytime tube so why use the night one?

We also don't quite know how the ticketing and capping arrangements are going to change for the night tube. Until that emerges we don't know how people's travel will be priced and capped and whether people will end up paying more to go out at night than they currently do with a 0430-0429 traffic day for capping purposes.

There has never been anything, other than money, stopping TfL adding some more suburban night buses if it wanted to. It now has several years worth of data from the existing network plus experience of the NYE night bus extras to be able to make a judgement as to where people might want a night service.

Passed through Blackhorse Rd today and see they've boarded the ticket office up with those hideous cheap looking blue slatted panels. Looks like the place has been robbed and cheap jack repair people have been in to "fix" it. Yuck.

Obviously you are aware that travelling without a valid ticket puts you at risk of either a penalty fare or worse if you were stopped by a Revenue Control Inspector/Revenue Protection Officer. On London Underground services the standard penalty is £80; on national rail services it can be considerably more, with risk of prosecution and a criminal record.

If you cannot purchase the ticket you require to make your entire journey you are obliged on London Underground to purchase a ticket as far as you are able to do so and part-exchange it at the first ticket office you encounter on your journey; for example, if travelling from Harrow-on-the-Hill to Great Missenden (ignoring the fact that you can purchase a ticket to Great Missenden on the POMs) you would purchase a ticket to Amersham and part-exchange this when you reached Great Missenden for the correct-fare ticket. If the ticket office is closed at GM then no further action can be taken against you. The same is true for a journey from West Ham towards Southend.

Tl;dr; if there is a method available to purchase a ticket (even if not the exact one that you require) you must use it to purchase a ticket as far as possible; if you pass this without a valid travel document then you are putting yourself at risk.

The POMs aren't perfect (Far from it, but that's for another thread) but they cater for the majority of people most of the time. LU is not National Rail, and isn't obliged to operate in the same way as them. Offices remain on LO purely because the DfT won't let TfL close them; they want to close them, and it will happen eventually.

Unlike a freedom pass a priv ticket entitles the holder to travel until they are able to purchase a valid ticket, there is no ticket a holder could alternativly buy, apart from a full fare over the whole journey, which would be valid for a priv holder.

Penalty fare notices always state that the passenger must buy a ticket at the first opportunity, if there is no ticket office appropriate ticket machines or permit to travel machines, and no appropriate staff on the train then no opportunity is presenting itself, in any case I cannot see Chiltern, or any other toc risking the wrath of the Daily Mail over this one.

There is no ticket office at Amersham, to either get a refund on a ticket or to buy a priv from there to great Missenden either.

Before reading what I have written below, please note that I am NOT a lawyer!

Under the GLA Act 1999, which sets out the powers TfL have in using Penalty Fares on LUL and Buses it states in Schedule 17 - Penalty Fares:


In philthetube 's instance, a Priv single from Harrow to Great Missenden is £2.00. The cheapest ticket philthetube can buy at the POMS at Harrow costs £4.80. Since there were no facilities to pay the necessary fare for his journey it could be argued that he should not be liable to pay a penalty fare charged under the GLA act if challenged.