Walthamstow Central Upgrade

This whole exercise was sheer lunacy and a great waste of public money!

Does anyone have any photos for reference, I'm not familiar with the area and don't quite think I googled the right things to find it

There was (I don't know whether there still is) something similar but not quite the same at Southwark. www.oyster-rail.org.uk/2011/09/the-southwark-pass-through/
I know that if you pass through Canary Wharf Jubilee without making a journey that you are charged (max fare?) but this is to discourage people from using it in favour of other equally good routes that don't add congestion to the station. I've never tried it, but I think if you use the easternmost escalators from the platform, exit through the eastern gateline, enter the middle gateline and exit the western one to leave the station you do not get charged for anything other than your train journey.

I can't immediately think of anywhere else where there is a walk-through gated area without a non-gated alternative nearby, e.g. at Stamford Brook the passage through the ticket hall is not part of the paid area.

The most famous place with "walk through" platform tickets was Earls Court for people using the upper walkway. I've no idea if those tickets still exist or whether an Oyster / CPC replacement facility has been created.

Southwark is currently even more relaxed at present, as it allows access to NR passengers wishing to get to/from London Bridge whilst Charing Cross trains are not calling there without charging a Tube fare for the Waterloo- London Bridge leg. It also allows NR point to point "London terminals" paper season ticket holders to enter Waterloo East, go through the two barriers at the Waterloo end of the concourse of Southwark, and emerge on Blackfriars Road - a very useful weatherproof cut though from Waterloo to Blackfriars Road!

I started this thread last Friday and would like to thank everyone for the great comments that have been made. I have never worked for L/U-L/O and only make comments as a bystander so welcome comments from the likes of Snoggle. So jjerome95 regarding W/C as I see it, the two surface platforms (B/R now Overground) are still using Oyster readers. There are two staircases, one on each platform leading down to the sub-surface level for the Victoria line. When the bus station was rebuilt a subway was put in running under the main road linking it with the sub-surface area which as Snoggle referred to is controlled by L/U, this also linked in with the two staircases leading up to the British Rail controlled areas. At the moment you can walk through from the bus station via the subway into the sub-service area. Providing you don't want to go through the gateline at the top of the escalators down to the underground, you can then walk up a flight of stairs to the chingford trains and also out through the booking hall to the main road which is on the opposite side to the bus station. Continuing through the 1968 built subway under the B/R tracks (also under L/U control) the other flight leads out into the Station Square where it once let you walk straight on to platform 1 for Liverpool Street. This is the wall that has been removed so that things will go back to as they were. At the moment any person can walk through the subway from the bus station through to the station car park and the new short cut to Walthamstow Queens Road. Once the three new gatelines are operational, I assume that only ticket holders can freely move within all areas of the station complex, non ticket holders will have to walk over Hoe Street road bridge to access the other side. Regarding the 1968 subway, when there was a tube strike the shutters were closed so people alighting from the buses with most of them going into town to work could not use it. B/R had removed the footbridge between the platforms so everyone had to walk over Hoe Street bridge, to which many missed the train to Liverpool Street. I assume B/R thought that it could save money by not having to maintain the footbridge forgetting that they had no control over the subway.

Great post! So in practise this new system is replicating the arrangements that first existed at this station. 

Up until the end of the Eighties, there was always very close collaboration between BR and LRT at the time. Even the APTIS ticket was developed in close conjunction with LRT's engineer's at that time - an APTIS ticket could work LRT's ticket gates! Gatelines were often shared, where LRT and BR trains served a station, i.e. New Cross and Walthamstow and Farringdon/Moorgate/Wimbledon. When privitisation arrived, that was no longer the case, and LRT then began installing their own gatelines alongside the BR ones.
Now the only examples I can think of is Abbey Wood Crossrail, and New Cross Gate, where TFL and National rail services run side by side, yet the Gate Line in the station is shared.

There are now signs up in the London Overground entrance halls that the new gateline will be in operation "soon".

The gates are already switched on (you can tell by the lights) which they weren't last week.

My guess is that the change will happen soon, maybe even tonight.

I'm sorry but your statements about gates are simply wrong. I should know - I was involved. We always aimed, where there was joint entry and exit, to gate a perimeter of a station and NOT to faff around gating operator from operator and interchange flows. It doesn't work, it's often pointless and given the historic nature of so many stations there isn't the space. We did not have bottomless budgets to reconstruct stations and there was nothing like the level of demand that there is today. That demand causes congestion and delays which is why ticket hall rebuilds have become feasible and that has allowed sensible gating schemes. I find it ironic in the extreme that Finsbury Park has been gated with a layout that was dismissed multiple times over two decades. I'd love to know what's changed that has suddenly made it "acceptable".

When the TOCs were privatised they were obviously terribly keen to grab the revenue but not spend any money to help collect it. We asked WAGN if they would contribute to gating the perimeter of Walthamstow Central. They declined. The Victoria Line management were desperate to have as much of the line fully gated as possible which is why we gated downstairs and put in a rudimentary excess fares office / ticket window. That drove WAGN mad because they saw it as eroding their revenue at the station but tough. Later changes at Walthamstow allowed a more generous ticketing offer to be introduced by LU.

I helped agree the scheme to put gates into Barking which was the first TOC run station to be gated. C2C / LTS Rail did at least put their hands in their pocket and we worked well to get that scheme done. That was pretty much the catalyst for other TOCs to look at gating and, of course, it spread. Being completely honest there are some good schemes and there are some appalling schemes out there. I suspect a massive amount of money has been wasted because TOCs won't staff stations round the clock to keep gates working. It is only the more recent positive experience of London Overground that has persuaded the DfT and TOCs that a staffed presence pulls in the punters round the clock. It also has other upsides hence why we are seeing more of that type of operation on the suburban TOC lines in London. That might mean the investment in gates and new entrance buildings might actually see all day use thus improving the payback.

As we have much debated on here in recent months the Walthamstow Central "episode" is one of the stupidest bits of gating I've ever come across. It will eventually right itself because TfL are in overall control and have rightly decided perimeter gating is the answer even though some people will lose the "under the tracks" walk through route. I hope we will not see any repeat of this sort of ridiculous scheme ever again - I even live in hope that Finsbury Park TSGN might sort itself out in due course (assuming they still have gates at platform level).

Tottenham Hale now has 2 gatelines and has lost the short interchange to nortbound GA trains

It's lost the way up to the Stansted Express??
Stark, raving mad............

Two months later, and this gateway and the new gateline still haven't been opened!! What's the delay?

I don't understand why they can't open that gate, everything else is open anyway. Sure there have been a few missed trains as if you come up from the subway to the London-bound platform they make you go the longer way round.