LO Ticket Office closures

Some LO stations have ticket offices run by other TOCs - Euston, Clapham Junction and Liverpool Street are obvious ones, but I think Barking, Watford Junction, New Cross and Cheshunt are other examples.

Survey Monkey isn't allowing you to fill in the online survey more than once. This is a bit of a problem as one of the first questions is something along the lines of "Which station are you completing this survey about? (If you wish to respond about more than one station, please complete a separate survey for each one)."

I don't store cookies anyway by default. It's blocking me based on IP address. But it's OK; I emailed them and they fixed it. It's a setting in Survey Monkey, apparently. Never use it myself - I prefer to write my own.

Nice to see that the facts are being presented rather than the ludicrous TfL spin on their consultation which makes it appear to be an entirely Arriva initiative when it demonstrably is not. Looking at the stations the net effect of these proposals is to essentially remove almost every ticket office from the West Anglia Inners (bar a few) and denude the NLL and WLL of ticket offices almost completely.

I can't wait to go and try to buy a privilege rate ticket from one of the new whizzo ticket machines which apparently completely replace the facilities in the ticket office - what a nonsense! I do wish they would not bend reality to suit their desired outcomes. I know priv ticket sales are a tiny share of the total but those who hold such facilities are slowly having all legitimate means to obtain a discount removed from them. It is about time Rail Delivery Group got themselves sorted out and created a form of machine readable priv ID that all passenger operated ticket machines could recognise. That would privilege ticket holders to access privilege rate fares and stop this nonsense with closing ticket offices and forcing priv holders to pay full fare.

I emailed the RDG to ask what they were doing about the lack of facilities for buying privs & they replied
"Thank you for your email regarding ticket office closures.
Until recently the closure of station ticket offices seemed imminent and would, therefore, be essential for TOCs to offer an alternative retail outlet. However, we have been advised these planned closures have been shelved for the foreseeable future.
Therefore there is no immediate plan to create an online solution, for now, but this may change in the future."

I replied telling them that they need to look into this as it is definitely going ahead & I'm still waiting for a reply.
On a different TOC note, Chiltern has been sneakily doing this at Northolt Park station..They advertise ticket office open times & it has been closed for over a year. South & West Ruislip are also advertised but these are LUL operated ones & they have no clue about the priv tickets.

So wait, they just rebuilt this station with a ticket office only to immediately close it?

Actually the Olympic Legacy people paid for Hackney Wick so TfL are not out cash wise for now doing away with the Ticket Office there.  In fact it generates cash doing so if they then sub let for commercial purposes.

Issue with priv tickets could be an easy one to solve, with either a supervisor menu on a ticketing machine operated by the station staff, or by using a "remote teller" solution which is being built into certain ticketing machines. I was surprised to learn, that a lot of the newer machines have intentionally left space for the tech required to make this happen in the future. Whether it would work, or what timescales to expect is another matter entirely.

Actually no.  If you look at other stations without a ticket office the cash is collected by a security frrm directly from the TVMs on a regular basis or in emergency there is a small safe in the staff room where they also store card stock.  

The London Overground ticket offices that survive are: Brockley, Bushey, Chingford, Crystal Palace, Edmonton Green, Enfield Town, Forest Hill, Highams Park, New Cross Gate, Norwood Junction, Sydenham, Walthamstow Central, West Croydon and Willesden Junction.

Consultation

Oh I see. 'Olympic money' obviously doesn't originate from the British tax payer then?

Such a relief to know my money isn't being squandered on rebuilding a ticket office only to see it closed months later 

Construction, maybe. But fitting out and equipping?

Possibly but the same would apply to commercial space.  Unlikely anyone would go to so much trouble to get in when cash holding is a fraction of what it was say 10-years ago.