London Banter - View Single Post

Tim Roll-Pickering · March 25th 09, 12:38 PM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote:

It highlights the problem with the current policy of not allowing
remote issue from self-service ticket machines. Somewhere like
Paddington should have a machine that reads a season ticket, sees that
it is valid to a station somewhere down the line and then allows issue
of a ticket issued at West Drayton or Boundary Zone 6 (or any other
location). All too often, someone who can pass through the barriers
at the London terminal with a ticket not valid for their full journey
will get away with not buying the extension.

Except that there's no mention of the extension problem (which I fully agree
with as expressed on other threads) and the £7.50 quoted is the Anytime Day
Single fare for Paddington to Slough. Livingstone sounds like he was
travelling on Oyster PAYG on the tube and transferring to a regular fare.

Another point he might not wish to answer is the poor availability of tube
and train combination fares from tube stations. But again his mantra as
Mayor was "everyone must use Oyster PAYG" and whack fares up to punish those
who dared to have travel requirements that PAYG is useless for.

Now if he had focused on the problems of season tickets he'd get a lot more
sympathy, especially as what is a simple purchase in itself usually takes
ages because of queues by tourists asking for complicated stuff, but this
isn't the situation he was in.