On 05/02/2014 18:00, tim..... wrote:

"Roland Perry" wrote:

In message , at 06:30:28
on Wed, 5 Feb 2014, remarked:
I am bemused by this. Does anyone have the ticket office usage figures
over the last decade? I can't believe they haven't fallen pretty sharply.

Have you really failed to notice the queues at the 'original' TfL ticket
office at Kings Cross (and much the same at the Western ticket hall
which is in St Pancras). Every time I've been to Euston (most recently a
couple of months ago) the queue for the TfL ticket office was huge.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As it is a Vic every time I arrive home off my Thursday/Friday evening
flight - at 10pm!

Who the flip queues up to buy a ticket at 10pm?


Lots of people, as you've seen.

It's best never to assume that everyone else thinks or operates in a
similar way to oneself.

Mizter T wrote:
On 05/02/2014 16:01, Recliner wrote:

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 14:02:13 on
Wed, 5 Feb 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:

this is a "must win" dispute for TfL or else they are
in dire trouble in a couple of years time.

Some figures from the news today: the strike has cost £250m and the
projected savings are £50m a year.

I assume that projected cost is to the customers and London business in
general, not TfL, which probably profits from the strike (saved wages, much
higher bus revenues, no refund on Travel cards or season tickets).


I demur - the lost revenue from all those Tube journeys that never were
will be very substantial. The extra planning, extra buses, and extra
staffing (if only those office and managerial staff who would normally be
doing something else, something that mostly presumably still needs to be
done) doesn't come for free.

If many of those would-be Tube pax used multiple buses instead, won't that
have cost them more? But, yes, you're probably right, TfL's revenue would
have been down, but not by a huge amount. Certainly not nearly £250m.

In article
,
(Recliner) wrote:

wrote:
In article ,
(Roland Perry) wrote:

In message , at
06:30:28 on Wed, 5 Feb 2014, remarked:
I am bemused by this. Does anyone have the ticket office usage figures
over the last decade? I can't believe they haven't fallen pretty
sharply.

Have you really failed to notice the queues at the 'original' TfL
ticket office at Kings Cross (and much the same at the Western ticket
hall which is in St Pancras). Every time I've been to Euston (most
recently a couple of months ago) the queue for the TfL ticket office
was huge.

I know all about those queues and the queues for every ticket
machine at Kings Cross St Pancras too. But I rather assumes it
would be one of the few to remain anyway.

Yes, as a travel advice office, not a ticket office.

How are they going to deal with registering railcards on Oyster cards then?
And the rest of Paul's list?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On Wed, 05 Feb 2014 20:07:21 -0600,
wrote:
How are they going to deal with registering railcards on Oyster
cards then?
And the rest of Paul's list?

A combination of online, post and phone. Or perhaps NR ticket offices
or the remaining gateway offices. No need to have this facility at
every station.

Neil

--
Neil Williams. Use neil before the at to reply.

On Thu, 06 Feb 2014 00:03:11 +0000, Mizter T
wrote:
Lots of tourists (domestic and overseas) arriving at central London
stations, not knowing quite what they want, but knowing they don't
just
want a single ticket.

This is where the planned roving assistants help? But it is a small
number of key stations they are likely to arrive at.

Plus, I'm going to throw it out there and suggest that the
clientèle of
MKC station are not representative of the wider population at
large.
(That's not meant as a derogatory comment BTW, but don't get too
smug
about it either!)

MK is somewhat "middle class" compared with other similarly sized
towns, certainly.

Neil

--
Neil Williams. Use neil before the at to reply.

In message , at
18:59:52 on Wed, 5 Feb 2014, Neil Williams
remarked:
Have you really failed to notice the queues at the 'original' TfL
ticket office at Kings Cross (and much the same at the Western
ticket hall which is in St Pancras). Every time I've been to Euston
(most recently a couple of months ago) the queue for the TfL ticket
office was huge.

Gateway stations are to retain a presence. But even so, most are
probably buying tickets available from machines, if MKC is anything to
go by. Give a man a fish...

Give a man a camera and he takes a picture of a Gateway station with
huge queues at both machines (in the foreground) and the windows:

http://www.perry.co.uk/images/stp-western-queue.jpg
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 20:07:21
on Wed, 5 Feb 2014, remarked:

How are they going to deal with registering railcards on Oyster cards then?

It would not be unprecedented for them to 'discover' at the last minute
that it can't be done, and withdraw the facility. Or produce a
completely new scheme that doesn't have the "loading" step.

My daughter has a 16-25 card loaded on her Oyster, but there's also a
"18+ Student Oyster" (not very useful for someone living in Z2). It
might be simpler for TfL to require *National Rail* to issue some 16-25
Railcards on a newly invented "16-25 Oyster" (rather than a bit of
card).

More fuss for travellers (because the issuing facilities might be
restricted to the London area), but a typical "two steps forward, one
step back" process 'it were the technology wot made us do it'.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 14:02:13 on
Wed, 5 Feb 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:
If you need a refund of £40 from a surrendered season ticket how is
this done at a passenger ticket machine even if a member of staff has
signed on?

Make weekly and monthly seasons non-refundable, and annual ones only
purchasable by card [how many people pay by cash?) and refundable only
by mailing them in.

Then announce that this is "progress".

Do you get 40 £1 coins rather than 2 £20 notes?

TfL machines are among the few places that give £2 coins as change.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 17:28:52 on Wed, 5 Feb
2014, d remarked:

Station staffing can't be maintained if they're letting 400 staff go via

voluntary redundancy. Thats almost 2 staff per station.


Or about half a person on-site at any one time, after you've taken into
account shifts, weekends, holidays etc.

--
Roland Perry

On 05/02/2014 23:33, wrote:
In article
,
(Recliner) wrote:

wrote:
In article
,
(Recliner) wrote:


I think it's something like 3% of passengers now using the ticket offices,
so most really are pretty much redundant (and closed most of the day
anyway, outside the centre). But the unions also don't like the fact that
many of the quieter stations will become single-manned, with a mobile
supervisor covering half a dozen stations.

How does Overground operate? I can think of some of their stations where
that might be an issue already.

Returning to the 3% figure - I don't even believe that. Is that really
3% of all journeys on the Underground involve a visit to a ticket
office? Not just a ticket machine?