Recently, with minimal publicity, there has been a proposal made that would close the vast majority of ticket offices at London Overground stations. If the proposal is fully acted upon the total number of TfL ticket offices remaining will probably number fewer than thirty and that total will inevitably only go down. This makes it a suitable time to look at what future – if any – there is for TfL-run ticket offices.
The start of the demise of dedicated ticket sales
For many years, bus and train travel involved purchasing a ticket of some description from an employee whose job it was to sell tickets. Until relatively recently, only small inroads had been made into eliminating this dedicated function.
At lightly-used rural stations outside London, even in a pre-Beeching age, it wasn’t unknown for the signaller to also sell the tickets. In a similar manner, some lightly-used single-decker bus routes had the role of driving and issuing tickets combined and carried out by one person. The resulting extra efficiency probably enabled a lot of routes to be run that would otherwise be uneconomical.
Automated ticket vending is introduced
When it came to automated ticketing, as in a lot of areas of transport development, London Transport led the way. The substantial number of passengers travelling on the Underground to a limited number of destinations, combined with the limited space available below surface level, meant there needed to be another way of doing things. The significance of the Underground ticket machines was not just the use of technology. It was also the willingness to look at the issue of ticket sales without being wedded to the idea that the passenger needs to state their destination in advance – something that was ahead of its time. As the ticket system developed into the 21st century it is as much this ability to ‘think different’, as it is technology, that spurred development on.
Early fixed value ticket machines at Piccadilly Circus 1928
Ticket machines on the Underground used to sell tickets with a fixed monetary value. A list of stations that could be legitimately travelled to on the ticket issued was prominent on the ticket machine. By selling tickets showing just the originating station and the fare, the system could be simplified to the extent that passengers could purchase their own ticket without human intervention.
By 1951 the ticket machines at Piccadilly Circus were far more compact
This system was largely possible in London because the fare structure on the Underground was (relatively) straightforward. In general, the national rail network was far too large and complex for such a system to be implemented there. It wasn’t just a matter of complexity either. The varied number of destinations and different types of tickets meant that it just was not cost effective to have a dedicated ticket machine for each fare.
In 1964 little had changed – except the prices and the fashion
On the buses too
In the 1960s, London Transport went one step further on the buses and introduced its first ‘Red Arrow’ service. This was a central London, single-deck service with a flat fare of 6d. No tickets were issued and there were two turnstiles on the bus by the entrance. Separate doors were used for exiting the bus.
Pay as your enter turnstiles on a Red Arrow bus
Initially only used on one-man-operated single decker buses, the multi-fare version was introduced on ordinary routes
Also in the 1960s, Mars Ltd (of Mars bar fame) came up with a far more sophisticated vending machine that used early electronics and could sell different products at different prices. You made your selection and put in the appropriate coins. London Transport was clearly receptive to new ideas and new technology and was quick to spot the potential of the new vending machine. Unfortunately, they then made a decision that in hindsight seems inexplicable. The obvious application was to replace the Underground ticket machines with something more flexible. This would then eliminate the need to attempt to match the different fixed-value ticket machines with demand – something that was always problematic with a fare increase each year. Instead, London Transport decided to introduce a turnstile on many ‘one-man’ buses with the idea that passengers could choose between paying the driver or, if they had the correct fare, buying one of the four most common fares from a machine which incorporated the turnstile.
Turnstile on a double-decker DMS bus in the 1970s
The turnstile on the buses was widely implemented but little used. It was something of a mystery why London Transport persisted with it. The main problem was that whilst the technology worked well in a fixed-location vending machine, a rattling bus that was on the go for more than 12 hours a day was probably one of the worst environments you could think of for this emerging technology. Passengers learnt not to trust it and it was generally shunned.
The Underground Ticketing System
Meanwhile, on the Underground, the lack of investment in the ticketing process did have a silver lining. This was that the entire network was ripe for a comprehensive update using the latest technology, when money did emerge. The Underground Ticketing System (UTS) was conceived and introduced in the 1980s as ticket machines had the potential to become more sophisticated, reliable and easier to use. It also enabled individual and auditable accountability for takings. This was something that was not easy with the system previously in place, which led to large internal losses due to either fraud or outright theft.
An early example of UTS – Finchley Road in 1987 or 1988
Partly as a need to handle cash securely, the free-standing fixed-fare ticket machines were done away with and – probably for the first time ever – ticket halls on the Underground became less cluttered.
Barons Court 1990
Although recognised at the time as a watershed moment, it was probably not appreciated just how much of a game-changer this was to be. For one thing, the integrated system was ripe for further improvement as newer technology came along. For another, this was an era where people were getting used to cash machines rather than interacting with a bank cashier. Reducing staffing levels (other than by reducing time taken to do the accounts and reconcile the shift or daily takings) was never a stated aim of the new system, but it must have substantially reduced demand for face-to-face transactions. This in turn lead to a reduced need for ticket office staff.
Oyster – the real game changer
The real revolution came with the launch of Oyster as London’s smartcard travel solution, which first came into public use in 2003. Oyster was a revolution, changing the way ticketing worked in London – and beyond – forever. Conceptually, it was completely different from anything that had happened before in the UK, although it was certainly not a world first. Paradoxically, it has also been evolutionary and readers may well be surprised to realise the length of time it has taken to fully introduce it, and all the features available today. It was trialled by staff in 2002 but it was only in 2016 that bespoke Oystercards were issued to police officers who, up until then, still showed their warrant card for their free travel. More relevant to our story, with most new phases of the introduction of Oyster, the usage of ticket offices has declined further still. A fare structure making Oyster cheaper to use than cash hastened this decline in ticket sales.
Contactless bank cards
Whilst Oyster is a good system, it placed the onus on collecting the money firmly with TfL. This costs money to administer (more so than any fee required by the banks) and it also meant that users had to have their own Oystercard for travel rather than use a card that they already possessed.
It perhaps shows how far London is ahead on the ticketing curve that whilst TfL are trying to persuade people to ditch their Oystercard and move to contactless bank cards, much of the rest of the country has only just seen the introduction of similar schemes to Oyster. Other transport operators have also incorporated contactless bank cards but, in the eyes of Oyster evangelists, they rather lose the plot by issuing a ticket paid for by the contactless transaction.
Closure of Tube ticket offices…
In 2015 only three percent of journeys involved a transaction at the ticket office. By then, closure of ticket offices was firmly in London Underground’s sights. It was a big political issue but the then Mayor, Boris Johnson, had already performed a post-election U-turn and supported the closures. It was almost certainly the stark figures involved, and the need to save money, that prompted this. Not surprisingly, transport watchdogs expressed concern and there was a lot of opposition from the unions, but the financial case to be made was clearly so compelling that the Mayor and TfL were determined to push through the proposals.
…But not all of them
What received much less publicity at the time was that it wasn’t quite true that all Underground station ticket offices would be closing. Some stations managed by London Underground were also served by London Overground and it was felt that they needed to remain open to provide a ticket office service to London Overground users. It was also the case that stations with an Underground service, but run by a train operating company (TOC) would continue to have a ticket office. So stations such as Wimbledon, Richmond, Barking and Upminster would be unaffected. There was even the slightly strange case of Farringdon. This station is managed by London Underground, yet has a GTR (Govia Thameslink Railway) ticket office staffed by GTR employees.
Going, going…
With finances even tighter under the current Mayor due to various factors (mainly the loss of a large government grant) an obvious further target was the London Underground managed stations that still had a ticket office staffed by London Underground workers. For one thing, technically it didn’t break a stated intention not to close an existing ticket office at London Overground (managed) stations. So it was then that in 2018 there was a further round of Underground ticket office closures that mainly affected Kew Gardens, Gunnersbury and stations at the northern end of the Bakerloo line. This was done with very little publicity.
Consulting on the new proposals
The current consultation is officially proposed by Arriva Rail London (ARL) who run London Overground on TfL’s behalf. Despite this, one should be in no doubt that this has been done at the behest of TfL.
Clearly, once the idea emerges that it is acceptable to have London Overground stations without a ticket office, any little-used ticket office is in the firing line. Arriva is currently consulting on closing 51 ticket offices. To put this in context, if this went ahead, that would leave just 14 ticket offices that would be operated by them.
Saving Money
As with the London Underground proposal, much is made of the need for staff to be more visible. So closure doesn’t necessarily mean staff reductions though, in most cases, one would expect some saving in staffing costs to be achievable (even if that is simply through not filling posts over time). Even with no actual reduction of staff at the station, there is a potential saving of staffing costs because station assistants tend to be paid less than ticket clerks. Furthermore, there is no need to equip or maintain a ticket office, with that same space potentially reallocated to retail.
The new ticket office at Hackney Wick – proposed for closure
Unlike the London Underground proposals that preceded it, there does not appear to be any commitment to enhance the ticket vending machine functionality. Yet this may simply be because this has already been done. Certainly, you can more-or-less buy a ticket from anywhere to anywhere with the latest machines and there are few ticket transactions that cannot be made using the ticket vending machine.
Figure it out
In support of the closure proposals, Arriva Rail London have published average numbers of tickets sold at each of the ticket offices affected broken down by quarter-hour periods during the hours when the ticket office is open. The rationale behind this figure, it seems is that the Secretary of State’s guidance is that ticket sales have to reach 12 per hour for the ticket office to be declared as ‘busy’. The figures, as can be seen, are staggeringly low.
The tables for Monday-Friday and for Saturday are rather cluttered so for simplicity we will only show the table for Sunday in detail. There are 21 ticket offices open on a Sunday that are currently proposed for closure. There is not one single entry of three or more ticket sales there during a 15 minute period. And there are only three instances of sales of an average of more than two tickets in any given 15 minute period.
Only six of the ticket offices proposed for closure are currently open after 1630 and, as can be seen, sales are minimal. One wonders if any ticket office (not just the ones proposed for closure) can justify being open after this time.
One might think Sunday is a particularly bad day, but it doesn’t look much better for Saturday. 36 of the 51 ticket offices proposed for closure are open, yet selling three tickets or more in a 15 minute period is achieved only once. There are around 27 instances of two or more tickets sold in a 15 minute period.
Monday-Friday not much better
During Monday-Friday only five ticket offices proposed for closure manage to sell more than three tickets during any 15 minute period. Only Honor Oak Park achieves this twice. Some ticket offices such as Rectory Road and Haggerston do not have a single 15 minute period where the average number of tickets sold reaches one.
There is even the remarkable case of Stamford Hill that, according to the figures, cannot manage an average of 0.4 tickets in any 15 minute interval despite being open from 0715 to 1430. This is even more remarkable given the ticket office has actually been closed since November 2017 as it was structurally unsound. In this case these are historical figures prior to closure and, if the ticket office were open, maybe they would be even lower today.
Within the list are various stations on the East London line. Wapping, Shadwell, Rotherhithe and Surrey Quays are included and it seems an anomaly for these to have remained open despite being former Underground stations. The really busy station on the East London line, Canada Water, which is located very close to Rotherhithe, lost its ticket office as part of the London Underground closures. Haggerston and Hoxton have been open since April 2010 but despite decent passenger numbers, purchase at the ticket office has been extremely low.
Hoxton’s figures suggest around four ticket purchases per day. If that has been consistent since opening then that suggests in over eight years only around 9,000 tickets have been sold at the ticket office since opening.
There is also the case of the new ticket office at Hackney Wick. It is open from 0645-1500. From opening until 1000 it is expected to sell precisely five tickets. For the following five hours it is open it sells an average of 1.68 tickets.
Loss of facilities
Most objections concerning ticket office closures usually centre on purchases that cannot be made from a machine. Among the railway fraternity (but not the general public) the first concern is ‘privs’. These are privilege quarter-rate leisure-only tickets available to some staff – more usually former British Rail (and London Transport) employees who have their employment or former employment conditions protected. These cannot currently be purchased from a ticket machine. Whilst it might bother some priv card holders, this is probably is not an issue for London Overground, given minuscule sum of money involved. Conscientious priv card holders may be concerned, but their only obligation is to purchase a suitable ticket at the earliest practical opportunity (otherwise there is no attempt to avoid payment).
A second issue that comes up is the inability of ticket machines to issue ticket from the zone 6 boundary. This is quite inexplicable given that ticket machines can generally issue tickets from any station, so the original argument that this could encourage fare evasion no longer has any validity.
A third issue particularly pertinent to London Overground is the matter of residual ‘point to point’ season tickets which are cheaper than zonal season tickets. These are still available on certain routes and cannot be handled by the ticket machines. However, these are generally to places like Liverpool Street which will continue to have a ticket office. It is hard to see this as a great inconvenience for the relatively few people who require these.
Meaningless figures?
What the figures don’t tell us is why people used the ticket office. One would have thought that this was a fundamental item of information that would be needed to make an objective decision. It could be that people went to the ticket office because of a ‘use it or lose it’ mentality. Equally they could have a valid reason that we don’t know about. In a similar manner, we have no idea of the value of the transactions. They might be for a single ticket for a short journey or they may be for a more substantial purchase. Or the person could be seeking information – something that appears not to register in the figures provided.
We also don’t know what percentage of passengers buy a ticket at the ticket office at London Overground stations when the office is open. This sort of thing is kept commercially sensitive so is hard to find out but, based on 3% for London Underground in 2015, we would be surprised if the figure was as high as 2% today.
Rubber stamping?
The case for these ticket office closures seems overwhelming given the low number of ticket sales, though there may be particular issues that could need mitigating against. No doubt, London Travelwatch will be following this very closely. No suggestion is made as to when the closures, if approved, will take place.
What next on London Overground?
Helpfully, the consultation document provides an annotated diagram of the status of ticket offices on the London Overground network. Slightly less helpfully, any station not managed by London Overground is shown in grey regardless of whether or not it has a ticket office. Some London Overground stations, most notably on the Gospel Oak – Barking line, do not currently have a ticket office and these are shown in black.
South London London Overground stations (excluding Richmond and Kew Gardens)
It seems inevitable that if further stations reach the threshold whereby they never achieve an average of at least 12 transactions an hour then they too will be considered for closure. Normally these figures are not available, so one can only guess, but if Honor Oak Park is proposed for closure then one would imagine that the ticket office at the adjacent station of Brockley (around 50% busier in terms of entries and exits) would be heading any future closure list and keeping it open on Saturday afternoons and Sundays very questionable.
Bushey is intended to be the only station with a ticket office between Willesden Junction and Watford Junction
In a similar vein, Bushey, not proposed for closure, is about as busy as Watford High Street and not that much busier than Carpenders Park. Sandwiched as it is between these two stations with ticket offices that are proposed for closure, it seems unlikely that Bushey ticket office will remain open on Sundays for much longer and its long term future must be questionable. The fact that it will probably be the sole London Overground survivor north of Willesden Junction means it probably will encounter disproportionally high costs to maintain it. For example, any relief clerk sent there will cause travelling time costs to be incurred from his nominal home base which will probably be in another part of London.
A considerable number of proposed closures are in North London
It does seem quite likely that the number of London Overground ticket offices will be reduced to 14 in the not too distant future. If that happens, it would be surprising if this didn’t go down to a maximum of 12 in the next year or so. Given the incredibly low usage in the afternoons throughout the week and also throughout Sunday it would not be surprising if the hours were cut down and the remaining ticket offices were only open in the mornings on Monday-Friday or, exceptionally, Monday-Saturdays.
And elsewhere?
Ignoring the exceptional case of the cable car, the only other ticket offices at stations on TfL are currently on TfL Rail. Even the few that used to be open on the DLR (except City Airport) are now permanently closed. And City Airport ticket office is due to be either supplemented by or replaced by a travel centre in the airport itself. So this raises the highly pertinent question of what ticket offices, if any, will there be at Elizabeth line stations?
One can immediately see how pressure could be brought to bear to close Elizabeth line ticket offices – at least at some stations. On opening, stations in the central area will be 100% reliant on ticket vending machines for ticket sales from the outset. This means that Tottenham Court Road station will not have a ticket office and so the inevitable argument will be put that if Tottenham Court Road doesn’t need one then why should others?
It is certainly hard to see how, in any rational world, TfL can have large busy stations without ticket offices, but feel a need to provide places like Acton Main Line with one. Even the fact that Acton Main Line station is being rebuilt and will have a new ticket office counts for little because, as mentioned before, the space for the ticket office could probably make money being rented out, instead of losing money being used to sell tickets.
If it is decided that one Elizabeth line station can manage without a ticket office, it is hard to see where this stops. If Acton Main Line then why not Hanwell and West Ealing? West Drayton isn’t that much busier. Iver (currently managed by TfL Rail) is extremely lightly used and the ticket office is currently only open 0630-1300 Mondays-Fridays. It is a similar situation at Taplow.
On the eastern side of the Elizabeth line it is hard to rationalise why stations there should have ticket offices while the almost-parallel District line manages without them. Maybe exceptions should be made for really busy stations like Stratford and Ilford. Shenfield isn’t managed by TfL so would be unaffected.
It would seem slightly strange if Abbey Wood did not have a ticket office, but the surrounding (Southeastern) stations did have one. There is always ‘the Farringdon option’ of having a different operator run the ticket office and at Abbey Wood that might make more sense. At Heathrow, if anything, a travel centre would probably be more appropriate than a conventional ticket office.
Few or none at all
It is very easy indeed to envisage the situation in a few years time where TfL has only two dozen ticket offices at most for all of its services. We live in a society that is becoming more accustomed to unattended service, be it at the bank machine, newer branches of McDonalds or scanning in one’s own shopping at the supermarket. It is also easy to envisage the number of ticket offices going down further as the years progress – just as is continuing to happen with bank branches. Following on from having a small number of ticket offices, there may come a point when TfL or the Mayor decides that the number of ticket offices it could usefully keep open is so low that it would be better to either do without them altogether, or to invite a TOC that serves the station in question to run the ticket office on TfL’s behalf.
It must be stressed that there is no known plan to eliminate all ticket offices on TfL, but the past few years have shown that as payment habits change and technology makes more inroads, this will doubtless be kept under close review. It seems that, in TfL, the future prospects for ticket office clerks are going the same way as bus conductors many years before them.
All photos courtesy of LT museum and used with their permission except for Hackney Wick ticket office which is Network Rail copyright
Brilliant article.
For those of us in much of south east London even having station staff and barriers manned (if they exist) is often a novelty with Southeastern Metro let alone ticket offices open.
Still, its a shame if LO go the way of SE metro and then remove staff from platforms. They’ll lose a ton of revenue if they do. Fare evasion is rife on SE metro. No staff on trains.+ no staff at most station barriers that aren’t London terminals = free trips for all!
I’d want to know if removing the option of interacting with a person for a ticket is viewed as discriminatory. Not everyone is happy with online or ticket machine use, and I’d worry that elderly passengers, foreigners or those with other disabilities are dissuaded from travel. In practice, are station staff willing to guide these people through interacting with the machines?
Public transport is not just about the numbers, its about serving all the public
Typo in Oyster paragraph?
Should read “tried by staff in 2002”
[should read “trialled” not “trialed”. Now corrected into British-English. I am not sure if trial is a actually a verb but that is what I intended. PoP]
As ever, a great summary of the issues – thanks.
DLR at City Airport. Is the ticket office there really closed? The tfl Web page for that station says there is a ticket office and shows opening hours for the ticket office.
It’s an odd one though, it cannot process oyster refunds – that catches out quite a few visitors leaving London from there.
[I am happy to be corrected with a definite report otherwise but I understood it had been closed. PoP]
Certainly, you can more-or-less buy a ticket from anywhere to anywhere with the latest machines and there are few ticket transactions that cannot be made using the ticket vending machine.
And
Most objections concerning ticket office closures usually centre on purchases that cannot be made from a machine.
THIS is the problem from a user’s p.o.v.
Can you trust, in advance, that when you get to a station the ticket-machine WILL be working & that it will sell you what you want, especially if you are using a discount of some sort ( e.g. a railcard) &/or you wan to start from somewhere else ( e.g. “Boundary Zone 6” – as you have noted! )
I note there has been a failed ticket-machine at my local station, Walthamstow Central for several months, now ….
Tickets in advance could be another problem, maybe?
( e.g. Boundary Zone 6 to Oxford with railcard for Sat 13th October – return, please – a real example )
P.S. I am sufficiently Luddite/suspicious that I won’t use a bank-card for a “ticket” unless rerally desparate – so far that means “never”.
PPS: From the Murky Depths – I have a solution to your problems, but not on this thread, I think.
Perhaps one distinction is that London Travelwatch is the body responsible for approving ticket office closures (under schedule 17 of the T&SA) and hasn’t objected (perhaps as it brings the status on the NR network in line with LUL) and passed the issue to the Secretary of State.
Outside of the purview, it is the business of Transport Focus who do not seem to be as forgiving.
There’s an “official” link to the consultation now..
https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/london-overground/ticket-offices/
I find this metallica reference very agreeable
Greg,
Theoretically at any rate, if the ticket machine isn’t working then that’s not your problem. As with the comment on privs, you are not trying to avoid paying so you haven’t done anything wrong. And also not your problem if it won’t accept cash. They can’t assume you are willing to pay with a bank card.
The consultation document covers how often ticket machines were out-of-order. If there isn’t a ticket office, all the more incentive for the TOC to ensure the machines are working. Other TOCs seem to manage an extremely high availability rate. I cannot remember the last time I saw a ticket machine out-of-order let alone ever seeing a solitary machine out of order.
Re PoP,
Aren’t there Priv Oyster cards now where the oyster system rather than the ticket vending machines or barriers sort the discount?
I had always understood that when these stations were passed to TfL control to become Overground, they remained National Rail stations with ticket offices continuing to be able to sell tickets to (or between) any other National Rail station in the country and, indeed, have used them for such a purpose (although staff training for non-TfL journeys is a bit variable).
I appreciate that the numbers of people actually buying tickets for beyond-TfL journeys might be small but it does seem to represent a diminution of a Network benefit that was not mentioned at the time of transfer to TfL. I would be interested to know what the government view, and the ORR view, might be about this.
I also note the loss of National Rail signage at many (most?) Overground stations, also showing a disconnect from the National Rail network (the stations are still owned by Network Rail though one would not guess it). These signs are mandatory at franchised and Network Rail managed stations and I am most unclear by what mechanism these seem to be exempted. TfL does a good job but can be a tad arrogant about anything outside its own immediate focus! I mention all this partly to alert those in south London, perhaps craving a TfL takeover, to be careful what they wish for, as the loss of national rail functionality might be more serious there.
I am sure there must be an LR reader (or several) who can enlighten us all further about what the actual National Rail obligations might be at an Overground station (or indeed if there are any).
@PoP
“And also not your problem if it won’t accept cash. They can’t assume you are willing to pay with a bank card.”
That is exactly the situation on the buses though.
“Boundary Zone 6” is certainly now an option on SWR ticket machines a Waterloo, although for some reason the machines refuse to admit that a fare exists from there to Yeovil Pen Mill, despite there being a direct service.
However, ticket clerks are not always the best clued up – I have had one at my local station try to give me a Gold Card discount on a journey to Warrington. On another occasion the same clerk asked me if my journey to Chester would be via Guildford or via Clapham Junction – maybe she was thinking of Chichester.
With all the ticket office closures, how are you supposed to buy an Oyster card in the first place, or renew a (paper) Travelcard or a Railcard?
@Michael Horne
” continuing to be able to sell tickets to (or between) any other National Rail station in the country …………………. a diminution of a Network benefit that was not mentioned at the time of transfer to TfL. ”
The article says that “that ticket machines can generally issue tickets from any station, “, although I have no idea how “general” this actually is. As I said above, SWR have now upgraded the machines at Waterloo (and maybe elsewhere) to have this capability – they couldn’t do it a year or so ago.
There is another issue – if you have any “Delay Repay” claims or other compensation paid in vouchers (and I have A LOT), they can only be redeemed at ticket offices
I think I have seen LO platform staff sell tickets?
The ticket office at City Airport was still open as of July this year and is still listed as open on TfL website. Not sure where info about closure has come from.
Also, regarding question above about Priv discount on Oyster cards; this has been available for well over a decade now (obviously only applies where Pay as you Go accepted so no good for people wanting a journey to outside London).
One ticketing option I must say I am quite surprised is not available is mobile ticketing. As most new phones have NFC in them, there shouldn’t be problems of opening the gates, as might have been before. The advantage will be to move the ticket-buying process away from the station altogether, as it could be done before leaving your house!
Or is there some obvious reason I’m overlooking why it isn’t available?
I feel like you came up with the pun in the title then decided you had to write an article about ticket offices as a result! 😀
(Great article though!)
@Timbeau:
“although for some reason the machines refuse to admit that a fare exists from [Boundary Zone 6] to Yeovil Pen Mill, despite there being a direct service.”
It’s because the fare doesn’t exist (probably because Yeovil Pen Mill is not in traditional Network SouthEast territory; Boundary Zone fares for the most part exist only to stations traditionally served by Network SouthEast. Hooray for the legacies of our current railway system! As a compromise though, you can buy a ticket from Surbiton which for many journeys seems to represent a significant saving – this is now allowed when you have a Zonal or season ticket without the train having to stop there.)
http://www.brfares.com/#!fares?orig=0072&dest=YVP if you don’t believe me
“I cannot remember the last time I saw a ticket machine out-of-order let alone ever seeing a solitary machine out of order”
Interestingly, the p/t offices on the western part of Crossrail often remain open if the TVM is out of order – I have witnessed this on several occasions at Iver. The offices at Langley and Burnham also appear to be remarkably popular, although the latter may be a function of only having one TVM. The increased presence of ‘gateline’ staff AML – H&H certainly would appear to have impacted on TO use on that section. Conversely, I can’t recall ever having seen anybody using a TO on the OG or eastern part of TfL Rail.
@ LONDONLOVINGNORWEGIAN
Some national rail companies have apps which use QR codes instead of NFC as their mobile solution, the gates have readers for them. I haven’t noticed if TfL gates have those but I doubt it.
I get that Rob’s TVM is a ticket vending machine, but I can’t fathom AML, H&H, TO, or OG. Could someone please translate? Tnx (=Thanks)
@ Herned
At Marylebone, Arriva Chiltern Trains have them, but only on a couple of gates. Using that technology seems to be the pastime of just a few.
I can forsee that TfL may “suggest” to Greater & Anglia (and the DfT, as it would require franchise variation) that they wish to take over the Stratford ticket office- it would make sense, but that’s not so often how things work.
I’d suspect that there are those within TfL who would be far happier if the ticketing from Overground stations matched that available at Underground, and feel rather lumbered with the requirement to sell tickets to the rest of the National Rail network.
@Alphabet Soup
AML Acton Main Line
H&H Hayes & Harlington
OG Overground
TO Ticket Office
London is a city which continuously gets an influx of new arrivals, either visiting or to live here. As such it does rather seem that when the first point of call for most of them will be the transport system, that the ‘usual’ interface for enquiries will be unavailable to them.
Closing ticket offices in mainline stations – like Harrow & Wealdstone – seems unreasonable too from the point of view of advance tickets for national journeys. Fine for on-the-day tickets only, I’d have thought.
@ PoP – interesting article. I won’t offer a long list of historical insights from inside the world of UTS as the article is not primarily historical. (Readership breathes sigh of relief 🙂 )
On the subject of Privs I hold such facilities. As several people have mentioned there is the option of a Priv rate PAYG Oyster and it is very convenient within the Oyster area. Without it I suspect my low level of NR travel would be zero. I am certainly concerned about the widespread loss of ticket office from a purely selfish viewpoint of wishing to retain the ability to buy privilege rate tickets where these are necessary. I am perhaps a touch paranoid about travelling without a ticket because privs are a discretionary benefit and can be withdrawn if “abused”. There are far too many stories of extremely heavy handed ticket checking practices on TOC services and it only takes one encounter to go wrong for a valuable benefit to be lost with no right of appeal or redress. This perceived risk is one reason why I do not wander willy nilly around the railway enjoying cheaper train travel. I have no wish to fall foul of an extreme interpretation of the “rules”. Those would be the rules that I, as a former very knowledgeable ticketing person, struggle with due to their extreme complexity. How the public (or even less knowledgeable railway staff) cope with this complexity I don’t know.
I am left wondering if “ticket sales” includes adding value to Oyster Cards or undertaking any other checks on such cards? What about, as your article hints at, other transactions that the public would consider as “value added” such as information, reservations etc? You’ll excuse me if I am a tad sceptical about how the data has been drawn.
I also wonder if this proposal is going to become another “Khan vs Grayling” showdown. As we know the relationship between them is hardly “sweetness and light” and there are worrying aspects about policy changes being blocked by government where they have the final say. In a perverse world I could see Grayling turning down some of these proposals just so TfL (and thus the Mayor) are saddled with the ongoing cost rather than reaping a saving. I believe there is something of a precedent here as past requests to close / reduce ticket office hours by London Midland and SWT were not fully accepted by the DfT. There is also the aspect here of TfL doing radical things that the DfT haven’t got round to doing so “not invented here” syndrome comes into play too. Will be one to watch I think.
On the subject of London City Airport DLR I am sure I read recently that TfL had actually enhanced the ticket office facility there as it was deemed to be a “gateway” rather like Heathrow and Gatwick where TfL have full blown Visitor Centres. I note your earlier addendum about awaiting definitive evidence tho.
Re LondonLovingNorwegian,
NFC – You can use the following contactless payment apps for TfL travel payments at readers:
Apple pay
Google pay
Samsung pay
Barclays pay
The smart ticketting solution used on the national rail network is ITSO which has only being rolled out by some TOCs so far. The ITSO consortium should be launching an NFC mobile solution to be built into TOCs’ apps very shortly. GTR, SE and Anglia are the main London area ITSO using TOCs.
@ Mike Horne – the contracts for both MTR Crossrail and Arriva London Rail’s concessions with TfL to operate TfL Rail / Crossrail and London Overground services are accessible on the TfL website. There are pretty extensive sections on ticketing and retailing obligations which tie the TOCs into the overall National Rail retailing and accounting systems / processes / obligations.
I have not checked the “branding” obligations and especially the loss of the “double arrow” National Rail signage which is so prevalent on inherited TfL rail services. While I don’t get as angry as some people do about this I do share your concern that it’s a visible diminution of what is a National Railway network service.
I am not as bullish as PoP when it comes to the loss of ticket offices on the National Rail bits of Crossrail. Firstly we don’t really know how ticketing will be affected by Crossrail and its interraction with Thameslink. I have no “inside” knowledge but I still expect there to be some ticketing surprises when Crossrail is up and running. We really have no idea how travel and ticketing is going to be affected by the opportunities that Crossrail will open up. That may actually generate MORE travel requiring paper tickets if people venture beyond the fringes of Crossrail to more places on Gtr Anglia, GWR, SWR (via Reading), GTR and South Eastern. I certainly don’t see Oyster suddenly being allowed to expand and we know the DfT are clueless when it comes to Smart ticketing. That only leaves traditional paper ticketing for longer “out of Oyster” journeys. I also think TfL will have much more of a battle on their hands if they try to shut ticket offices in places like Romford, Ealing Broadway or Abbey Wood. I completely take PoP’s point about the numerical logic but the public are not logical in their wants and needs and neither are politicians in their decision making. We also have the Rail Delivery Group “ticketing review” which has yet to reach its conclusions but that could, if mishandled, turn into a political time bomb for the government especially as it has to be “revenue neutral”. In short for everyone who may gain someone else loses and we know how that plays out in a world of social media instant responses and screaming headlines.
PoP
There are three machines at Walthamstow C – two of one type, working & another, which is supposed to be more versatile, which… isn’t.
NGH
Yes, a friend has such a Priv-Oyster.
Timbeau
With all the ticket office closures, how are you supposed to buy an Oyster card in the first place, or renew a (paper) Travelcard or a Railcard?
Which reminds me … Announcements have been heard at Liverpool St, stating that annual seasons will soon be Smart-Card only & paper tickets will stop.
How will this affect the many who still use “Point-to-Point” seasons, annual or otherwise?
Many such people do not want a “zonal” season, for cost reasons….
Muzer
Correct.
Thus it is often cheaper, if travelling outside the old Network SE area to use three tickets.
To give a practical worked example: Geriatric’s pass to boundary z6 + B-z6 to Didcot return with railcard + Didcot-Swindon return with railcard ( Saved me nearly £12)
I assume this is generally applicable?
Incidentally my local station has a “manned” Ticket-Office & is often in use when I pass by on an internal-to-London journey – I would be really stuffed if it closed, as I make quite a few “boundary zone 6 +” travels every year ….
@ Ngh – I have yet to read of any of the TOC’s implementation of ITSO based smart ticketing working even remotely well. Every implementation is different and full of problems including staff who don’t understand it / can’t process it, cards not being read, cards failing, website functionality that’s borked etc etc. In short it’s near to hopeless and nowhere near as fully functional as Oyster. You’d expect ITSO to be better than Oyster given the opportunity to learn from 15 years of experience and create a step change improvement. However it seems tens of millions of quid spent of consultants and bits of kit can’t get you a working, reliable system.
Re WW,
That’s DfT for you…
So loads to comment on. Some of it already mentioned by other people.
From The Murky Depths
But if TfL ran Southeastern , they would do a lot of gating that hasn’t currently been done – and the gateline would be staffed.
John B,
From a legal perspective, I think you would have to show that a particular group was adversely affected. And that would have to go beyond ‘not being happy with …’ In a phrase that forever sticks in my mind a DfT official said that all equality promises is ‘equality of misery’. So disabled people, older people etc have to take the knocks the same as everybody else. You don’t get favourable treatment – just you musn’t be disadvantaged compared to the general population.
Re: City Airport DLR ticket office
I have long learnt that the only way to verify the status of something like this is to visit it. It would not surprise me if TfL introduced a visitor centre in future at City Airport. They have one at Heathrow and two at Gatwick. But a visitor centre is not ticket office.
Wolf,
Tend to agree with you regarding London Travelwatch and Transport Focus. London Travelwatch tend to be far more pragmatic. They raised concerns about Underground station ticket office closures and issued a comprehensive report after it happened about things that were not right (such as staff not always easy to find and identify). To their credit, London Underground listened and addressed these shortcomings. I expect London Travelwatch will do the same here and monitor the situation after it has happened.
Re: Priv tickets
I was well aware that there were priv Oystercards. But that doesn’t help if you want to go from Brockley to Brighton for which you need to buy a priv ticket. I am sure it would be perfectly technically possible to use the Oyster validator on the ticket machine to identify a priv card holder and provide a secret ‘priv menu’ for such holders. But I can’t see it happening as it would be a lot of software development for very little income.
Mike Horne,
As timbeau has pointed out, the full ticket functionality is maintained – just not at the human level. It is at times like this the actual wording becomes critical.
The lack of a National Rail (formerly British Rail) symbol is interesting and I have heard at least one other person express disquiet about this. It is definitely not an oversight as the London Overground signs standard makes it clear that they are only to be used at ‘stations which serve London Overground and other National Rail […] modes’.
So an admission that London Overground is a National Rail mode but they clearly don’t feel that the National Rail totem applies to them – just everyone else.
timbeau,
Concerning the fact that the railways must accept cash but buses in London (and trams) don’t – different legislation and conditions of carriage apply so the rules are different.
I did think of adding a bit to the article about the status of cash transactions. I suspect the day will come, not that many years off, when cash won’t be permitted on the DLR. From there it is short step to getting rid of the ticket machines altogether and demand the people use Oyster or wave and pay bankcards. I am fairly sure TfL could do that – again different rules.
Re: Using phones
I was surprised at this comment as TfL have generally been at the forefront of this. The entire TfL network supported Apple Pay on the day the product was launched. As far as I am aware, there is not single phone with a NFC pay mechanism that isn’t full supported by TfL and in all cases I believe this was the case from day 1.
QR codes would be totally impractical on TfL as one of the main benefits (often forgotten) is the throughput you get with Oyster and other contactless cards (or phones). There is no way that TfL would introduce technology that slows people down through the gates.
Muzer,
Our editor is the pun-loving one amongst us. I write the article with a title and discover it published with a different title. Usually I am pleasantly surprised, occasionally I am not.
Does Harrow on the Hill have facilities to purchase tickets beyond Amersham because last time I was there, I couldn’t see any.
How does one buy an oyster card when there is no ticket office?
Finally I still see at my local station people requiring staff assistance for all manner of things. How long before tfl eventually decide to remove station staff? I know it’s speculative now, but thirty years ago who would have thought all ticket offices would be at risk?
@Pedantic of Purley
Are you sure all NFC phones are compatible, including those from China? I ask because I know the contactless debit cards (albeit different technology) from China don’t always work when making payments at shops etc.
@Paul – At all LUL stations and Overground / TfL Rail Stations with the new ticket machines you can buy Oyster cards from the ticket machines. I suppose also the idea is now, with more and more people holding CPCs (Contactless Payment Cards), there will be reduced reasons to buy Oyster cards.
Re Paul & PoP,
“Are you sure all NFC phones are compatible, including those from China? I ask because I know the contactless debit cards (albeit different technology) from China don’t always work when making payments at shops etc.”
They would of course need one of the 4 apps that TfL use (Apple pay, Google pay, Samsung pay, Barclays pay) installed on their phone rather than one of the local China only type payment payment apps.
Regarding NFC for pre-paid tickets (rather than directly using apple/google pay):
I seem to recall that, at least on iPhones, the NFC hardware isn’t exposed to third-party apps, so using it for tickets would be a non-starter. (Android may be different.)
I stand corrected on the topic of mobile payment. As no mobile payment method is available for Android (Google Pay/Samsung Pay) in Norway yet I had not considered it.
@Philip Potter: at least on iPhones, the NFC hardware isn’t exposed to third-party apps
A notable exception to this is the Japanese Suica card, which can be added to recent iPhones (including non-Japanese ones apparently) and then recharged via the JR East Suica app. In principle TfL might have been able to negotiate similar access for Oyster with Apple, but this would have gone against their desire to shift people from Oyster (with all its administration costs) to direct contactless payments. Whereas Suica, while originating as an Oyster-type transport card, is widely accepted by retailers in Japan.
@PoP
Phone payment does have a noticeably slower response time at ticket gates than Oyster or payment cards. I’m already seeing things on social media in the vein of “if you use a phone pay app on the tube in the rush hour you’re a complete bastard”.
Re Phil E,
I’ve hear good old fashioned tutting too! Especially when it goes wrong on the first attempt…
Phil E, ngh
I am sure TfL will be on the case. Similar delays happened when contactless bank cards were introduced but it turned out the technology was about to change and the newer cards don’t exhibit the delay.
Certainly TfL are aware that 200 extra milliseconds(ms) on a 500 ms transaction can affect throughput.
I suspect they are keen to support phone use and will be looking for Apple to improve the technology or TfL to make the necessary adjustments (whichever is applicable). After all, it shouldn’t have to do much. Just record the phone being used and (I imagine) make sure it isn’t on the naughty list – not been cancelled due to being stolen or other reason.
Paul,
Bear in mind that a lot of TOCs in the Oystercard area don’t actual sell Oystercards and will direct you to a Newsagent that does.
If we’re looking for Overground station oddities, it has to be Seven Sisters…
This station does show the red “National Rail” symbol, because there a few scheduled trains a day on Greater Anglia: 07:02, 07:32, 08:02, 08:32, 00:04 direct to Liverpool Street and 16:53, 17:23 17:53, 18:23, 18:53 direct from Liverpool Street.
But, as the article points out, there is no ticket office, just a row of machines.
Also of note is that the In-car Line Diagrams on the Victoria Line have had their “London Overground” taken off for an show the September 2012, not the current position, for reasons I don’t really understand.
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/victoria-line-cld-archive.pdf
[Snip to remain on topic. PoP]
Coming back to “Z6 boundary to … “
There must be a huge number of Freedom Pass holders ( anyone got a figure? ) And quite a lot of them must presumably use the “Z6+” facility, even though it’s given very little ( no? ) publicity.
IF TfL are determined to close these ticket offices, how do they propose to allow this functionality to continue on machines that don’t/can’t/won’t handle it now?
My colleague purchases an annual TfL card using a cheque supplied to him from the season travel loans office of our workplace. He’s been desperately trying to find a ticket office he can use to complete this transaction that doesn’t entail queueing for 10-15 minutes amongst all the tourists and day trippers.
TRT
This is a problem “the boss” has – it depends on whether the people at the actual ticket windows at either/both Walthamstow or Liverpool Street will “accept” the transaction as valid &/or one they know what to do with. She has an annual point-to point & with the Gold Card discount applied to her PAYG Oyster, & some ticket clerks get confused …..
If, as has been suggested, TfL ( Anglia? ) are going to do away with paper point-to-point Annual Seasons, it’s going to be even more fun.
Repeat question: does anyone have any information on the discontinuing of said physical tickets?
Re Greg,
Anglia are ditching paper for Anglia only products (In a similar way that Southern introduced the Key 4 years ago away from the TfL area) not sure what they are doing for multi-operator (inc TfL ) tickets. GN stations are apparently being amenable as regards issuing paper and it means another TOC gets the sales commission instead of Anglia! The change has apparently not been well though through.
The last TOCs issuing paper seasons will do very well in sales commission!
Re: 3rd photo – “In 1964 little had changed – except the prices and the fashion”
Well, since you mention it, there appears to be another very dramatic change: in 1928 and 1951 all the ticket purchasers are women, but in 1964 they’ve all become men (love the Beatles mop-top by the way).
I always suspected the Swinging Sixties weren’t quite the crucible of female liberation that they’re held up to be!
@Greg Tingey 09:19
This Freedom Pass user just gets a ticket from a station as close to the boundary as possible. East Croydon to Gatwick is, with a senior railcard discount, just £3.05. I’m not going to quibble about a further 20p or whatever that I could save if I got a ticket from the real z6 boundary.
NGH
Thanks for that, so madam will not be affected, because, of course her annual season is inside the zones & issed by TfL ( now ) – was Anglia before the takeover of the inner NE London lines….
I wonder if TfL will wind up as the last “TOC” ( yes, I know … ) issuing paper (card) annuals? Now that is directly relevant to our discussion.
I hope they use some of the savings to replace or tinker with the ticket gates themselves. The ones are Brockley are (and always have been) shockingly slow to even register that a person is standing there with an oystercard on the reader. And they’re not very keen on sucking in paper tickets either.
On a more serious note though, what is the story with needing to buy a ticket with no office and a non functioning ticket machine (e.g. Nunhead)? If there is no one to speak to when this situation arises, does the passenger have to do the “queue of shame” at the Excess Fares window at their destination?
Re Greg,
My bet might actually be GWR or Chiltern due to the proportion of onward TfL use from Paddington /Marylebone.
Very interesting. I was surprised when London Transport insisted on complete ticket office closure for the Underground. I still think there should be offices at the ‘gateway’ stations. Those with mainline connections, a few strategically key places like Hammersmith or Harrow, the airports. It’s not just privs. Trying to get a child oyster for a relative arriving from the north at Kings Cross involved trying to get the attention of someone trying to help people at the scrum at the LU machines. I would much rather have waited for my turn at a ticket office. On privs 20 years ago I witnessed a staff travel concession being purchased from a machine in Germany. All that was needed was the input of your staff number into the machine and off you went. Whilst the U.K. system is so complex some ticket offices will still be needed. The trade off I guess will be that in return for simplification the National Rail system will massively reduce ticket office service
@Greg
There are approximately 1.2m active Freedom Passes
Key on the Southern works very well. IT is slower to read than oyster but once you are used to that it’s fine. IT has a payg option that also works on local buses. I’ve never had cause to use it but I’ve never seen screams of anguish about it online either.
@ Overgrounded (2 October 2018 at 16:19) “I find this metallica reference very agreeable”
Me too, but is it not a Ernest Hemingway reference first?
John Donne, surely.
@Mikeatsmileend: I still think there should be offices at the ‘gateway’ stations
Isn’t that essentially what the Visitor Centres are? Confusingly the “King’s Cross” Visitor Centre is actually at St Pancras, which is probably the best place for it as it intercepts Eurostar passengers heading for the Tube – but maybe its existence should be better advertised in the actual King’s Cross ticket halls?
With the privs issue I can imagine that once word got around that inputting a particular number got you a quarter-price ticket, it would be hard to stop it being abused – in Germany fare enforcement is more based on random ticket checks (when presumably you would have to show staff ID) than barriers.
@Ian. J: yes the visitor centres were supposed to pick up some of that which is why I guess whenever I see them the queues are horrendous. I don’t think that and the general milling about by the machines on the LU concourse is the right way to arrive in London. Also there are some ticketing issues where you just need to speak to someone in a one to one environment. On the German privs thing I should imagine that the machines tracked the the frequency of use and journey destinations of the priv ID and could soon work out if abuse was occurring. For example if it was being used at the same time many miles apart. Along with the need to show photo ID when requested it ought to be doable.
Quinlet
Thanks. So – 1.2 million possible users of “Z6+” tickets & no machines can handle this?
Um.
Ian J & others
TfL/LUL Visitor Centres – agree that there should be more of them, as the queues are horrendous. As suggested “Entry Stations” & more of the London Termini, for starters, which means one at St Pancras & another at KGX, surely? I mean .. NOT one at Waterloo or London Bridge?
Life’s complicated enough.
I buy tickets on line at home.
Pop round to the station with my Credit Card to collect them.
Sometimes make a point of saying hello or good morning to staff, just like I do with bus drivers.
Greg Tingey,
You really don’t want to let the issue of Zone 6 boundary fares go do you?
I just wish to emphasise that this is really only peripheral to the issue of closing ticket offices. Not least because even “open” ticket offices are often only open for a limited part of the day and are often closed at weekends. So, really, it is a separate issue.
It might potentially affect 1.2 million people but that is a classic twisted argument to try and make the figures seem high. Of those how many even use the train? For a lot of people it is their perceived as their bus pass or even a generally accepted means of identification that is useful to carry around and easy to replace if lost or stolen.
Of the rail-using portion of Freedom/60+ users how many actually cross the zone 6 boundary ? And how many of those cases actually make a different to the fare? Often the station is the boundary. And for longer distance (e.g. GWR) they often have special offers from the London terminal that work out cheaper than the standard fare from the zone 6 boundary.
There would appear to be at least three four simple ways to resolve this:
1) Extend the last valid station to the first station beyond the boundary if there can be a difference in fares between using Zone 6 boundary and an actual station. This would lose the ‘return via a different route validity’.
2) Make it a rule that if you purchased your ticket from the first station beyond the boundary (when the station isn’t on the boundary) it counts as a zone 6 boundary ticket.
3) Change every single ticket machine in the country capable of issuing ‘any-station to any-station tickets’ to issue zone 6 boundary tickets.
4) Just do away with the option and make those affect pay from the last valid station and restrict their route options.
@Greg
“1.2 million possible users of “Z6+” tickets & no machines can handle this?”
Not so – there are ticket machines with this capability: SWR’s machines at Waterloo for example.
“Phone payment does have a noticeably slower response time at ticket gates than Oyster or payment cards. I’m already seeing things on social media in the vein of “if you use a phone pay app on the tube in the rush hour you’re a complete bastard”.”
And I thought it was just me thinking that. 🙂
Contactless definitely takes a very small fraction of a second longer than Oyster, but the delay for phone NFC is several times that. We’re probably still talking on the order of a second, but it’s very noticeable at, say, Oxford Circus at 17:30. For whatever reason, phone NFC seems more likely to fail and require a retry as well. And that’s not including the bastards who have to take a moment to stop what they’re already doing on their phones and then tap in.
I keep an Amex in my old Oyster wallet and use it for almost (because Amex isn’t taken everywhere) all contactless payments. It’s far more convenient than using a phone, and my slippery fingers are a lot less likely to smash said phone into something in the process.
PoP
Yes/no.
It’s the loss of access/loss of utility that worries me – in principle, as well as personally.
I agree that a very large number of those 1.2 million will only rarely go “outside the zones” – likely less than 20% in any one year? ( So down to 240 000 max & probably considerably less )
I know there are also quite a few people who hardly ever use their “passes” even for local journeys, so the distribution of users is probably the usual bell-shaped curve. ( With me a couple of s.d’s out to the right. { Note* }
I had always assumed that the last station was the boundary – was I wrong?
Actually, I think you would only need to alter ticket machines where London users are likely to buy, not “everywhere in the country”.
And your option #4 would induce riot & revolution …
See also Timbeau’s comment, demonstrating that the functionality is easily possible.
{Note* In the past year, I have used the facilty approximately once-a-month, on average }
Interesting article.
As a user (and a Freedom Pass holder due to limited mobility) of London Overground’s Surrey Quays station – a couple of points.
The ticket office at said station has been closed for some time – information only (when it is staffed). Nice (not) to learn that it actually should be open.
The ticket machines do sell Boundary Zone 6 tickets to wherever. The real problem is that the machines are unreliable. I was buying such a ticket a few months ago. Finger to screen – get part of the way – then it wouldn’t work. Back to the start. Carry on like this for about five minutes – a member of staff came to assist. He gave up trying to battle with the machine – and ended up selling me a ticket from the “Information Office”.
Greg Tingey,
My understanding always was that the Zone 6 boundary was exactly that but I may well be wrong. The idea was to not disadvantage those who lost out because there wasn’t a station near the boundary. Also the tickets removed any doubt as to whether there was a requirement for a train to stop at the boundary station.
As the principle is that a ticket office should sell all tickets available from anywhere to anywhere then, in the spirit of the principle, it should be reflected in ticket machines.
But, as I say, not really an issue specific to the proposed closing of LO ticket offices.
@PoP
“My understanding always was that the Zone 6 boundary was exactly that ”
Indeed so, and for good reason, although it’s less obvious with Z6 because it is (on most lines) the outermost zone.
If you have, say, a Z1-4 travelcard and want to travel to Zone 6, and no “boundary Zone 4” ticket was available, you would have to buy a ticket from the last station in Zone 4 to your Zone 6 destination, i.e a Zone 4 to Zone 6 fare, thereby paying for Zone 4 twice.
@GREG TINGEY @POP
I note with interest that
https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/services/freedom-pass/using-pass/national-rail says
“Always show your Freedom Pass with your photograph at the ticket office when buying extension tickets. ”
But there doesn’t seem to be anything that back the assumption that Freedom Pass users can travel to the boundary as you can when you pay for Travelcard on Oyster or part of a National Rail point-to-point.
So, for example you can get to Dartford on a Freedom Pass, but not with a Zone 1-6 .
From what written on the website, it does rather seem that the assumption about needing Zone 6 Border tickets isn’t right. The site seems to say you need to buy a separate ticket from the station shown on the map.
This is especially true as the Freedom Pass is not usable on high-speed (well, non-stopping) services.
@Briantist
I hadn’t noticed that before (I’m not very familiar with Freedom Passes) but it does seem that you would have to book from the last permitted station rather than the boundary. (And the validity is not the same – for example Dartford and Swanley are outside Zone 6 but valid for Freedom passes: I think these are the only non-TfL examples).
Note that Condition 19 of the National Conditions of carriage makes a distinction between Season tickets, zonal tickets, and passes
19. Using a combination of tickets
You may use two or more tickets for one journey as long as together they cover the entire journey and one of the following applies:
(a) they are both Zonal Tickets unless special conditions prohibit their use in this way.
(b) the train you are in calls at a station where you change from one ticket to another;
(c) one of the tickets is a Season Ticket (which for this purpose does not include Season Tickets or travel passes issued on behalf of a passenger transport executive or local authority) or a leisure travel pass, and the other ticket(s) is/ are not.
I would expect that the usual rule about split ticketing applies: you must be on a train which calls at the split point UNLESS one of the tickets is a season. But the Over-60s pass is a local authority pass and is therefore excluded by the passage in parenthesis. So if you’re going beyond London, you have to buy a ticket from the last station the train calls at within London, not from the boundary.
Also, how exactly do you resolve a bad Oyster problem these days and how many additional maximum fares is that?
Other transport operators have also incorporated contactless bank cards but, in the eyes of Oyster evangelists, they rather lose the plot by issuing a ticket paid for by the contactless transaction.
I have encountered this in Romania – there is a card reader on the bus, you place your contactless bank card on the reader, and then a piece of paper comes out of the same machine that is presumably your ticket. The big problem was simply that printers run out of paper and/or get jammed, and therefore the system fails often.
Are there any other cities which do work the way London does and the payment card essentially becomes your ticket after you touch in? I am yet to encounter another system like this. I find this a little strange, given that this is an astoundingly good way of doing things and it has been working in London for a few years now.
Timbeau
If that assumption was correct, then surely, by now, someone would have been “gripped” by a travelling ticket inspector for being “non-valid” for a portion of their journey?
From personal experience, I have never had any problems “crossing the border” on any of the many routes out of London where I’ve done this. Which suggests that one does have “continuous validity”.
The problem I have is securing Senior Railcard discount on through journeys onto NR, in my case from the Central Line via Stratford.
The machines at Stratford itself, and the ticket office, which is actually run by TFL rail) will allow this, but not those eg at Debden or Epping
@Timbeau the National Rail Conditions of Carriage have been obsolete for two years now. Condition 14 in the National Rail Conditions of Travel is the new source (it was rewritten to make the wording clearer and introduce loads of ambiguity in the process).
“14.1 Unless shown below, you may use a combination of two or more Tickets to make a
journey provided that the train services you use call at the station(s) where you change
from one Ticket to another.
14.2 If you are using a Season Ticket, daily Zonal Ticket, or another area based Ticket such
as a concessionary pass, ranger or rover in conjunction with another Ticket and the last
station at which one Ticket is valid and the first station that the other Ticket is valid are
the same, then the train does not need to call at that station for your combination to be
valid.
14.3 Some Tickets specifically exclude their use in conjunction with other Tickets. This will
be made clear in the terms and conditions when buying such Tickets, and you cannot
use such a Ticket in conjunction with another except as set out in 14.1 above.
14.4 In all cases you must comply with the specific terms and conditions of each of the
Tickets you are using (for example, keeping to the valid route(s) and train services for
which each Ticket is valid). It is your responsibility to check that you comply with the
Conditions listed above”
@Greg Tingey: Worth bearing in mind that with the Conditions of Travel, your train in that example has to stop at Didcot Parkway (this didn’t used to be a case if you had a season ticket/leisure travel pass, but now it is). Not all GWR trains do, so this would effectively limit your choice of train.
@ m Jennings – I’m thinking maybe the existence of a flat fare is the decider on issuing a ticket. Travel inspection on a graduated fare route may be easier when you just need to look at a ticket. I may be wrong.
Since I have had a pensioner’s England bus pass, it has worked in three different ways on our local stagecoach buses. At first one would show the card to the driver; at stage 2 one put the card on a reader, and out came a ticket; and nowadays one puts the card on the reader and waits for a green border to show (no ticket).
Muzer
Thanks – so, in most cases, I or anyone else “crossing the line” at Z6 with a “pass” is OK, but, fortunately, my trains did stop @ Didcot, but I wasn’t aware of that new restriction.
I think it’s critical that all the “Boundary Zone ..” fares – not just from Zone 6 – are made available at ticket machines and via online sales as soon as possible. The industry has been dragging its heels over this one, because perhaps many travelcard holders don’t know that these fares exist and overpay for “London Terminals” or other fares when they already have a valid travelcard covering part of their journey.
@Michael Jennings
Contactless without ticket is available on National Express West Midlands, where as Mikeatsmileend observes, it functions as a flat fare, plus a daily cap. This does mean that it is more expensive to use contactless than cash for short hop fares, that are less than the ‘flat’ fare that applies to almost every other journey.
The Robin Hood PAYG Smartcard in Nottingham offers daily caps across four separate operators, and it is planned to offer contactless on the same basis during 2019.
@Malcolm
Some local authorities require the issue of a ticket as an audit measure. Some operators follow suit, even where local authorities do not require it (Arriva in Kent being in the latter category).
@M jennings: Are there any other cities which do work the way London does and the payment card essentially becomes your ticket after you touch in
Sydney (via Cubic) have licensed the technology from TfL and are rolling it out. I think Dijon have a limited similar scheme – but London seems to be much further ahead than anywhere else on adoption.
@mikeatsmileend: I’m thinking maybe the existence of a flat fare is the decider on issuing a ticket
More likely the question of whether ticket inspectors have card readers with a live connection to the ticketing system – eg. the Tube and rail services London are not flat fare but have ticketless contactless.
@Malcolm – there is a 4th variant – practised by Safeguard on the Guildford local services, which is to show the driver your pass; you are then issued with a zero ticket (which seems to be the worst of both your options 1 and 2).
Anon(etc)
The industry has been dragging its heels over this one, because perhaps many travelcard holders don’t know that these fares exist and overpay … This, yes – I didn’t say so, but thanks for highlighting the probable problem. ( “Beware of the Leopard” )
Ian J
Merseytavel have “Walrus” which is an Oyster-like system, which seems to work for me when I visit.
If an Oystercard with a Travelcard loaded is touched to an LUL TVM, there is a menu offering extension tickets to anywhere in the South East.
The newer ticket machines installed on the District and Bakerloo lines offer tickets to anywhere in Great Britain.
I used an overground machine at South Acton recently and was pleasantly surprised it could sell me a ticket from anywhere to anywhere including every zone boundary.
The one issue I have encountered is Old Street station- how can you get a ticket when you want to start your journey there? Given it is a national rail station with trains that travel outside the Oyster zone I am always baffled.
Looking at some of the ticket offices staying open, those on the West Croydon/Crystal Palace branches of the ELL and Bushey are served by NR TOC’s as well.
Despite the TVM’s, I can’t see the likes of Norwood Junction and West Croydon which are served by more Southern (and TL at Norwood Junction) services than LO having the ticket office closed currently.
I’d assume New Cross Gate, Brockley, Forest Hill and Sydenham will be on trial to see if they continue to be viable to keep their ticket offices open, considering how busy those stations are not just for the ELL destinations, but others on the NR network across the country.
Honor Oak Park is an interesting one. This is a ticket office which going by the sales figures in the morning peak may be enough to keep it open in the morning peak only.
@ Steve G – Old Street was what was called a “Section T” station (had direct BR, now NR, services running from it). When we put in the Underground Ticketing System in the 1980s these stations had additional ticketing data to allow for a wider (but not huge) range of BR destinations to be added to cater for direct services (or those involving a change of BR trains) on the relevant line. In Old Street’s case that was / is the Great Northern route. Both the ticket offices and larger (multi fare) ticket machine could handle this wider range. With the later advent of touch screen ticket machines the old physical constraint of buttons on the multi fare disappeared.
AIUI there has been a lot of work by TfL / LU to expand the capability of ticket machines to cater for National Rail journeys whether on direct services or with an interchange from LU to NR services. I’d expect the ticket machine to be able to sell you a single or appropriate return from Old St to anywhere on the Great Northern route as an absolute minimum. How far “off piste” the range goes I don’t know. I somehow doubt you could buy a Super Off Peak return to Darlington, for example, but I *might* be wrong about that. I don’t “play” with ticket machines these days as a job or for fun.
I note that the latest Programmes and Investment Committee agenda and papers (warning – 200 page PDF file) contains the following:
I genuinely did not know this when I wrote in an earlier comment “It would not surprise me if TfL introduced a visitor centre in future at City Airport.”
So, if the DLR ticket office is not already closed, it almost certainly will close by the end of the year.
Catching up today with the entire thread (after a prolonged break) I am left wondering how the visually impaired cope with the absence of ticket offices? Do the vending machines have a Braille option, for example?
After experimenting with my mother’s Freedom Pass, I’ve found that extension tickets to stations in the South East are available if you touch the Freedom Pass to the Oyster reader on London Underground ticket machines.
I would be very surprised if many people arriving at London City needed assistance in travelling around London. The sort of people who arrive there for a meeting in Canary Wharf or the City will either be completely used to contactless/paying by phone or will jump in a taxi.
I was made aware of the ticket office closure programme on Thursday as I was given an RMT protest card outside Turkey Street station, with a list of the ticket offices under threat.
It would be interesting to know WHAT sort of transactions these ticket offices carry out. From Turkey Street and other stations on the edge of London I assume there is a much greater chance of people travelling outside the Oyster zone than for an inner London station like say Camden Road, and thus maybe having more complicated ticketing needs?
@IAN J do the readers held by the revenue inspectors really have a live connection to see whether you’ve touched in or not? That seems unlikely, given how slow it’d be (and likely wouldn’t work in tunnels).
I suspect that all they do is check your card is valid, and perhaps not on a blacklist. Maybe they store the card details and location and then reconcile these with the backend system later on.
@John U.K.
At a meeting on transport matters here in Maidstone, a blind person informed the meeting that only 3% of blind people can use Braille.
John U.K.,
6 October 2018 at 19:22 (Edit)
Do the vending machines have a Braille option, for example?
A more relevant question might be how often a person who can read Braille needs to use a ticket machine? Given that, if they live in London, they are entitled to a type of Oystercard that gives them free travel at all times on services within Greater London how often would it be used if available?
And surely this is one group of people who would benefit from ticket office closures if it meant that there were more staff available to assist them without having to find the ticket office or ticket machine in the first place.
Maidstone Jotter,
Indeed. There are a lot of misconceptions about blind people. But as John UK originally pointed out we should be considering the whole spectrum of visually impaired.
Very few can read Braille because it is a technique that is almost impossible to pick-up unless blind at birth and properly taught at a young age. people who go blind (or severely visually impaired) nearly always use modern forms of technology as an alternative – not least because these are no longer ‘special’ but just ‘standard’ such as audio-visual descriptions on the TV. Fortunately, fewer people are born blind nowadays because the primary cause in the 1960s (too much oxygen given to the mother at birth) is now understood.
In a similar way, very few blind people want to have a guide dog despite what people think. And, for various reasons, fewer still actually have one.
Mikey C,
I tend to agree that people arriving at City Airport are not generally the ones who need assistance. But for people for whom time is money they are often quite agnostic as to which method of travel to use so long as it gets them to their destination quickly.
Yes, they are comfortable with contactless (keeps expenses simple if nothing else) but they need to be aware that it is available before they head to the taxi rank as the default option. One could look at it a different way and think of this as a group for whom one particularly wants to amend their travel habits in favour of using public transport when practical so one needs to reach out to them.
Seeing as you gave the specific example of Turkey Street I looked at the figures. Not much use in the peak there are roughly 12 tickets sold up to 0915. After that it is about a further 10 tickets until the office closes at 1300. So approximately 2.5 tickets an hour off-peak.
If you accept that very few enquiries are made in the peak times then we are really talking about off-peak. Even if you assumed that there were three or four enquires for every ticket sold (and that I think is extremely unlikely) I think one would still be hard-pressed to produce a convincing case for the office to remain open. Maybe part of the problem is that a lot of people don’t perceive other station staff as being there to help and maybe London Overground don’t do enough to get across the message that they are there for that purpose.
Contactless is a bit of a pest for expenses because of the need for a receipt.
If I’ve got a paper ticket I can take a photo of it and my expenses app does the rest (all the details are read by OCR software and the claim submits itself). The actual receipt can then be binned.
If I’ve got a record in the contactless system I have to print it out then manually create the entries. The time involved is far more expensive than the extra cost of buying paper tickets.
If someone knows how to make the tfl contactless website send VAT receipts for selected journeys by email that would make my life (and the life of many other SAP concur users) much easier.
Standard SOP for business travel amongst those of my age seems to be:
– check what Google says
– if transit is quickest, see if they accept foreign cards
– if no, or if a car is quickest, check if Uber or grab works
– as a last resort, find an ATM to get cash so a cab driver can rip you off
None of these steps requires finding a ticket office – and the first three can be done before the plane stops rolling.
@Bob “If someone knows how to make the tfl contactless website send VAT receipts for selected journeys by email”
The following items do not have VAT charged on them and therefore there is no VAT to reclaim: train tickets, insurance, stamps at a post office, most books, bank charges, interest, salaries, any purchases from a non-VAT registered person or business.
https://www.greenaccountancy.com/resources/vat/vat-questions/
Bob,
For some contactless may be a pain because of the need for a receipt. But for some of the people that use City Airport they can ‘wave & forget’. Their secretary or personal assistant will tie up the details from the itemised bank or credit card statement.
A couple of things I find noticeable:
– 3 weeks seems very short for a consultation, 3 months is more typical for government consultation with potentially substantial negative impact
– as others have mentioned before, the user profile of ticket offices is likely to be quit different from other travellers – so where’s the equality impact assessment?
– The main function of most ticket offices in London is surely to provide information. Should that be counted and addressed?
Oh, and on the issue of issuing paper tickets when paying by smartcards or contactless bank cards outside London, I think this is ultimately caused by the difference in complexity between the TfL ticketing system and any other British conurbation. I mean, how many possible tickets (e.g. adult zone 1 – zone 2 single, child zone 6 day ticket, etc) are there in Oysterland compared to elsewhere?
So many of the commentators on ticket office closure (including some here) are working on the assumption that if the ticket office closes then the staff currently based there will disappear from the station. Hence all the queries about how to get assistance if the ticket office is closed. But TfL keeps stating that the staff will not disappear but will add to those on the front line in the station where, in practice, they will be far more accessible and more useful for giving assistance of a much wider variety. Cynics may say that this is merely the first step and that, after the ticket offices are closed, it will be far easier for TfL to cut overall numbers. But this general anti-change argument does not help public transport. You might as well argue that the gas lamp lighters should not have been abolished.
Not sure whether Pedantic or anyone else has data to support the idea that City airport users have a PA to do their expenses for them.
Where are all these PAs? The CEO of the unit I work for has one but the other 60 or 70 staff certainly don’t. And I would guess that the PA’s job doesn’t include doing the boss’s expenses.
It’s all very well saying that assistance-needers can get it from front-line staff, who should be about the station somewhere. The worry is that one cannot find them. Now this may be an unnecessary worry – I admit that I have never needed assistance at a station and been unable to find it. But I am a very poor sample, since I have rarely needed assistance anyway.
Maybe a doorbell (where the ticket window used to be) would be handy. Or even a special coloured vest?
@ Quinlet – I completely understand the points you make. I also accept that any views I have are limited because my use of the tube/ rail is pretty low these days. However my experience of using LU stations since ticket offices closed stretches to two extremes with little in the middle.
If you’re in outer areas you are going to struggle to see any staff in LU ticket halls and if one is there they are rarely very proactive. I went through Blackhorse Rd the other night and two people were having genuine problems getting out via the gates. The member of staff stood by the supervisor’s office and did not move despite the obvious problems. Excuse me but why are they employed if they’re going to do that? I’ve lost count of the instances of staff just not being visible at all. You also have increasing numbers of stations where gates are powered down or, the old trick, left powered up but with a wide gate left open. Wonder what that’s doing for revenue even with Oyster / Contactless? People learn when things get switched off and when they can avoid paying. We fought for *years* to convince operational management to have a staffing establishment that kept ticket gates closed to maximise their revenue benefit.
The opposite extreme is Zone 1 where I see clusters of staff hanging around gatelines having a natter and not doing much else. No ticket hall roving, no proactive identification of people who may be uncertain etc. I know the difference in behaviour because I’ve done the proactive bit myself when doing strike cover in the past. OK those circumstances demand more info and more help for people but even so. I know I am making general observations from a small sample size but I do actually pay attention to what is (or is not!) going on.
Ironically on London Overground we seem to have a different situation which is far too many staff around the place – people on platforms and in ticket halls at stations which are not overly stressed by massive numbers of trains or passengers. In that context for there to be any staff cost saving from a ticket office closure programme the aim MUST be to reduce the total staffing establishment on London Overground stations. Otherwise why bother? Instead of 3 or 4 people milling around are there going to be 4 or 5 in future (including displaced ticket office person)? I can’t see it. I expect the aim will be to get to two staff per shift – one for gateline and ticket machine cover, one for roving / platform coverage. GOBLIN stations without gates have 1 person on duty which is the bare minimum (ignoring Romford – Upminster where, AIUI, there is no one at Emerson Park).
I’m lucky in that I typically never need assistance from station staff as I know precisely where I’m going and how to get there. I also have negligible ticketing interraction. I am therefore an “edge case” in terms of any user sample size. There must, though, be many more people who do need help, mobility related assistance and for some just simple reassurance that they going the right way. I am also concerned about an earlier comment in this thread where one person said the ticket office at Surrey Quays had been operated as “assistance only” for months and months with people forced to use ticket machines. That looks to me like an attempt (for whatever motive) to push down the numbers using ticket offices for ticket purchases. If that has been done elsewhere for any sustained period of time then the data will be wrong against what should be the base case. That’s not on in my opinion.
I just don’t think LU have this right at all despite all the analysis / reviews etc as I wonder how stretched the management are in terms of having a clue what goes on on their patch across the operating day / week. I can see the same muddle being imposed on London Overground and I don’t think it will work there either because sparse cover on some parts of the network starts to take us back to the nightmare that was North London Railways. There has to be the right number of staff coupled with good management structures to ensure staff perform as is expected. That’s always been a challenge with front line staff and it clearly remains one. I know we will never get ticket offices back on LU and I still consider it a flawed decision in certain respects. TfL could have done something different if they’d been minded to and still saved a lot of money. I fully expect, barring a perverse SoS decision, that 51 ticket offices will close on London Overground and that staff numbers will fall. A rushed three week consultation period shows that TfL are “in a hurry” to bag the financial saving. I also expect TOCs to start doing their own work to push for more widespread ticket office closures country wide if Mr Grayling signs off this request for 51 closures in London. I appreciate Oyster and Contactless make a difference here but other areas are heading slowly in the same direction.
@QUINLET “this general anti-change argument does not help public transport. You might as well argue that the gas lamp lighters should not have been abolished.”
With modernisation ‘Gas Lamp Lighters’ these days are timer adjusters as the lighting has been automated.
https://www.guidelondon.org.uk/blog/around-london/11-interesting-facts-about-london-gas-lamps/
The Park Estate in Nottingham retains much of its original character, including the original gas lighting network. Bournemouth has 28 surviving. There are others in towns and heritage railway stations.
Assistance Staff do have uniforms and safety jackets, along with a tablet for enquiries.
About the only times I’ve used ticket offices in recent years have been for loading various discounts and concessions onto Oyster – the Gold Card is the most recent one (and utterly absurd given that it’s attached with a season ticket purchased online – why does it need to be manually added?!) but in my days with a Young Person’s Railcard it was also necessary to find an open office to add that to the Oyster to secure a lower cap. Just what are people supposed to do to get various reduced rates added to their cards – go on a long tour of London to find an office that’s open & has staff who know what they’re doing?
@WW: I understand the point about non-proactive staff not giving assistance when they should be, but surely the same applies to ticket office staff at times when people are not buying tickets? If half an hour is passing between ticket sales at some stations at some times (as the figures suggest), then it is hard to believe that the staff in the ticket office are any more productively engaged most of the time than they would be if they were hanging around the ticket gates chatting. The difference being that staff out of the office are much more visible (unless they find somewhere to ‘hide’). And just having visible staff, even if they are not doing anything, does have benefits in perceived security, especially at night.
I’m lucky in that I typically never need assistance from station staff as I know precisely where I’m going and how to get there. I also have negligible ticketing interraction. I am therefore an “edge case” in terms of any user sample size
But isn’t having neglible ticketing action the norm these days? If 50% of passengers are on contactless and a proportion of the remainder on Oyster with auto top up, or season tickets bought online, and given that most passengers complete most journeys without needing directions etc, then it is the people who want or need human interaction who have become the edge cases. Which is not to say that many edge cases are not important, or that most passengers do not value the presence of staff, even if they do not interact with them.
For London City Airport it is worth remembering that 41% of inbound travellers are travelling for leisure.
The problem is identifying who can provide assistance. There are often other people on stations wearing uniforms. How is someone unfamiliar with the network supposed to identify the customer-assistance staff from amongst the cleaners, the drivers traveling to work, the security guards, the ones whose job is to shout “stand behind the yellow lines” but has no idea where the train is going, or for that matter anyone who is just travelling to (non transport-related) work wearing a uniform. Just wearing a dark suit I have been mistaken many times for a railway employee. (Even when the lanyard identifying my actual employer was visible…..)
Re Timbeau,
The Thameslink Programme’s solution during the London Bridge rebuild was staff in pink hi-vis with “Customer Assistance” written on the back so they were easy to spot and differentiate from other staff.
Where there is a will there is a way…
timbeau,
Exactly that problem was identified by London Travelwatch when looking at the consequence of removing ticket offices from tube stations. Two critical things emerged. One was the need for a distinctive tabard or other means of specifically identifying relevant staff. The other was a recognised default location (generally near the ticket machines) so that available staff could usually be easily found. I am not saying these measures were entirely successful but on the plus side there is generally much better staff interaction in central London stations to help people use the ticket machines.
However, I do think the challenge of finding staff is somewhat over-egged for London Overground. In many stations they will be by the ticket gates. For gateless stations it is not usually challenging to find them if they are there. There are often also help points which, for some reason, people seem incredibly reluctant to use.
I can’t get IanJ’s link to work but a lot of interesting statistics about City Airport travellers are available here (but not the one he mentioned).
Note that 60% of passengers use the DLR.
I give in.
The obvious answer to ticket office problems & ticket validation & getting through barriers that don’t work, or don’t work for you, is to use Berlin’s system.
No ticket barriers at all, your tickets MUST be validated or a season/oyster look-alike of some sort, roving platform staff & LOTS of travelling ticket inspectors.
It seems to work, why can’t we do this?
Cheaper, too, as the barrier-watch staff become Ticket Inspectors, & you don’t have to pay costs-&-maintenance on the complicated barrier machines.
[ Runs away & hides, whilst flame-war breaks out. ]
@PoP
“There are often also help points which, for some reason, people seem incredibly reluctant to use.”
In my experience the help points are usually either not answered at all, or can provide no more information than the visual displays.
“One was the need for a distinctive tabard or other means of specifically identifying relevant staff. ”
That’s fine, as long as staff wearing that distinctive uniform can be seen. If the only staff members visible are security guards/ cleaners/whatevers, members of the public will ask them for assistance and they may not be qualified to help.
@Muzer
“It’s because the fare (from boundary Zone 6 to Yeovil Pen Mill) doesn’t exist”
….which is odd, because there are direct trains there from Waterloo, both via Yeovil Junction and via Frome
Greg Tingey,
Obviously a possible solution. On my first visit to Berlin and my first use of local transport within minutes the ticket checkers were there complete with an none-too-friendly-looking Alsatian dog. One has to question to what extreme lengths one could go to that are acceptable.
The trouble with such policies is that the incentive is to avoid a large fine afterwards. What it doesn’t do is keep people off public transport who really don’t care or won’t pay up (and may be wanted for more serious offences anyway) or can’t pay up whilst a the same time catching a few innocent people in the net. Basically, any system that is going to clog up the courts or police cells isn’t a very practical one.
The current system, if properly enforced, is based on getting a high level of compliance in paying for journeys by means of restricting entry to the system. One of the brilliant things about Oyster (and other contactless) is that you risk having to pay the maximum fare if you try to cheat the system. People who cheat by not paying don’t usually get prosecuted but sometimes have to pay a maximum fare. On other occasions they may get hassle when needing to exit a gated station and that can be an effective deterrent for a lot of people.
Sorry the link got curtailed. Try here (Page 4 specifically)
…which doesn’t work when linked to from here, for some reason, even though it does from Google. Try googling “2017 LCY customer profile” and follow the links from there.
@Greg T: the German systems don’t offer passenger-friendly solutions like contactless payment and pay as you go with daily capping, though. So you would be inconveniencing the majority of passengers, who choose to use these means of paying for their journey, for the sake of a small number of corner cases, some of which (like the alleged impossibility of buying tickets from the zone 6 boundary from a machine) seem more imagined or hypothetical problems than ones that cause genuine problems to significant numbers of people.
Gates also play a safety role by restricting access to platforms. Holborn is a classic example, staff only open a handful of gates during the evening peak. This is probably less of an issue in Berlin I imagine.
TBC
I was thinking the exact opposite side of the argument, that gates cause much too much congestion ( And I have seen it reach what I consider dangerous levels ) on leaving or attempting to leave platforms/stations.
I take PoP’s point about “public face”, However, the daily capping/contactless problems are easily solved using the Berlin system – you simply replace their validator machines ( One on every platform at present ) with an oyster-like reader-validator.
I must admit that I found the entire public transport system in Berlin the most user-freindly I have ever seen, or heard ( Or rather NOT heard! ) but that is just one data-point/opinion. Oh, & it works
@ Greg – as the former client for network wide gating on LU and the person who talked to several TOC managers about gating then you can “blame” me. I understand why an open system like Berlin is attractive but we had that or something close to it in London and it simply cost a fortune in fares evasion. A simple system like Berlin also has a whole range of opportunities for easy fraud – child impersonation, free riding, printing false tickets etc. Yes there may well be oppressive levels of ticket inspection at times but not all the time. It’s been a fair while since I was last in Berlin but I don’t recall encountering ticket inspectors at all during my last visit.
London’s system gives a clear delineation between paid and unpaid areas. It creates order and supports passenger flow management which is important at many stations. The move towards Oyster and contactless and away from paper ticketing has automated ticket checking on all modes – buses are a big improvement from the old visual inspection of paper tickets. The use of electronic cards allows lost, stolen, duplicated cards to be stopped. The data generated allows a load of sophisticated background fraud checking to be done and action taken. The data also supports service planning and other activities that were previously expensive and cumbersome to undertake. Once it was clear that the ticket gates were bringing in a lot more money then there was a clamour from the tube line managers to get them. I was regularly “encouraged” by my director at the time to seek funding for gating the Victoria Line as he “got it in the neck” all the time from the then line manager. Revenue on the Vic when up hugely when the north end (except F Park) was done. If I’d known then that we could have installed what is now at F Park then we’d have done it back then. I also recall the looks of horror on the faces of some passengers at Brixton and Stockwell when they saw we were putting in gates there (the first ones outside Zone 1).
London has never wished to fund huge gangs of ticket inspectors – whether on the tube or rail networks. Note that here I mean proper revenue inspectors not people sat in wooden boxes trying to do an impossible job of visually checking, collecting or clipping tickets that we had through the 70s and 80s. A gate can do that task to far higher accuracy and in greater volume than any human can and I’ve done visual inspection checking – it is extremely hard to do well if there is any sort of volume of people walking past you.
As I usually say a gated system is not perfect. It works best in high volume, high frequency environments with reasonably predictable passenger behaviour. Where it doesn’t work so well is on low frequency routes or those with high volumes of leisure / irregular passengers laden with luggage. It also doesn’t work very well when companies shove too few gates into tiny ticket halls or enclosures which cause jams and congestion. It’s also not worth doing if you can’t be bothered to keep the gates in use across the traffic day. There are other strategies you can employ for those different user groups / service patterns. It is, of course, just worth saying that TfL does employ the Berlin system (in part) on the DLR which is largely unstaffed and ungated. I’ve never seen fare evasion numbers for the DLR but I’d be interested to see how it varied as passenger numbers grew as that would reduce the effectiveness of on train checking by train captains.
I’ll just finish by saying that I recognise people have a wide range of opinions about ticket gates and their usefulness. I don’t think a huge ongoing repeat of those views would be very helpful here. I know people won’t necessarily agree with what I’ve said.
WW
Entirely correct about DLR, of course & I hvae no idea what their level of fare evasion is, either ..
It also doesn’t work very well when companies shove too few gates into tiny ticket halls or enclosures which cause jams and congestion. And there, you are also spot-on & that is one of the two main weaknesses of London’s present operation, the other being institutional – as remarked by others, that people in difficulties seem to have to wait much too long for assistance, or so ISTM.
When I used to live on the Isle of Dogs, I always found the frequency of ticket checks on the DLR interesting. You could go weeks without having your ticket checked, then every month or so there seemed to suddenly be a push (I always assumed from above) to be checking tickets.
You’d seem to get your ticket checked almost every journey for the next few days, then nothing again until about a month later.
Greg Tingey,
I would be the first to agree that TfL aren’t perfect when it comes to having enough ticket gates. However they do try very hard and a lot of the cost of the UTS system was building work either to enable the ticket machines to be serviced in safety from the rear or to ensure there was enough space for sufficient gates – but I suspect not for any significant expansion.
Pure speculation on my part but I suspect that when they got desperate to gate certain stations they resorted to less-satisfactory solutions. I think it was Dilbert who said ‘when all else fails, try lowering your standards’.
To their credit, they have done a really good job with the gateline at Charing Cross Underground Station in the past year or so. If only that was replicated elsewhere.
Re ticket offices on National Rail; GTR’s franchise explicitly includes a commitment to reducing open hours. I’ve no idea of progress but my experience is that ticket offices are certainly closed more than they used to be (though that may be due to the general malaise affecting Southern these days).
If I ever do manage to find my local ticket office open, I will finally be able to get my defective paper season ticket changed.
@Ian J:
Many German systems now have app-tickets so no need to even get a bank card out if you don’t want to. Long period tickets are relatively cheap compared to PAYG and day tickets are often the price of 2-3 singles so capping is not so important. Sometimes they have complicated zones but London is just as complex.
The advantage of daily capping over day tickets is that you do not have to know, when you start your first journey, whether or not you will make further journeys on the same day. Not an earth-shattering benefit, but it is handy to have.
“In my experience the help points are usually either not answered at all, or can provide no more information than the visual displays.”
Help Points are checked regularly by both TfL staff and external auditors (on the TfL Rail / Overground network at least) and if not answered within 30 seconds are flagged as such. Although it’s not obvious to the public, they are operated by different staff depending on the travel mode they ‘belong to’ – woe betide the inexperienced auditor who hits the Victoria line help point in the routeway at Walthamstow (for example) rather than the Overground devices!
The level of info they can provide is, of course, another matter and is not tested as part of the same process. I would suggest that they would not be particularly helpful in terms of ticketing arrangements / queries and in the main can only provide information that is fairly readily available – train times, delay information, route planning etc.
Rob,
I have certainly been disappointed with the quality of response of help points – and equally ticket offices at lightly used stations where only one person was on duty. In particular they don’t seem to even have access to something like the open train times diagrams.
To give one instance, I was stuck at Bourne End because of disruption and wanted to know if the train to Marlow was on its way from Marlow (in which case unlikely to be further delayed), had left Maidenhead or was nowhere near us (in which case the time on the customer information display was just a forlorn hope). That information could not be provided by the gentleman in India.
I note also Geoff Marshall’s latest video includes a help point not being answered (11 minutes in).
Totally agree PoP – it is sometime since I have had reason to try a non-TfL located help point (about a year or so ago if memory serves at each station on the Cardiff to Rhymney line) so can’t comment on their operation but I would imagine that operators only have access to information provided on the internet by TOCs – I’m sure we’re all familiar with turning up at station that are apparently operating a ‘good service’ to be met with delayed / cancelled trains! It is perhaps scant consolation (particularly as it wouldn’t have helped in Bourne End) that the vast majority of TfL located points are at least answered within 30 seconds in my experience – even if they are unable to provide much information – and it is taking the operators west of Hayes & Harlington a while to get used to saying “TfL Rail” instead of “GWR”…
Rob,
My guess is that the help points on TfL Rail west of Hayes & Harlington (or maybe West Drayton) are temporarily subcontracted out to GWR and their Indian call centre. I would expect that they will eventually be brought in-house.
@ PoP / Greg – for clarity my reference to suboptimal gate installations was not directed at TfL. It was directed at train companies. PoP is quite correct that there were limitations in the early days of UTS as to how much demolition / building work could be afforded for gating. However as also noted work has gone on in subsequent years to add capacity or remove potential bottlenecks between escalators and gatelines. It is worth also saying that Oyster provided some capacity gain by being a generally faster way of using a ticket gate and within TfL’s performance target. Obviously the use of NFC equipped phones and contactless bank cards are not quite as fast as Oyster so past throughput gains may be being eroded at the margin as the ticket media mix changes over time.
I have long learned to take any information provided by a transport undertaking with a very large sack of salt. Two examples this morning.
1. A train was shown on the displays at my station as “delayed” when the National Rail “train departures” webpage showed it was going to skip nine consecutive stations, including mine.
2. The carriage occupancy indicators in the train I actually took said my carriage had “a few seats left” when in fact there were about thirty passengers standing. Goodness knows what it was like in the carriages which it claimed already had “all seats occupied”
Timbeau
And the Operating companies wonder why people don’t believe / trust / love them when they provide “information” of that quality!
@WW 8.10 13:49
I think the difference is the “mindset” of the network.
The pricing strategy of an open network has to be such that for the vast majority of users buying a valid ticket is less hassle than not doing so. In my case that is achieved by having an annual pass that (with regular use) costs less than £1 a journey and covers about 95% of my journeys. Getting caught by ticket inspectors over the year is likely enough that buying the ticket is cheaper (especially when considering that fines go up for repeatedly getting caught) and much less stressful.
With London’s pricing strategy, reaching a stage where the above is true is near-impossible (at least without imposing crippling fines), meaning more intrusive enforcement is required to make the system work.
I’d also add that having such an annual pass system, means ticket machines are used much, much more rarely.
Mobile ticketing that would be a pain to implement with barriers (namely QR codes) is also widespread.
@John, DM: Yes, the approach in German-speaking countries is usually to have a very high discount for annual season tickets to provide a strong incentive to buy one and so reduce the proportion of passengers buying tickets on each journey. Clearly there are winners and losers with such an approach – the winners being mainly people who live there and commute daily, the losers being irregular users and tourists who pay relatively more. It is harder to provide people with an incentive to travel off-peak as well. Where the subsidy levels are higher and the population is lower it can work, but in London reducing season ticket prices would be unaffordable, and the system couldn’t cope with the increase in peak usage that would result. As it is TfL has long advised the Mayor to reduce the annual season ticket discount (and Mayors of all persuasions have not followed that advice).
In any case, it can feel like in those countries fares policy is designed around the ticketing system. Ideally it should be possible for an accountable body like local government to devise a system of fares according to fairness, management of demand, and the income needed, and the ticketing system should be flexible enough to support whatever fares system is chosen. Also ideally the system should not penalise honest misunderstanding of what the ‘correct’ fare is for a given journey.
With enforcement there is also the question of not just how likely a fare evader is to be fined, but also how likely they are to end up paying that fine – easier to enforce in countries with national ID databases.
@Ian J
That’s one way of looking at it – and in London the levels of crowding means the network struggles to cope as it is, making the policy that London uses necessary.
The other way of looking at it is designing the ticketing system and fares policy around integration and efficiency.
Underground networks are comparatively easy to barrier off and introduce “paid” and “unpaid” areas. For buses and trams attempting to do this is either not very effective, or results in a significant dwell time penalty.
Having an open system means for example that you can build a train station where side platforms at either side are massive entrances and exits – there is no need to funnel passengers to and then through a barrier line somewhere.
That Oyster is tracked so closely does make planning easier – however it is also an invasion of privacy in many ways – many people would rather their every journey wasn’t tracked.
In any case, I’m not sure there is a ticketing system that is ideal for any fares policy – one will always influence the other – or else be suboptimal for one policy compared to another.
Display of the National Rail logo at stations was a franchise requirement originally imposed by OPRAF, subsequently the SRA. That is why it is not displayed at stations run by unfranchised operators, such as St Pancras International. It would be open to TfL to require its display at London Overground stations run by a concessionaire at its behest, but it has elected not to do so, presumably because it chooses to portray the Overground on maps and elsewhere as part of the TfL empire (effectively, just another Underground line) and to disguise the fact that it is a licensed TOC. This leads to nonsenses such as the signs at West Hampstead which direct passengers separately to the National Rail and Overground stations when this is a false distinction.
@JOHN CARTLEDGE ” nonsenses such as the signs at West Hampstead which direct passengers separately to the National Rail and Overground stations ”
That example where there are three distinct stations with separate street entrances is one where the signage distinction works well. Previous efforts at using different names both with National Rail signage confused travellers.
Just so – except that it would have been open to DfT to insist on the Z sign when delegating the franchise to TfL.
Graham H
As in places like Berlin where the letter-symbols are very clear:
DB / S / U – which tell you what services you are likely to get – & most importantly, if you get more than one sort of service, then both, or even all three signs are displayed.
And happens here … sometimes.
Greg Tingey,
Well I think it is getting better here but you are dealing with disparate groups. involving many TOCs. As brand awareness becomes more important and modern stations are looking less and less like traditional stations (and sometimes incorporated into buildings with a different use) this becomes more important.
However the question still remains: what exactly are you branding? It has to be the service provided not the ownership of the station – which TfL standards make quite clear. And this is where you need directive and enforcement from ‘on high’. From memory, Amersham, and similar Metropolitan line stations, are shown as London Underground and not joint London Underground and National Rail. Also from memory, New Cross is primarily National Rail with scant recognition of the London Overground element whereas at New Cross Gate it is the other way round.
Another issues is where the ticket machines are placed. The recent revamp of London Bridge left my wife wandering around for about 5 minutes trying to find where exactly the ticket machines were (hidden around a corner down an escalator).
@Ian C: That really depends on the entrance you use! When you come from the tube, is very different to arriving over by the Shipwright’s Arms…
@Southern Height It shouldn’t depend on the entrance if there is adequate signage!
Ian C,
Not so much a case of where they are placed but more a case of how few there are. I can understand them not being keen on spreading them out and preferring concentrating the few that they have. A related point is that, being such a big station, it can take a while to find the only ticket office.
I think this is indicative of modern trends. I was really surprised when Blackfriars (LU) was rebuilt a few years ago with hardly any ticket machines. I thought they had made a big mistake but, in fact, very few people need or choose to make use of them. I think London Bridge is going the same way. Not many people use the ticket office (the old one before rebuilding could be really busy) and the ticket machines don’t seem overtaxed either.
I bet Farringdon will have a surprising dearth of additional ticket machines when the Elizabeth line opens .
You do get the opposite error though. My local station was redesigned a few years ago, with the original two entrances replaced with one “so that everyone would be directed through the booking hall”. It seems to have escaped the notice both of the architect and the relevant TOC that all but a tiny proportion of the entries and exits at the station are accounted for by the following categories of passenger:
1. season ticket holders
2. Oyster users
3. Contactless users
4. Freedom pass/U16 pass holders
5. people using the return half of a ticket (a significant number since the station serves a popular shopping area, and has direct trains from beyond Oysterland)
6. people exiting the station having arrived by train.
I don’t know what proportion of the total entries and exits this is, but category 6 alone must account for 50% of people using the station.
None of these need to go anywhere near the machines or ticket window*, yet everyone is funnelled through the single narrow entrance.
Re: ticket gates
In the end, the slightly Orwellian solution to the “problem” of ticket gates is likely to be facial recognition by AI. It’ll take a while before we’re comfortable with it, but I’m fairly sure it’ll happen. It’s the sort of technology that Amazon is using in its new “Go” stores in Seattle and Chicago, where you walk in, pick up whatever you want, and walk out again, with the technology having “watched” you and what you pick up, charging your account accordingly.
In a public transport scenario, this would mean “ticket” machines with built-in cameras (as already seen on self-checkouts). Once you’ve paid your money or set up your account, the system will know who you are via facial recognition, and from that point you will just walk in and out of stations without gates just like in Berlin, until your ticket is used or your pass has expired.
However if you haven’t paid or set up an account and the system doesn’t recognise you, or your ticket has expired, it will track you and automatically alert staff such that by the end of your journey you are approached, challenged and subjected to fare evasion procedures.
All this technology is already possible; the only leap required is social acceptance, which may take a while but I believe it’ll happen.
But suppose I’m wearing my red clown’s nose, Jimmy Edwards mustache and Baby Jane wig?
The technology described by Anon….etc above exists and is in active use for a transport application.
Board a BA fight at LAX (Los Angeles) and the boarding gate opens by comparing your face (camera in the gate) with your stored immigration photo. Providing there is a boarding pass issued in your name and your photo matches, the gate opens automatically and you walk into the plane. You never show a boarding pass (which when I used it was stored in my phone – no paper). Something similar operates at Heathrow T5 and at Gatwick for UK domestic flights but you do still need to present the boarding pass at T5
However, while the system at LAX was surprisingly swift, it’s still a few seconds before the system performs the match and opens the gate – hopeless compared to the sub second speed that the oyster gates operate at.
@Alex Mckenna
Either the AI will still see your facial features and recognise you, or you’ll get stopped and asked to remove them. Same for people with overhanging hoods or caps. You’ll have to show your face to get on the tube, which could serve a security purpose as well.
It’s probably feasible that, at some point in the future, the tech will be able to recognise your eyes alone, the shape of your head, even your gait. All it’d need is sufficient picture definition to see the unique features.
Worth adding that it’s highly likely that facial recognition technology is in use on the tube network and in many other places by the security services, but is not (yet) permitted to be used for anything else.
The National Rail (double arrow) emblem does not denote ownership of a station but, rather, the fact that it offers access to services to which the National Rail conditions of travel apply – as well as the Ticketing & Settlement Agreement which requires, inter alia, that ticket offices sell all types of ticket from anywhere to anywhere. In practice, it also signifies that the station operator is licensed by ORR. Users can therefore expect a common minimum standard of service and have certain exercisable contractual rights. These facts still apply at Overground stations notwithstanding TfL’s efforts to obliterate any visible association with National Rail.
Part of the problem at West Hampstead has been that since privatisation the operators of both the North London line and the Bedford-London line have had three public identities each. Little wonder that users have no brand loyalty and great difficulty in remembering the operators’ names. Display of the National Rail emblem would at least convey a minimum element of continuity and give a degree of reassurance. Given the deep-seated mutual animosity between the current political supremos at DfT and the GLA, there can be no certainty that TfL’s role as concession-awarder for the Overground (and therefore this brand name) will endure indefinitely. If TfL succeeds in its ambition to opt the Overground out of the new rail ombudsman scheme, its users will be disadvantaged vis-a-vis other National Rail passengers in this respect too.
The type of branding is simply to do with the SFO (station facilities operator) – i.e. the train operator nominated to operate the station. That’s why New Cross is all Southeastern with little mention of London Overground; whereas New Cross Gate is all orange with barely any mention that Southern call there.
(Or Milton Keynes, which is uniformly LNWR green, save for a few Virgin posters and platform staff).
@John Cartledge
I don’t believe there is any stipulation upon TOCs to use the double arrows logo at stations or anywhere else other than on interoperable tickets. It’s in most of their interests to use it to identify stations, but LO is a hybrid network comprising a former tube line, new infrastructure owned by TfL and NR lines, some of which carry other traffic including other NR services and freight and some of which also carry tube lines.
The public now perceives LO largely as an extension of the tube network and thus TfL has taken the decision not to show the double arrows at stations unless they’re also served by other TOCs, such as Shepherd’s Bush. This is definitely the least confusing approach for identifying stations from the public perspective and thus I think it is the most appropriate one.
John Cartledge & PoP
My exact point, thanks. The sign shows why type of service you can expect, as PoP @ 08.56 indicates. From the traveller’s p.o.v. the “TOC” is bloody irrelevant – ( another failure from the particular privatisation/fragmentation model we have adopted. ) Yet the current railway & metro systems we have now have been deliberately set up as independent “silos” with no real cooperation & coordination.
J. C. – So, then, how will “overgound” stations, after their ticket offices have been closed, meet the ORR / National Conditions as they are supposed to follow & obey?
If TfL succeeds in its ambition to opt the Overground out of the new rail ombudsman scheme,
I really don’t like the sound of that – have you any more details, please?
@Greg Tingey
“how will “overgound” stations, after their ticket offices have been closed, meet the ORR / National Conditions as they are supposed to follow & obey?”
In exactly the same way as any other unstaffed station on the National Rail network. Birkbeck being such an example in the London area.
Although BR privatisation has certainly added to the silo effect, maybe the rot set in in 1948 when BR was not “given” the underground network. In the BR era there was very little co-ordination between the two different train operators in London – occasional patchy through-tickets and fare co-ordination, yes, but mostly they were seen as rival enterprises.
I’m not saying that BR should have been given the tubes – among other big snags the co-ordination with road transport would have been lost, and the tube was always seen as the better-run and more useful network. It would surely have been politically a big step too far. But it has taken until Oysterisation for the public to wake up to the fact that a train is a train is a train.
@anonanonaon
Once you’ve paid your money or set up your account
But the great advantage of TfL’s contactless system is that there is no need for most passengers to do either of these things (which impose a cost in time for the passenger and administration for the operator). Instead you use the card/phone/watch you already have. In the phone or watch case biometric identification is carried out on-device which avoids many privacy issues.
it’s highly likely that facial recognition technology is in use on the tube network and in many other places by the security services
Someone linked to an article recently about the lighting of Crossrail stations which mentioned that one of the criteria for lighting on the escalators was that the lighting be bright enough to illuminate people’s faces for facial recognition purposes.
@Greg T deliberately set up as independent “silos” with no real cooperation & coordination
That seems to be exaggerating a bit – a joint ticketing system in the shape of Oyster (and contactless) has been set up since privatisation and applies to all local NR services in London (and some beyond), Travelcard and other interoperable ticketing continues, there are TfL services running from TOC stations and vice versa, rebuilds at places like Kings Cross and Paddington have involved close coordination between the Underground and Network Rail, and so on… Compared with this, the question of whether a double arrow should be displayed or not seems less relevant (I hadn’t even noticed that St Pancras doesn’t have one).
@John Cartledge: Little wonder that users have no brand loyalty and great difficulty in remembering the operators’ names
Are you really saying that users of the Overground at West Hampstead can’t remember the name of the Overground? I would suggest that Overground and Thameslink are the two best-known rail brands in the UK after London Underground.
To repeat myself, display of the double arrow symbol outside all stations was a condition of the franchises awarded by OPRAF and its successor the SRA. For an example, see paragraph 10.7 of the Chiltern franchise agreement at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/598481/RED_Chiltern_Franchise_Agreement.pdf.
For those in the know, it identifies a station at which services provided by an operator which is part of the National Rail network are available. Notwithstanding that its contract is with TfL rather than DfT, Arriva Rail London (operating under the Overground branding) is such an operator, and it is subject to the same basic obligations as any other ORR-licensed TOC. The fact that part of its route is over infrastructure owned by TfL, or shared with other operators, whether passenger or freight, has no bearing on this.
Display of the symbol does not oblige a TOC to provide a ticket office at that station – but it does signify that if such an office is provided, it will offer the full range of National Rail tickets.
London Underground-owned stations are not subject to either the National Rail franchising obligations or the ORR’s licensing regime, and there is no therefore no legal requirement for them either to offer a particular range of tickets or to display any particular signage, even where they are also served by a TOC. Some of the anomalies this situation creates are illustrated in the LTUC (now London TravelWatch) report “Whose station are you?” at http://www.londontravelwatch.org.uk/documents/get_lob?id=829&age=&field=file. This was published in 2004, so some of the detail it contains has been overtaken by subsequent events, but the general principles set out in it still apply.
Regarding the ombudsman, TfL can be held to account – in differing ways – by the London Assembly, London TravelWatch and the Local Government Ombudsman. It has made it clear, both in response to the government’s 2015 consultation on the implementation of the EU’s directive on alternative dispute resolution, and to the ORR’s 2018 consultations on the implementation of the Rail Delivery Group’s voluntary ombudsman scheme, that it regards its present accountabilities as sufficient to safeguard the interests of its users. For that reason, it never submitted itself to the jurisdiction of the Bus Appeals Body and it has shown no appetite for bringing its National Rail concessions (Overground and TfL Rail) within the rail ombudsman’s scope.
PS re West Hampstead : What I am saying is that it is extremely unlikely that many current users of Overground and Thameslink services will recall that in the fairly recent past the relevant stations were operated by Silverlink and First Capital Connect, or that if and when they are re-branded again, anyone except readers of this thread is likely to notice, let alone care.
But such frequent name changes mean that it is very difficult for signage to be kept up to date and consistent. Examples of such discrepancies, even at the top and bottom of the same staircase, can be seen on slide 34 of a presentation given to a London TravelWatch interchange seminar which can be found at http://www.londontravelwatch.org.uk/documents/get_lob?id=4376&age=&field=file.
I am therefore arguing for consistent use of the National Rail and Underground emblems and names, because these are likely to endure much longer than ephemeral TOCs. There is an on-going argument about how the the Overground and TfL Rail should be signed, because these have a foot in each camp – though since constitutionally they are TOCs, subject to ORR regulation, my preference is to label them as such.
@John Cartledge:t is extremely unlikely that many current users of Overground and Thameslink services will recall that in the fairly recent past the relevant stations were operated by Silverlink and First Capital Connect
And this past history is no more relevant than the fact that one of the stations used to be called West Hampsted Midland after the BR region that owned it.
or that if and when they are re-branded again, anyone except readers of this thread is likely to notice, let alone care
If the Overground disappeared no-one would care? Really? Do you have any evidence for this?
Examples of such discrepancies, even at the top and bottom of the same staircase
The pink arrows give it away as signage erected by FirstGroup not TfL. I can certainly see an argument for making TfL responsible for all signage at key London interchanges to ensure greater competence in and consistency.
Meanwhile page 36 of the same presentation is a very clear example of the three stations, serving three modes, each having a different symbol, which seems the least confusing possible outcome.
Focusing too much on the legalities seems to detract from the actual purpose of the signs, which is a) to tell people there is a station there, and b) what kind of station there is. Why not do research to investigate what categories passengers put stations into and what they would find helpful?
TfL can be held to account – in differing ways – by the London Assembly, London TravelWatch and the Local Government Ombudsman
Oddly you don’t mention the main means of accountability for TfL: to the Mayor, and through him to voters.
John Cartledge,
Some interesting and valid points made.
To me this prompts the obvious question: why haven’t DfT enforced the rules about the National Rail double-arrow sign?
It could be because of ignorance of the current situation, or more important issues to attend to or it could be simply that they don’t see any benefit in enforcement. And I am presuming it is only them who could enforce the rules.
There will always be differing opinion on signage. It is a topic as fuzzy as what should appear on a tube map. The only point I will make is that if every London Overground symbol on a totem has to be accompanied by a National Rail symbol then that is redundancy of information and TfL’s approach is more sensible because you convey more meaningful information (with fewer signs!).
Anecdotal evidence such as mobile phone calls (‘I am on the tube’) suggests many members of the public see London Overground as synonymous with London Underground. Whether this is a good thing or not is another matter.
The issue of redundant former transport operators still having their signs up is an age old problem that doesn’t get tackled and I agree there should be less emphasis on the current operator and their favoured colour scheme. The worse case I have seen is on a bus in Hong Kong inviting me to write to 55, Broadway SW1 if I have a complaint.
Ian J,
The voters booting out the Mayor (and his handling of TfL) is a different kind of scrutiny. I believe John is talking about failure to follow the rules rather than dissatisfaction with performance. So it is about, amongst other things, abuse of power. I notice both of you, oddly, don’t mention the one form of accountability that TfL seriously has to worry about – Judicial Reviews.
Re West Hampstead Thameslink : The inconsistent signage on the staircase was offered as an illustration of what can happen when there is a constant churn of operators, not an attempt to pin responsibility on any organisation in particular, TfL or otherwise. That’s why I support the yet-to-be-implemented recommendation in the review of stations commissioned by Andrew Adonis (when Secretary of State) from Chris Green and (the late) Sir Peter Hall that there should be a uniform and permanent scheme of signage at all National Rail stations, to eliminate wasteful re-branding whenever franchises change hands. Transport Scotland has now adopted this policy, but retained the double arrow.. So has TfL , but without it.
Re brand signage : I am arguing that the double arrow emblem should appear instead of the Overground roundel, not in addition to it, so that all National Rail stations are identifiable as such, irrespective of the transient TOCs that may run them from time to time. But unless and until some research is done into what passengers understand the double arrow symbol to mean (whether on station signs, tickets, railcards or elsewhere), this discussion is necessarily speculative. Since different contributors here clearly interpret it differently, we’re not going to resolve the matter.
Re enforcement : I have no reason to believe that the requirement for display of the double arrow sign has been ignored by station operators to which it applies and has therefore required enforcement (which would be the responsibility of whichever body had imposed it). But it was simply a contractual requirement of OPRAF and SRA. No such obligation arises where it has been omitted (for whatever reason) from any more recent franchise agreements issued by DfT or concession agreements issued by TfL.
Re ombudsmen : Pedantic of Purley is correct (and I am glad that we agree about most other issues raised here) . Ombudsmen are responsible for investigating and resolving individual consumers’ complaints about the service they have received, not determining overall policy direction. Introducing a rail ombudsman does not affect the functions of the Secretary of State, and extending his/her remit to National Rail services run under TfL-issued concessions would not affect those of the Mayor (who chairs and appoints the TfL board, and therefore cannot act as an autonomous agency by which the organisation can be held to account).
Re judicial review : This is a time-consuming and expensive way of establishing whether a pulic body is failing to comply with the law. It is not an appropriate mechanism for resolving complaints about (e.g.) poor service or alleged ticket irregularities, and judges would be most unlikely to accept such cases where other avenues for redress exist.
Further to the inconsistent treatment of Overground stations. Earlier today I tried to check journey options from Shadwell to Gatwick. My preferred method is the “mixing deck” grid used by some rail operators (such as c2c). Low and behold – this point blank refused to accept that Shadwell is a valid station, though it would recognise Canada Water….
I did succeed in checking times and options using a different rail portal. Also noticed that the cheapest paper ticket is £23, whereas oyster is £8.30 (or less if I go via Surrey Quays and tap out and in at East Croydon)
@John Cartledge: Little wonder that users have no brand loyalty and great difficulty in remembering the operators’ names
In my experience the vast majority of people who live in London consider there to be two types of rail service. If a service appears on the Tube Map, it’s a tube; if it doesn’t appear on the tube map it’s a train. They don’t care what the operators are called; lines are referred to by name where there’s been some continuity of branding, i.e. tube lines and to a lesser extent lines like Thameslink. That’s it.
Ultimately expecting the public to have a decent grasp of the ever-changing myriad of operators and route names is unrealistic, one of the reasons I believe the DfT is now specifying transferable branding for new franchises.
@ISLANDDWELLER
I think the answer to the question is … the section of the Overground network that was part of the old East London Line doesn’t form part of the National Rail* network, it’s owned by London Transport**. So the former Underground stations can’t be planned to as they are still, in effect, Underground stations…
* ie, central government
** ie, local government
Briantist
Slight problem there …
ID stated that it did work from Canada Water which is also *NOT* a National Rail station, either, so there’s something amiss / askew /awa’ wi’the fairies in there somewhere ….
And, of course, if you go far enough back, it was the jointly-owned East London Joint Railway [ the GER, the LB&SCR, the LCDR, the SER, the Metropolitan Railway, and the District Railway. ]
Um, err ….
Brianist. Heathrow stations aren’t owned by National Rail either, but you can find those stations in journey planner. Hatch End isn’t owned by National Rail either. Just shows what a mess this is.
Wonder what’s going to be the status of the new Crossrail stations in the core….
At the time of privatisation, Salmon was quite clear: he wanted the Z off the Board to be applied to any station that was served by franchised services (including the only 2 then not owned by RT – Hatch End and StP), Technically, of course, Overground and Elizabeth Line stations are franchised, but the whole issue has become clouded by joint stations and the devolution of franchising to third parties. Logically, I suppose, the distinction now is between those stations where a franchise service is subject to DfT control, and those stations where the service is subject to someone else’s control, but I suspect no one has thought it through (except, of course, TfL, MerseyRail and ScotRail) and there are plenty of grey areas – those T&W Metro and Strathclyde metro stations which are downstairs in franchised stations- logically, these would be no different to downstairs LU stations).
As to TOC branding, at the time of privatisation, the assumption was that journey choice would be determined by TOC brand and not by destination (!) – the sausage argument. Yes, I know it’s utterly absurd, but that’s what the Treasury believed. [In the pre-dawn days of privatisation, the Treasury argues that proto-private operations to Heathrow and Port Ramsgate would score as public expenditure unless the trains were prominently marked as private sector – I was busy gearing up to send my then SoS, Paul Channon to Cabinet to argue that if the Treasury thought the economy turned on a paint job, when, alas the Treasury spotted my saw busy cutting through the branch and withdrew their objection; didn’t matter because my legal colleagues found other grounds to shoot the alien spaceship down.
The irrelevancy of branding, except possibly in relation to Virgin and perhaps Stagecoach has been finally destroyed by the appearance of these scratch bands of consortia, but who remembers Prism and Silverlink anymore? The frantic efforts of First to pretend that they weren’t the GW franchisee didn’t help. It’s simply that it’s taken DfT years to realise this….
GH: so who owned St Pancras at the time of privatisation? I thought that in those pre-HS1 days it was just another (though spectacular) BR station.
Re : “National Rail” :
Although it has no statutory basis, for all practical purposes this brand name (and the double arrow emblem) is – or should be – used to identify passenger services and stations operated by organisations which are subject to the ORR’s licensing regime. These are the holders of one or more of the following :
(a) a European Passenger Licence and a GB Statement of National Regulatory Provisions issued under the Railway (Licensing of Railway Undertakings) Regulations 2005; and/or
(b) a Passenger Train Licence issued under the Railways Act 1993 ; and/or
(c) a Station Licence issued under the Railways Act 1993.
It therefore covers all regular main line passenger train operators, irrespective of the ownership of the network on which they run. In the case of London, services and stations operated by Arriva Rail London Ltd (which trades as London Overground) and Rail for London Ltd (which currently trades as TfL Rail) are included. Metro, light rail, tram, heritage and charter operators are excluded, except where the latter are running scheduled services on a sub-contract basis (as has happened on, e.g., the Cumbrian Coast line).
Passenger Train Licences issued under the 1993 act have now largely been superseded by European Passenger Licences issued under the 2005 regulations, but a number are still current, e.g. that held by Merseyside Passenger Transport Services Ltd.
Uniquely, London Underground Ltd still operates under Railways Act licences issued by the Secretary of State prior to the establishment of ORR. However, these relate simply to those sections of its network which are shared with main line operators, i.e. its Amersham and Richmond branches. The rest of its system is excluded from regulatory oversight by virtue of the Railways (London Regional Transport) (Exemptions) Order 1994.
Copies of all current passenger and station licences can be found on the ORR website at http://orr.gov.uk/rail/licensing/licensing-the-railway/current-licences. Individual stations covered by them are on the ORR public register at https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwiHVUgdJBhSURIUmZEVHNqd1U/edit.
@John Cartledge: the constant churn of operators
But note that the operator of the Overground recently changed, with no effect at all on Overground branding or signage, because these are specified by TfL not the TOC. Your argument seems to be that the National Rail symbol should be used just in case central government chooses to take control of the Overground. But note that when Westminster seized control of the Underground in the 1980s, there was no visible change to branding or signage at all – the system of branding (the roundel, map, line colours etc) established in the 1930s continued, as it still does. The Overground is simply an extension of this well established system.
Keeping consistent branding over a very long period of time is one of the things that TfL and their predecessors have been very good at despite major changes to the underlying governance.
@Graham H
What does the “Z off the Board” mean? And what is the sausage argument?
Can his Lordship confirm that, during his brief tenure as custodian of all of those stations, that he wasn’t tempted to put one or two aside for his twilight days. “Oops, typo. Never mind”.
We promise not to mention the Swancave in a disused tunnel.
In my experience, the usual way that passengers remember an Operator’s name is when they adapt it to read as something derogatory. e.g. First to worst, the r inserted into Capital and so on.
With line brands now being retained, what happens when these become tainted?
@T
Having ruled out Admiral Togo’s Z flag, I am assume that the Z refers to the logo set out in the British Rail Corporate Identity Manual.
@timbeau – Z was merely internal slang for the double arrow (if we’d have had a key on the keyboard it would have been useful). The sausage argument was used by Freeman, famously describing how punters would choose between operators on the basis of the quality of the sausage in the dining car – I believe it was the same speech in which typists were described as choosing an inferior class of travel. Away with the fairies. “Off the Board” meant that the intellectual property in the double arrow was transferred to OPRAF (Ithink OPRAF rather than the SoS) by Statutory Instrument.*
@Betterbee – It was owned by London & Continental (who were owned by the Secretary of State). Hatch End was owned by some long dead private individual’s executors
@John Cartledge – I’m not at all sure that display of the double arrow was ever a condition of holding a licence. OPRAF were very clear that it had to do with franchising not licensing; the point was not to tell the public that a service was licensed but that it formed part of the franchised service offering.
@Nameless – Lord Dawlish adds ” station rentals weren’t very high -AIR, Ipswich, for example, was only about £100k pa and most country stations a few thousands – RT only made up its income from the volume of sites. I don’t believe that anyone corrected the mistake at Dawlish, nor at Ipswich, indeed, where, in a fit of boredom at 03.00hrs after a heavy night of signing, for some unaccountable reason, the lease was executed by the Duke of Wellington.
* This transfer had consequences, which I may have mentioned before; if so forgive me. It meant that the Board’s branding had to be changed. We could no longer use the Z on our notepaper or even the flag flying over the HQ. I chose to revive the Lion holding a Wheel, emerging from a Crown which looked so striking on the AL1-6 classes, and when embossed on decent creamlaid paper looked equally dignified. The flag was replaced with the Board’s achievement of arms which rather gave the impression that a subcommittee of the Field of the Cloth of Gold was meeting in Eversholt Street. There was also a range of suitable giftware… I arranged for the designs to be prepared on the basis of drawings supplied by the College of Arms – I have already described here the entertainment value of those discussions and won’t repeat.
Besides the double arrow, Salmon also wished to acquire the Pullman Car coat of arms (as displayed on antimacassars everywhere on ICEC) because he believed that franchisees would pay for the use of such a prestigious symbol. The College of Arms put a firm end to that – the achievement of arms was awarded to the Pullman Car Co and could not be delegated or franchised to third parties. Again, I have already described my occasions on the subject with Lord Lyon King of Arms and his running dog Stirling Herald. To note – a symbol of service quality on offer (presumably complete with Pullman sausages in Freeman’s mind) not of the legal status of the operation.
Of course, PRIV card holders can have the staff discount added to their Oystercard. But try finding a member of staff who can get the PRIV discount added to a child’s Zip Oystercard correctly without causing the card to stop working!
Re : double arrow
To repeat myself again, for the sake of clarity, display of the double arrow sign at stations was simply an obligation of franchise agreements made by OPRAF and the SRA. That is why it still applies to Chiltern. ORR does not require it.
My contention, however, is that if the emblem (and the “National Rail” brand) has any continuing value, then this is to denote facilities and services which form part of a nationwide network to which common minimum standards apply – e.g. in relation to information, insurance, through/interavailable tickets, timetables, conditions of travel, complaint handling, disabled persons’ protection, etc.
In practice, these standards are secured by the ORR’s licensing regime, and associated requirements such as the Ticketing & Settlement Agreement. So, de facto, this is what the emblem now denotes. This regime applies equally to operators holding concessions or franchises which happen to have been issued by devolved administrations, i.e. Transport Scotland, Transport for Wales, TfL, Merseytravel.
I am well aware that TfL’s corporate self-esteem impels it to plaster roundels on everything it touches, and that this has become one of the world’s most widely recognised brand images. If some passengers on the Overground erroneously believe themselves to be “on the tube”, that confirms the success of this marketing tool.
But in my view – one clearly not shared by some other contributors – this is not a sufficient reason for concealing the fact that a quasi-official National Rail network offering certain common benefits to its users (not necessarily available to those on unlicensed systems) exists, and that the trains/stations they are using are part of this. If displaying the double arrow totem outside stations serves any purpose at all, then it should serve it everywhere.
I am relatively indifferent to the colour trains or stations are painted, provided that signage is legible and effective and money is not wasted on endless re-branding (for a case study, see the post-privatisation history of the services out of Liverpool Street). What I am arguing is simply that the double arrow emblem should and does have a continuing purpose, and that this applies equally to all licensed passenger operations.
If one outcome of the latest DfT-initiated review of how the rail industry works is that bits of it are hived off completely to local ownership and control, and the concept of a truly “national” network is abandoned, passengers will have to cope with the consequences. But unless and until that day comes, I believe (as even the original architects of privatisation, for whom I hold absolutely no brief, clearly did) that undermining public perception of the network by abandoning this residual token of its identity is unhelpful.
Ticket office closures apart, I recognise that the Overground has flourished under TfL’s stewardship, not least through the injection of GLA funding. I am sorry that for partisan reasons Grayling has walked away from the McLoughlin-Johnson compact on transferring more “metro” routes to TfL control. But it ought to be possible to have the best of both worlds – i.e. TfL standards of service plus National Rail passenger rights and benefits – and to advertise the fact. It is odd that my critics apparently demur.
@John Cartledge – no doubt, the Z should mean all the things you say, but it never has since privatisation, and doesn’t now. Nor does ORR care and it most certainly avoids network issues as far as possible , even regarding the T&SA as something to be quietly pushed into obscurity. DfT would do anything to avoid any suggestion that there is such a thing as a national rail network as we have seen with their attempts to pass the buck to consortia of operators such as the RDG, their denial of any such thing as a strategy for rail investment, national fares strategy, national rolling stock strategy and even some sort of national livery. All these denials have cost money.
I don’t think that anyone here is actually disagreeing with you, merely arguing instead that DfT has deliberately eviscerated any useful meaning for the Z logo and it’s unclear whether it actually now conveys anything to passengers other than that there is still, or should be again , a directing mind to the industry. One can see why DfT get agitated about it. At the time it was handed over to Salmon, I think he had very short term ideas indeed: leave the symbol there to gull the public into thinking that nothing had changed, and with the withering away of franchised services that would be the end of it. Virtually every decision Salmon took has been shown to be wrong…
This appears to be a counsel of despair. Passengers old enough to remember British Rail will identify the double arrow with it – and, because the emblem did not disappear, with whatever British Rail has since become. As it still appears prominently outside most stations, younger users will regard it as a generic identifier of main line railways.
At the time of privatisation, it was conceded even by the Major government that there were some “network benefits” such as through/interavailable ticketing or a single travel enquiry line which were worth preserving. Indeed, it is doubtful if the Railways Bill would have been passed without these concessions to Tory backbenchers. It was done partly by means of franchise obligations and partly through licence obligations (though which was used for what seemed fairly arbitrary), and happily most of these benefits (including regulated fares) still endure.
If they were and are worth preserving (and I sense most of us are in favour of this), then they’re worth promoting and publicising. But this cannot be left to the whims of individual franchising authorities, let alone operators. That’s why I’m keen to see the emblem run up the masts (well, totems anyway) where it belongs. It would be daft to embrace the Green/Hall proposal for a common system of station signage network-wide while jettisoning the logo which is its unifying identifier.
@john Cartledge – of course, if the network can be shown to have some identifiable substance. If not, the whole thing becomes a mere eflatus and a simulacrum like the insignia of the former Holy Roman Empire. It may be worth mentioning here BR’s initial response to the threat of privatisation, which was to replace the operational side of the businesses with a programme of contracting out the actual performance of the train service delivery. As far as the public was concerned, there would have been no difference – very like the Swiss post bus service, for example. As others have remarked, who cares a toss who operates (whatever that means) a service?
Your point is one of my fundamental concerns about the agitation for renationalisation. I have a lot of sympathy for that, but what does it mean in practice? What would change? What would you do differently? [In my book, the changes would be financial and relatively invisible to the woman boarding the 08.36 tomorrow, albeit with some long term consequences visible perhaps to that woman’s daughter… On the other hand, the punters’ expectation is for cheap fares and a seat.]
Ah, the semiotics of the railways… Who would have thought it? [Greg T – -I’m looking at you…!]
There were other stations not owned by Railtrack, including Milton Keynes (booking office and concourse), Folkestone Harbour, Fishguard Harbour, the Eurostar part of Waterloo and several in the New Forest.
However, property ownership has no bearing on whether the BR arrow needs to be displayed.
@LiS – At the time of their transfer, Folkestone had no train service and the MK sharp end was in the hands of RT. I don’t recall the New Forest Stations – can you name them? I distinctly remember transferring Lyndhurst.
Graham H
I will willingly plead “guilty” to that one ….
OTOH, your comments about both the ministers involved ( F & S respectively ) show in horrible clarity the complete detechment from reality with which Rail Privatisation was approached, even leaving aside any doctrinaire considerations behind it at the time, which I think might be better discussed in another time & place.
[ P.S. “the Holy Roman Empire”, which was neither holy nor Roman, & wasn’t even an empire in the normal sense …..
I’m always reminded, when seeing such things of the little plaque at Mayrhofen, proclaiming that this station & railway was opened by His Serene Majesty the Kaiser Franz Josef in 1902 …..]
John Cartledge raises one significant point which is whether London Overground services should be seen as and identified as primarily part of a national rail network (pace all the caveats from Graham H about that) or primarily as part of a London network. The former implies a strict use of the Z logo, the latter, the TfL roundel. I think the whole point of the transfer of LO (to all intents and purposes) to TfL was to get these services more closely integrated into the London rail network both for planning purposes and in the public mind. That and the argument for transferring the three south London metro services into LO is as much about dealing with the feeling that south London is cut off because it has little or no underground. If that is right then the use of the TfL roundel at LO stations is far more important than the Z logo, whatever the legal niceties might be.
Graham H
Title to the Bournemouth line through part of the New Forest vests in the Crown, but not the newer section beyond Brockenhurst. The Southampton & Dorchester Railway only had a wayleave through the forest. When the line via Ringwood closed BR had to negotiate its way out of returning the land to the way it had been before the railway was constructed.
@Quinlet – Indeed a political decision in a grey area. The case for displaying both symbols (which might be a logical conclusion) wouldn’t do on pragmatic grounds.
@Greg T 🙂 (There’s an even better, non railway, example. near the former prince-archbishop’s palace in Wurzburg, where the court apothecary still plies his trade as the f e hofapothek only 200 years after the principality was abolished.)
@LiS – However, it was the Board, not the crown which granted title to RT for those stations, no doubt subject to whatever caveats were necessary- it wasn’t my job to read each lease from beginning to end, but it’s entirely possible that the situation was normalised after Castleman’s Corkscrew closed..
F E = fuerstliche erzbischofliches
Whether or not the continuing availability to rail users of National Rail’s network benefits is a “legal nicety” is apparently a matter of opinion. My contention is that they are important and valuable (pace the continuing availability of privilege tickets, a debate into which I’m reluctant to be drawn), and that passengers are entitled to be made aware of them. The plain fact is that the double arrow emblem remains in use in a variety of contexts, to identify benefits and facilities offered in common to users of all TOCs’ services, and its significance should therefore be consistently promoted. If you visit the National Rail Enquiries website, it’s the first thing you see – and it’s there for a very good reason.
This proposition stands or falls on its own merits, quite independently of the pros and cons of promoting the Overground brand. As it happens, I was responsible for commissioning a study published in 1998 by the (then) London Regional Passengers Committee entitled “The South London Overground – the case for enhanced suburban rail services.” In it, we argued that the component metro routes of the three south London TOCs should be given line identities similar to those found on the Underground, that their service levels should be enhanced to walk-on frequencies, and that the whole network should be promoted under an “Overground” brand.
Unfortunately, this publication predated mass internet access and the report is not accessible on line, though hard copies are available to anyone interested. Five years of lobbying followed, which resulted in the launch in 2003 on four pilot routes of the “Overground Network”, which aimed at giving a common identity to all of the higher-frequency innner-suburban services south of the Thames, to replicate that of the Underground elsewhere. The speakers at the launch event were the chairs of the London Transport Users Committee (which had succeeded LRPC), the SRA and ATOC, and the MD of TfL’s London Rail division. An account of this event can be found at https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20080709001056/http://www.londontravelwatch.org.uk/news.php?id=140.
The Overground Network (ON) had its own logo, which was displayed at stations, and its subsequent history is set out on its own page on Wikipedia. It fell victim to political and institutional changes at both the national and London level, and an absence of clear organisational ownership. But its name has survived in a different form in the guise of the present TfL-sponsored Overground brand, of which it was very much the conceptual forbear. This historical recital is offered simply as a rebuttal to any charge that I am hostile to the overground concept per se.
The image on the ON Wikipedia page of the station totem at Richmond, on which the ON emblem is sandwiched between the double arrow and the roundel, makes it clear that it complemented these logos, and in no way replaced them. Each had a distinct meaning, and was there for a purpose. That purpose remains today, although sadly the institutional will to fulfill it seems now to be missing. But perhaps, once the fates of the Holy Roman Empire and defunct railways in the New Forest have been finally resolved, Great Minster House’s finest minds might be induced to turn their attention instead to the desirability of reinstating the perfectly “pragmatic” semiotic solution which the Richmond totem exemplifies.
John Cartledge & others
Precisely
If more than one type of service is available, then the symbols for those should all be displayed.
So, in Berlin, the magnificent Hauptbahnhof has all three & so does Friedrichstraße & “Zoo”.
All this on the Holy Roman Empire, reminds me of Wagner’s sarcastic comment towards the end of Meistersingers, where the chorus imagines even such as its disappearance ….
Whilst these exchanges have been very agreeable, even if some may have found the odd diversion too much to stomach, what they do demonstrate extremely clearly is that there is (a) very little understanding of, let alone agreement on, what constitutes a network benefit, and (b) whatever the answer to that question, it has no relationship at all to roundels, flags, Z-rod symbols or anything else currently displayed.
On the first point, to relate the argument back to the topic of the thread, you would get different answers to what constitutes a network benefit if you asked a transport planner, a timetabler, , or a member of the public and it would depend on which country you asked it is. The discussion is a close sibling of the discussion on what constitutes integrated transport. It is also closely related to discussions about what should or should not be put in a PSO. UK practice has been almost entirely limited to defining network benefit in terms of ticket interavailability. Other things that, say, the Swiss (and Jon Tyler!) would recognise, such as timetabled connexions, or a common(ish) fares structure have been alien to what has been done in the UK nationally, even if it should have been so.
On the second point, the Z symbol is, in fact, devoid of any content and, as I said, meant no more than “Here be a franchised service”. Of course it didn’t have that meaning when BR had it: it was a brand mark, exactly the same as the badge on a car bonnet. There was no promise of any specific service, any quality, or network benefit. Any such issues are now hidden away in the franchise agreements. At best it should be seen as a mark of control or responsibility – to whom do you go when things don’t work… The LT roundel is just the same for all practical purposes: it has never offered any actual promise about universal service levels, integrated timetabling, easy interchange, service quality (however defined), or even ticket interavailability. In the case of the Overground (and ScotRail and MerseyRail) , DfT has ceded control to local government and it’s up to the new controller to use their own mark (whether it was good or bad for the GLA to take over and generalise the roundel so, I leave to others ). Displaying two symbols outside a station is fine if there are genuinely two different “controlling minds” – Richmond is an obvious example . If not, what is gained other than confusion?
Graham H
Very good question, particularly if, as some of us think, there is no “Guiding Mind” at all, epecially if DfT are involved (!)
While I would be happy to see a full range of Swiss-style network benefits introduced (or restored) to the National Rail system, we are where we are, and for the time being we must make the most of what we have. But that is certainly not zero.
At the risk of sounding like a record needle stuck in a groove (remember those?), the obligations to which all TOCs are subject by virtue of their licences and derivative industry-wide agreements include through/interavailable tickets, anywhere-to-anywhere ticket sales, a single travel enquiry service, the travel assistance scheme for passengers with disabilities, the Transport Focus/London TravelWatch appeals system, railcards, insurance, co-operation in the event of service failures, and the National Conditions of Travel. Of less direct relevance to users, but of immense indirect benefit, is compulsory membership of RSSB.
I think these are worth having. Others may disagree, but if they do, the onus is on them to explain the overriding disbenefits. Assuming these arrangements are retained, passengers are entitled to know of them, and for services and facilities to which they apply to be clearly labelled as such. The double arrow symbol (which seems mysteriously to be migrating from a rectangular to a circular background) is the obvious device for this purpose. If DfT no longer wishes to require its use, I’d be happy to see it imposed by ORR instead (a view which was shared, I believe, by former ORR chair Chris Bolt).
Travel agents’ advertisements routinely include the logos of ATOL and ABTA, which give reassurance to their clients of their professional reliability. Financial institutions advertise the fact that they are licensed by the FCA. Display of the double arrow emblem at stations serves a not dissimilar purpose. If many users don’t know exactly what it means, that’s a reason for telling them, not for resigning ourselves to its abandonment. And none of this precludes the concurrent display of operator logos (whether Overground or any other) provided that these are removed or replaced if they cease to be relevant.
Readers of Reconnections may be able to take a blase view of such matters because they are rail industry cognoscenti. Long experience at the coalface of transport consumerism has taught me that passengers need all they help they can get in negotiating the complexities of the industry’s practices and procedures. Clear and consistent use of symbols, linked to readily accessible information about their meaning, would be an important step forward towards that end.
I’m going to take a slightly contrarian approach to stating that the Z remains useful but I think it has different connotations from the ones about ticketing and other network attributes.
Surely, to most people, it just means trains – it’s understood in a way that transcends its anachronism, just as level crossing warning signs still use gates and steam engines.
@John Cartledge – Of course, but, apart from interavailable ticketing, those are not network benefits, merely universally imposed benefits. There are non-rail operators (eg certain ferry services) to which some or nearly all of these benefits apply, and those operators were also signatories to the T&SA. Some of the things you list also apply to light railways and tramway operators, too, but I doubt if they would even want to be subject to the Z requirement.
@Ronnie MB – I agree, I guess Salmon had had it mind that all these open access operators would spring up, and that they would identify themselves differently. (I doubt if Salmon’s thinking had got as far as working out whether the rail industry therefore needed a generic symbol – the Whitehall view at the time – Freeman again – was that franchises would wither away and be replaced by cheaper private operators – indeed when , as I may remarked before, when I was touted at him as a prospective director of planning, his response was that he expected to let only one round of franchises, after which his work was finished,)
Graham H
I see that R Freeman is still with us, & has not yet gone to the great Woodhams in the sky.
I wonder if anyone could get an opinion out of him, now, on the on-going disaster he helped initiate? ( He’s only 4 years older than me, after all )
The somewhat “stalemate” nature of the discussion over the NR “symbol” is giving me flashbacks of the issue of ticketing provision at Stratford station when it was proposed LU take over the ownership and operation (including ticket selling) of the station. The scale of ticket ranges and destinations was where we ran into somewhat “fixed” opposition from the LRPC (London Regional Passengers Cttee). I will say no more.
And just to remark in passing that vinyl records are making a (small) comeback and some of us still buy them and play them. 😉 What that means in the context of the use of NR symbols or ticketing practice I leave to the imaginations of the LR readership.
re:John Cartledge – your points are well made and interesting to read. In the context of Ticket Offices the network validity of tickets is significant as between Underground and Franchises.
Z symbol usefulness is in identification. It’s widespread use is in wayfinding and indicating interchanges on network diagrams. I would also add operational building entrance to distinguish the many closed stations and redeveloped properties that no longer resemble traditional station buildings. In the context of urban areas served by U/S bahn type networks the city transport logo gets prominence but your requirement is to identify the network validity and conditions on the S (Overground).
The Richmond totem photo example (from 2007) shows the ‘on’ symbol as an example of the transience you highlight. Equally perhaps TfL Rail and Elizabeth fall in that camp.
The overall grouping of the Roundel is an attempt to clarify, if it’s not Underground then it’s a network franchise.
@John Cartledge
I note with interest that there is a single legal usage of the crossed-Z symbol, and that’s in the DfT etc al, Traffic Signs Manual 2013 where it is known as “Working Drawing No. S 38”.
This means that the “white out on red” version of the logo** is familiar to Road users.
There is also a “white out on blue circle” logo that you use if you sign up to API “Darwin” services from National Rail Enquires.
** Chapter 7, p135 of https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/traffic-signs-manual
@Aleks – – You are right that the Z often indicates “Here be trains” but it doesn’t indicate necessarily that tickets are sold there, even at stations which have trains call – any unmanned station for example. And, of course, there are still a few places that sell National rail tickets which are not in stations. Should these, too, display the Z? Consistency is hard to find.
@Graham H – agreed, even the tickets themselves are not consistent and don’t need a logo but do conform to national conditions.
Once a halt is officially closed the process should include the removal of the Z symbol and traffic signage. The Croxley branch was mothballed with all signage.
@Aleks – as have been many closed stations, and then there have been the not quite -closed stations like Stone, which continued not to be served by trains for many years. I wouldn’t mind betting that the replacement buses didn’t sell rail tickets for the whole system. And I would place an even larger bet that the relief TLK buses will not sell tickets for anything other than the places they serve. BTW – does anyone know how the Tilbury town- Tilbury Riverside substitute bus was marked and whether it sold any sort of train ticket – same with the notorious Wandsworth- Ealing “rusty curves” bus.? Then there is the “runs as required” taxi to Newhaven Maritime…
@Graham H – “how the Tilbury town- Tilbury Riverside substitute bus was marked ”
http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/TilburyGravesend3.html
The TfL Rail bus service has never asked me for a ticket so a cheaper alternative for the 86.
Re network benefits :
Whether there is a meaningful distinction between “network benefits” and “universally imposed benefits” is an issue I’m content to leave to lawyers. My argument is that irrespective of what they are called, these benefits are real and worth preserving – and that passengers should therefore know of them (or be told about them when need arises) and have a simple means of identifying the services and facilities to which they apply. The double arrow emblem is the obvious way of achieving the latter.
Of course, this does not mean that other operators, such as London Underground, do not provide travel information, or offer (some) through tickets, or look after disabled passengers, or have a complaint-handling procedure. But they do this as a matter of commercial choice, not in fulfilment of a regulatory obligation. If any other operator – whether by rail or any other mode – wished to sign up to providing the full set of benefits required of TOCs, and thus qualify to display a double arrow sign, that would be great. But it is not an outcome which the current (non-)regulatory arrangements can impose.
Re Stratford ticket office :
The LRPC’s opposition to the loss of a National Rail ticket office at Stratford was based on the argument that the Underground was not equipped to offer the same range of NR ticketing options. Whether or not this attitude was “fixed”, it was certainly consistent, logical, and – from a passenger perspective – correct.
The relevant issues were fully rehearsed in the report “Whose station are you?”, previously cited. It contained a recommendation “That at jointly served stations operated by London Underground, the ticket offices should offer the same ticket-selling service as that provided at stations operated by National Rail, i.e. covering all National Rail destinations.” If no guarantee that this requirement would be met at Stratford was provided, the committee’s hostility should have come as no surprise.
Re totems :
The Overground Signs Standard (published on line) is instructive, since it offers a rare public acknowledgement by this TOC of its membership of the National Rail network – albeit only for the purpose of using totems to disguise the fact.
The standard states that at Overground-only stations, only the orange and blue roundel is required. But “Stations which serve London Overground and other National Rail or TFL modes should display a totem sign displaying all networks served.” Use of the word “other” in this context implies that it is part of National Rail, although it is only the presence of other TOCs which is deemed to necessitate display of the National Rail emblem.
Somewhat oddly, the standard also states that “Where an Overground station interchanges with the rest of the National Rail network and that property is owned by National Rail, it is the National Rail logo that is displayed before the Overground roundel.” Again, the phrase “the rest of the … network” confirms that the Overground is part of it, but in the context of property ownership there seems to be confusion between National Rail (a brand) and Network Rail (an infrastructure operator).
Re : off-system ticket sales and information
Rail-appointed travel agents have used the double arrow emblem (e.g. in shop windows) to identify the availability of National Rail tickets. On-line ticket retailers display the circular version of the double arrow on their sites to indicate that they are “National Rail accredited”. Sites providing information derived from National Rail Enquiries data feeds must conform to guidelines requiring, inter alia, use of the “Powered by National Rail Enquiries logo” which incorporates the same circular version of the emblem.
Re : Wandsworth-Ealing rail replacement bus
Tickets could be bought at stations, though there was nothing on the bus stops served to indicate the fact (or, indeed, much about the existence of the service). They were not sold on board. When I travelled on it (as the sole passenger), I proffered an Oystercard which the driver accepted, though he had no means of verifying its validity.
As a general principle, it is never the responsibility of the driver of a rail-replacement bus to check tickets. When tickets are checked on these buses, it is done by a rail staff member. If a ticket is offered to the driver, he or she would probably nod at it, rather than entering a pointless conversation with the customer though.
@GT
A great Woodhams in the sky would imply that the chances of entering the afterlife are just short of 70%.
In other areas where the municipality has its finger in the National Rail services, both symbols are displayed at stations.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Five_Ways_Station_-_Islington_Row_Middleway_%286905522131%29.jpg/1024px-Five_Ways_Station
https://www.merseytravel.gov.uk/about-us/Pages/MaghullNorth.aspx
Only in London is it assumed that the local passenger transport executive’s logo will be as recognisable as the national one.
National Rail – if it appears in the Great Britain Timetable, and on the National Rail Real Time train departures (as Overground and TfL Rail services do, but Underground and Tramlink don’t) it’s a National Rail service, and any station served by such trains is thus necessarily part of the NR network.
@Aleks/Malcolm – Aleks – thank you for the pictures of the Tilbury bus. What is interesting is that that particular service is actually not a rail replacement bus service, but that rarest of beasts, a statutory substitution bus service (the Wandsworth route was one of the only two (?) others) – – introduced under the 1987 Act and treated legally as if it was in every way a train service. Yet that fact seems to not appear on the vehicle or the stops, nor did the driver car (if I’ve understood correctly) a POTIS or equivalent ticket issuing machine. It also seems to have slipped below the NR timetable horizon. It’s a remarkable survival, although I can’t imagine many use it.
GH et al: according to the brochure at https://www.kent.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/43569/Gravesend-to-Tilbury-ferry-brochure.pdf, “Ferry passengers intending to use train services from Tilbury Town Station must pay for a single ticket on the no. 99 shuttle bus. The price of the bus ticket will be refunded at Tilbury Town Station ticket office upon purchase of a train ticket”, so the bus driver doesn’t need a rail ticket issuing machine for journeys in that direction. There’s no mention of any equivalent facility for journeys to the ferry from Tilbury Town, but according to https://www.ensignbus.com/uploads/1/5/6/5/15657682/99_farechart_sep_17.pdf, a “National Rail Train ticket that says ‘To/ Via Tilbury Stations'” is valid on the 99 bus.
Timbeau: your first link doesn’t work for me, but https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Ways_Station_-_Islington_Row_Middleway_-_sign_(6905535371).jpg does.
@Betterbee – thank you for that! The implication is that the 99 is free to rail users. Mind you, the Tilbury – Gravesend ferry has its own anomalies, so anything is possible, Sealink used to operate the route and at their privatisation attempted to sell it on to the captain, as not being relevant to their sea ferry business. The captain was well advised, however, and refused to make an offer; as he pointed out, under the charter of Edward III establishing the ferry, he was taking on an obligation to operate (albeit in a northbound direction only), so he should be paid. Sealink settled by giving him a new boat.
We used the Tilbury – Gravesend Ferry Terminal bus 99 recently to get to and from the Marco Polo cruise ship. As we have Freedom Passes we just tapped in anyway but all other passengers just showed their rail tickets. On the way back there were 2 ships at the cruise terminal and the bus could not hold all the people queuing and the driver just let as many cram in as possible. No tickets shown.
@Betterbee
I now can’t get either picture of Five ways to work. Try this one of Ardwick instead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardwick_railway_station#/media/File:Ardwick_Station,_Manchester_MH2.jpg
@Aleks
That link to the Tilbury ferry pages, although very interesting, doesn’t seem to mention the bus service.
Some years ago we got on the ferry at Gravesend on a Sunday morning and were surprised to be asked where we would like to go! We were the only passengers, and the crew tried (unsuccessfully) to sell us a trip down the river and back rather than going straight across to Tilbury.
I bet that never happened to Edward III.
@ John C – Of course you are going to take the position that LRPC were correct at Stratford. I would expect no less over an issue that is clearly a “red line” for LRPC and its successors. I won’t repeat the details of the debate back then as it’s not particularly relevant. I made reference to it simply because the debate *here* has become similarly entrenched.
What I do think we have got to is a place where TfL and TOCs will try as hard as they can NOT to include ticket offices in any new build lines for NR services simply to avoid being put in a position where it becomes impossible later to remove or scale back the facility. This manifests itself in the frankly ludicrous (IMO, of course) where most Zone 1 Crossrail stations will have no ticket or travel office facility at all whereas somewhere like Burnham or Langley retains a ticket office. I recognise many people will travel using Oyster or Contactless but nonetheless Crossrail (CR) and Thameslink (TL) together should prove to be revolutionary in use of NR services and connectivity. The lack of a staffed and knowledgeable NR ticket selling facility seems very odd to me given the places that can be reached with one change from a CR or TL train. And yes I know LU stations are staffed but staff are not trained on the complexities of NR ticketing and availabilities. Whether we like it or not Crossrail will bring in more NR related ticketing queries.
And as a small side issue I note that it is being reported today that the Mayor has written to the DfT asking that Oyster and Contactless ticketing be extended to reach Southend, Stansted and Luton airports. The success of Oyster’s extension to Gatwick is cited as the justification coupled with a likely increase in rail usage (and revenue) once smart ticketing is introduced. It’s an interesting move as it suggests that TfL have, as expected, vastly expanded the system capability to recognise more NR destinations as part of having to handle Crossrail. I wonder if the DfT’s long held opposition to “not invented” Oyster and Contactless ticketing will result in the Mayor’s request being turned down?
ww
asking that Oyster and Contactless ticketing be extended to reach Southend, Stansted and Luton airports … But not Shepperton, right? 😁
The only major clue that North Dulwich has a railway station is the Z sign here:
https://goo.gl/maps/4je8Jy2Du8B2
Pan around to the left for station building at street level.
@Timbeau -scroll down for the Rail Replacement not the current 99 alternative
Rail Replacement mini-bus at Tilbury Riverside
A bus service replaced the trains from Tilbury Town to Tilbury Riverside when the branch was closed. Initially, standard-sized single deck buses were used.
In January 2007, a small mini-bus was in used which could drive down onto the ferry pontoon.
Rail Replacement bus at Tilbury Riverside
In 2012, Clintonia were running midi-buses to the top of the pier
Current iteration of rail replacement 99 since 2014
https://www.nationalexpressgroup.com/newsmedia/news-across-the-group/2014/99-bus-refreshed-as-service-marks-80-000-passenger-journeys/
The revamped 99 bus route, which links Tilbury Town railway station with Tilbury Riverside in Essex, is managed by rail service C2C and operated by local bus company Ensignbus.
Clearer view of side branding ‘Ensign Bus & C2C working in partnership’
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130150336@N07/17019469096
@Greg
Oyster to Shepperton (or Epsom, or Reigate, or Sevenoaks or other logical places wrt the train service) would be seen as ‘of no use to Londoners’, unlike Oyster to airports. We can’t have money spent on those things that merely aid those that live beyond the boundary’s ability to come and make or spend money inside the capital and don’t directly and obviously benefit the citizens of the city, can we? 😉
Si
Your imitation is very well done, but unfortunately politicians & TOC’s are involved in this anomaly.
However, Shepperton is something of a “special case” as it’s a dead-end branch line & quite a few people travel out to Shepperton from London & find that their Oysters don’t work & have to buy tickets – mostly “extras” for Shepperton Studios. [ And, yes, there are gates @ Shepperton. ]
IIRC, the other obvious anomaly is Hertford E – but Oyster has now been extended to there.
Walthamstow Writer: “It is worth also saying that Oyster provided some capacity gain by being a generally faster way of using a ticket gate and within TfL’s performance target. Obviously the use of NFC equipped phones and contactless bank cards are not quite as fast as Oyster so past throughput gains may be being eroded at the margin as the ticket media mix changes over time”
Absolutely. Shashi Verma has very publically said that increased throughput on gatelines has enabled LU to avoid major ticket hall rebuilds at a number of locations.
Mind you, the Oyster Business Case included the customer time saved for the use of Oyster over mag stripe (the fraction of a second) in the benefits to customers. Sometimes cost-benefit analysis can overdo things…
In terms of LU avoiding ticket offices, I’m pretty sure the modernisation at Euston Square involved not including a ticket office. And of course Wood Lane was built without one too…
Transport Insider Now In The Desert,
Indeed. And the modernisation of Cannon St didn’t provide for a ticket office either. I think there were a couple of others.
London TraveWatch’s initial reaction to LU planned closure of ticket offices was to suggest that LU shouldn’t embark on this process without trying it out at a few stations to understand whether it was feasible or not. To which LU retorted that they already had five stations operating without a ticket office and hardly anyone had even noticed (and obviously not London TravelWatch).
I suspect the decision to not provide one at Euston Square was partially for a similar reason to Cannon St – so that it squashed the ‘ah, but have you tried this at a busy London terminus?’ question.
@greg
Shepperton is merely the smallest such example. There are three other branches which are isolated from the rest of the non-Oyster network
– the East Sussex line (beyond Upper Warlingham, to East Grinstead and Uckfield),
– the C2C system beyond Grays/Upminster,
– the Southend Victoria and Southminster branches which can only be reached via Shenfield.
Transport Insider Now In The Desert,
Mind you, the Oyster Business Case included the customer time saved for the use of Oyster over mag stripe (the fraction of a second) in the benefits to customers. Sometimes cost-benefit analysis can overdo things…
But it isn’t a fraction of a second is it? If you are talking about a large station and queues would otherwise build up then the time saved by avoiding queues building up could easily be five minutes or more. And its perfectly reasonable to include this in cost-benefit analysis.
@Timbeau
If Southminster/Southend counts due to Shenfield, then there’s also the Watford Junction – St Albans Abbey branch.
Both marginal cases, I admit. Both Southend and St Albans have stations on other lines, although in Southend’s case the other station is also in an exclave.
@John Cartledge: it is entirely possible to make Overground passengers aware of the wider network benefits available to them without mandating that TfL use the double arrow as their main emblem. For example by putting up posters in the (former) ticket halls (which could include the National Rail emblem). This would be more informative than a rather gnomic Z on a stick outside the station entrance.
The Z on a stick is recognised throughout Great Britain as signifying “here be trains” though. Useful if you are in an unfamiliar area (and want to get out!) although you might be disappointed if you turned up at Denton on a Monday morning.
Most Brits would also recognise the London Transport Roundel, but I doubt that the various regional logos of other conurbations have such universal recognition, which is why Greater Manchester, Merseyrail et al use the Z as well.
@timbeau – you are entirely right – as is evidenced by many map publishers, sat navs, and even used abroad to that end. But apparently, it *should* mean something else highly specific. Who knew? Not the punters, nor those commissioning the sign, nor those owning the copyright in it.
@T
St Albans two stations are over a mile apart. Hardly an OSI.
timbeau,
I tend to agree. An Underground sign is instantly recognisable. A National Rail icon* is instantly recognisable. Whilst the same cannot be said of an Overground sign it is sufficiently similar to an Underground sign to convey a similar meaning to someone not completely conversant with the details of different signage. Moreover, for those in the know, it conveys additional information.
One can always argue a particular sign should not be used because people are not familiar with it but surely that is the case for every sign on its inception?
I have no doubtJohn Cartledge is technically correct but I think we need to look further and see what the purpose of the rules were (something that seems to be not entirely clear) and adhere more to the spirit rather than the strict letter of the rules. It is highly significant that, I presume, when the rules were created London Overground did not exist.
* At the time of its creation a wag suggested it was entirely appropriate as it symbolised a company that couldn’t make up its mind if it was coming or going.
@Nameless – then there’s Farnborough to Farnborough North… Those who have actually made this OSI tell me that the waymarking with the Z symbol tends to give out in the middle of housing estates. The Dorking one is a bit easier but, when I last made it, not marked at all (it was one of my minor projects in NSE days to look at the case for a linking footway and stairs entirely on railway land, although it was far from easy to see how a business case – in BR terms – would work).
The original Overground signage conformed. It was in the margin of the Richmond photo so here is a clearer view.
https://www.arrowcommunications.co.uk/newsroom/mobile/london-overground-stations-to-offer-free-wi-fi/
The roundel family is a later TfL takeover strategy that has been stalled.
Google maps seems to be very liberal with the Z symbol, it’s stuck on the Horsted Keynes and Tunbridge Wells West too…
Of course, before the double arrow, there was the original double arrow:
https://goo.gl/images/xSmh5W
@Ronnie MB 🙂 3/6, too!
@Aleks
That article has managed to use the wrong Overground symbol. The original “on” logo signified very little – the services and stations were still run by TOCs
There weresome common signage standards and little else. https://web.archive.org/web/20040205041455/http://www.overgroundnetwork.com:80/pdf/on-new-network-map.pdf
Note how some lines stop at seemingly random points (Teddington, Streatham, Crayford) and how some stations are greyed out (Berrylands, Shortlands, Carshalton, Wandsworth Road) because of the 4tph criterion. (And that 4tph only applies Monday to Saturday anyway, which is a problem because the whole point was to encourage extra off peak journeys, many of which are likely to be on Sundays)
@Ronnie MB
Are you sure? It looks like a thistle to me.
@GH
That’s 7 Mars bars or 14 postage stamps.
@Nameless – – I’ve found , with the passage of time, it doesn’t pay to think of prices long ago and then make the inevitable comparison with today – 15/= to send a letter, £1 for a loaf of bread. (If you really want to be depressed, I recommend the Port of London’s rate book for 1910 – a nice letterpress cloth bound book – offering such delights as the daily rate for hiring their largest floating crane – £50gns – or the cost of unloading an elephant (small) – 5/= – large elephants were 10/=, which suggested some interesting arguments on the quayside)
Not a thistle, though I can see the resemblance to the SNP’s thistle and drop of oil.
Inside the brochure, it was explained that the blue arrow represented the Firth of Clyde and the yellow arrow the pantograph of an electric train.
I can remember at least one station that still into the 80s had the X above the entrance rather than the Z.
Presumably, a large elephant is difficult to describe but you know it when you see one?
Aleks,
Further to timbeau’s comment, the Wikipedia entry for Overground Network is informative. Note the very first line is Not to be confused with London Overground.
Re National Rail :
I don’t think there’s any serious argument about which services the National Rail network does or does not include. As the quoted extract from its sign standard shows, London Overground privately acknowledges that it is a TOC and therefore part of it but – for whatever reason – does not wish publicly to advertise the fact.
I fully accept that for the 99+% of the rail travelling public which uses trains in blissful ignorance of the provisions of ORR-issued licences, another more accessible and meaningful indication of its meaning would be useful, and for some (though I suspect not many) of these, inclusion of a service in the National Rail timetable in either its printed or its on-line PDF versions might be a handy guideline. The timetable has now been shorn of most of the various bus links, heritage rail services and ferries it once contained (even station-to-station routes like Portsmouth-Ryde), so its contents are now virtually coterminous with the NR system. But not quite. Table 45 shows all of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway’s trains, not just those running on licenced main line infrastructure. And – for a reason that some Reconnections reader will undoubtedly be able to give – Stena Line sailings between Fishguard and Rosslare still appear in Table 128.
But this is knowledge that few passengers carry in their heads, or in their hands. So it remains my contention that display of the double arrow outside stations serves a useful purpose, even if many passengers might struggle to define exactly what it means. And, interestingly, London Overground seems to agree, because it does show the double arrow at its stations at which other TOCs’ services call.
Re Ealing-Wandsworth bus :
I don’t know whether this would in fact have qualified as a “statutory substitution” rather than a “rail replacement” bus, though I suspect that for the same 99+% of passengers this is a distinction without a difference.
When CrossCountry withdrew the last of its trains from London in 2008, it left three chords (near Acton, Willesden and Clapham) unserved by any scheduled service. The DfT did not wish to initiate the statutory closure procedure because it hoped that other operators would come forward with proposals for a replacement service and, indeed, after a while one of Southern’s empty stock workings into Kensington Olympia, which used the Clapham chord, was opened to passengers. But to preserve the legal fiction that a service still existed, a coach operating subsidiary of CrossCountry’s owners was contracted to run a once-weekly return trip between Ealing Broadway and Wandsworth Road, calling at Kensington Olympia en route. It did not appear in any public timetable, and the trains it was nominally replacing had not called at either of its termini, which were simply the nearest stations to the ends of the chords.
This wasteful and devious circumvention of the statutory closure procedure was the subject of complaint by London TravelWatch and others. Eventually DfT relented and advertised the intended closure, which resulted in the withdrawal of the coach (and the removal of the Southern train from the public timetable) in 2012. A fuller account of this episode appears in the September 2012 newsletter of the London Campaign for Better Transport, which is available on-line at https://bettertransportlondon.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/cbtlondongroupnewsletter016_sep2012.pdf.
Re London TravelWatch :
I no longer have any contractual connection with this organisation, and any views I express here are my own, so they are not a matter “of course”. My references to its (and its predecessors’) actions and policies are simply for the purpose of setting the historical record straight.
As far as ticket issuing facilities at central London stations on CrossRail are concerned, I have not been party to any discussions that London TravelWatch has had on this with TfL. My view is that as these will be busy National Rail stations, they should have the means of selling the full range of National Rail tickets (yes, even child privilege tickets on Oystercards), and of doing so either by bank card or for cash or vouchers. I am undogmatic about whether this should be done partly or solely from passenger-operated machines (with competent attendant staff to assist if necessary) or via traditional ticket offices. My instinct is that at stations from which many outward journeys originate, ticket offices will have a continuing role. But I am not sure exactly which stations would qualify as such, or what the consequences of the move towards electronic ticketing may be.
Re : London Underground ticket offices :
London TravelWatch was well aware that for years ticket office facilities had not been available at all Underground stations. But this was only at less-busy stations, and/or times of day/week, except when there were sudden staff absences. It had no bearing on the organisation’s stance vis-à-vis the general loss of these facilities system-wide.
Re : Totems vs posters :
To suggest that notices about network benefits in ticket offices are a sufficient substitute for a double arrow on a totem outside a station entrance is to offer a false alternative. It is not an either/or choice. Gnomically or otherwise, the totem is there to proclaim that this is an entry point to part of the National Rail network. The information poster/s should be there to summarise what the services offered by that network are, and where more details can be found. The relevant station information requirements laid down both in schedule 4 of the SRA’s franchise agreement template and (for comparison) in London Underground’s customer service delivery standard (as they existed at that time) are set out in full in LTUC’s “Whose station are you? report, already cited, at http://www.londontravelwatch.org.uk/documents/get_lob?id=829&age=&field=file.
Double arrow emblem :
The ownership status of, and rights to use, the double arrow emblem (including on road signs) are set out in the Intellectual Property chapter of the SRA’s “Passenger rail industry overview” (1996), which thanks to The Railways Archive is accessible on line at http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/OPRAF_PRIO1996.pdf. The Station Standards section of the same document states that “The Franchising Director will require the double arrow symbol to be used at each [franchisee-operated] station to indicate the location of the station.” Who’d have thought that such a simple and self-evident proposition could arouse so much (apparently genuine) argument?
Re : Overground Network
The purpose of this branding (as conceived by LRPC in its “South London Overground” report and endorsed by SRA/TfL/ATOC) was to encourage passengers to treat those sections of the suburban National Rail network with sufficiently high-frequency timetables as walk-on services analogous to the Underground – a 21st century heir to the LNER’s jazz train concept, perhaps. The logo on the totem signs was complemented by appropriate service information displays in stations – and, of course, by the double arrow on the totems. ON fell victim to the demise of the SRA, the indifference of DfT, the parochialism of the participating TOCs, and the desire of TfL to appropriate the term overground for its own narrower purposes, though by chance London Overground now operates a couple of the routes to which ON branding was applied.
@GH
But if repriced using the Mars bar index, the brochure would be about £4.20 now.
Ronnie MB
Ah the magic Cuneo painting, with a doodlebug on the lhs & at least one Clyde Puffer on the right!
John Cartledge
…either by bank card or for cash or vouchers. Please don’t!
I have just had the dubious pleasure of buying tickets ( Boundary Z6 to ****, natch ) using an ex “GWR” voucher obtained as a result of a spectacular collapse of services in Cornwall last March … It took the sorely-tried booking office Clerk about 8 minutes to get it through the system ( Apart from anything else the barcode on the voucher wouldn’t “read” … )
If one had had to rely on automated machines it simply would not have happened at all. Fuller details available on presentation of a pint.
Incidentally, whilst all this rigmarole was in process, three other intending passengers bought tickets from the same office.
@Nameless – these relative movements are (to me, anyway, sad git that I am) quite instructive. Colour televisions, for example, seem to have cost around £300 cash for the last 30-40 years, and, closer to home, an average railway coach around £1m cash for the last 30 years until very recently.
Just for amusement – and forgive me if I’ve mentioned it before – a while back, the NFU approached the department to update the compensation figures for farmers whose crops were burnt by passing steam trains as set out in the Railway Fires Act 1906 on the grounds that preserved railways had become more numerous and were now burning down fields of wheat more frequently. My economists spent a happy week indexing wheat prices since 1906 and showed that wheat prices had fallen in real terms quite substantially. When we realised that wheat was now subsidised and that the taxpayers might actually be better off if the crops were set fire to, the NFU suddenly dropped their claims….
Graham H…..now about that book of anecdotes – the wheat tale is priceless!
@greg
“I have just had the dubious pleasure of buying tickets using a voucher obtained as a result of a spectacular collapse of services. It took the sorely-tried booking office Clerk about 8 minutes to get it through the system ( Apart from anything else the barcode on the voucher wouldn’t “read” … )”
So imagine the fun we had when trying to pay for a journey with six such vouchers (values ranging from 97p to £3.86). It took the best part of 20 minutes. (The ticket clerk seemed unfamiliar with “2 Together” cards as well, which didn’t help). And when we eventually got on the train, it was terminated short because of a broken down train ahead of it, so we had to complete the journey by local bus – earning us yet another delay repay voucher!
Re : vouchers
To clarify, I was using the term generically to include not only paper delay-repay vouchers (which are now falling out of favour as a consequence of the introduction of alternatives such as electronic bank transfers or cheques) but also national transport tokens (but these are no longer issued and will shortly cease to be redeemable), travellers’/company cheques, postal orders and company/MoD warrants. I suspect that most of these will soon exist only or primarily in electronic form. But as long as they remain valid means of paying for rail travel, they should be accepted where tickets (or their electronic equivalent) are sold.
@ Transport Insider / PoP – yes the business case for Prestige (later Oyster) included a small time saving. It was there to reflect the fact that keeping a smart ticket in your hand and touching a target was less cumbersome than removing a paper ticket from a wallet, inserting it and then retrieving it. We called it the “fumble factor” and I had endless and tedious discussions with people from Finance about the relevance or even existence of this benefit. While I agree that you have to avoid “cooking the books” over marginal benefits accuring to millions of people over a year the “fumble factor” benefit was never fully represented in the business case. We were forced by the accountants to scale it back to allow it to be included at all. The fact that we were proved right and many tens of millions of pounds of construction costs may well have been avoided subsequently is left for the reader to ponder. The dangers of trying to explain new technology and its interraction with the public to sceptical finance people.
One aspect of closing ticket offices not noted so far is that of reducing the costs of protecting their contents – ticket materials and cash – and removing the costs associated with collecting that cash at the end of the day. In the 90s I was working for BTP at Kings Cross and worked on a report about the ‘security’ (or, more often, lack of it) in many north and north of London stations.
One (I won’t say which) was noted as having its safe located behind the door because the partition-board walls had no wiring in; it would have been quite possible to just put a fist through the wall and climb through! Others had cctv covering the windows and doors but had neglected to ‘cross the views’ such that the cameras got stolen because they didn’t view each other. There was also the issue of carrying the stored takings at the end of the day (or 2-3 day period) down to the platform to be collected via a ‘special service’.
Overall, the costs involved with cash handling at ticket offices weren’t inconsiderable, and though machines may still have cash transactions the majority move to Oyster, wave-and-pay, and card payments at machines will be very beneficial.
@Alison W – A very relevant issue – 25 years ago, NSE spent well over £15m pa shifting and banking the cash – 2% of turnover – and that’s apart from any on-site security costs (or lack of them!).
@AlisonW and GrahamH There must be a finite minimum cost for logistically dealing with cash and the security and admin related in an efficient and (somewhat) timely way – some items might scale but to a limit? I guess the question is, what is the minimum amount that needs to be taken in cash for the cost of dealing with cash transactions to break even?
@Ben – I’m sure you are right that the cost for cash handling is of the X+Y kind, but I have never seen a tender for this sort of thing. Sorry.
Si 17 October 2018 at 00:50
“Oyster to Shepperton (or Epsom, or Reigate, or Sevenoaks or other logical places wrt the train service) would be seen as ‘of no use to Londoners’, ” because its obvious that no-one ever travels outwards.
@Ben: An amount greater than what the bus drivers were collecting in fares…
@ Ben – There are multiple aspects to cash handling and collection / banking. There are capital costs involved in the provision of secure (or not!) accommodation, safes and coin / note counting machines. There is also an element of ongoing maintenance for each of these. Beyond that you have the process costs of paperwork, accounting and staff time. In addition to that you then have management of local cash floats (change for the machines) and cash collection. In some instances on LU cash had to be “recycled” between stations to ensure local floats were maintained as some stns had very had levels of change needed and others generated an effective surplus.
I agree with Alison’s core comment that the move to electronic payment will have helped reduce many of these costs. However they have not vanished. LU has not gone completely cashless unlike the bus network. Cash is still used for Oyster top ups and people do still buy paper tickets with cash. I’m sure the volumes of cash handled have dropped hugely thus allowing cash collection costs to be reduced through revised collection cycles. I also expect processes have been streamlined too which will have saved man hours and allowed a reduction of staff costs. What LU has not yet quite managed to do is start reducing the numbers of actual ticket machines at stations. If the push towards contactless continues then I suspect that is the next phase in the strategy but LU has to be careful not to alienate the remaining users of Oysterand paper tickets who do still need to use a machine at some point. IIRC there was a desire on TfL’s part to start rationalising the agent network (Oyster ticket stops) to reduce machine costs and commission payments. I don’t know if that plan is being actively pursued or not.
WW :
‘ …the business case for Prestige (later Oyster) included a small time saving. It was there to reflect the fact that keeping a smart ticket in your hand and touching a target was less cumbersome than removing a paper ticket from a wallet, inserting it and then retrieving it. We called it the “fumble factor” …’
A benefit lost when Contactless came along. From the earlier Oyster days when I could just knock my wallet on the reader, now the Card Clash issue means I’m back to fishing the relevant card out first, and putting it back in again.
@Mr Beckton
“now the Card Clash issue means I’m back to fishing the relevant card out first, and putting it back in again.”
I keep the card I’m using separate from the other cards for just that reason – also prevents absent-mindedly touching in with one card and out with another.
Regarding ticket offices, we have of course never had these on the DLR, nor staff at the barrier (what barrier?), for no seeming hardship. In fact the principal nuisance is that, because the DLR was allowed to buy ticket machines to its own, presumably cheaper specification, you cannot see even on the latest ones your journey history on them, as you can on Underground machines, and thus have no way of seeing if there are any incomplete journeys on your Oyster.
Re DLR :
The original DLR was designed as a stand-alone network and built down to a very tight budget (set by Heseltine) which offered machines with limited ticket purchase options (whether by destination or means of payment), extremely basic staff-free stations (which it more accurately called stops), lifts that were incapable of coping reliably with the level of use they attracted and had to be upgraded, etc, etc. The niceties of passenger service were very low amongst its designers’ priorities, so it serves as a model for almost nothing other than how to get a basic railway built on the cheap, parts of which then have to be substantially reconstructed almost as soon as it’s opened in order to make it fit for purpose. It was only lobbying by LRPC which persuaded LRT even to show it on the Underground map proper, rather than simply as London’s equivalent of Shetland in a box in the corner. It should serve as an object lesson in how not to design facilities at new or rebuilt stations elsewhere.
Re traffic signs :
The official DfT guide “Know your traffic signs” (https://www.highwaycodeuk.co.uk/uploads/3/2/9/2/3292309/know-road-traffic-signs.pdf) offers two station logos which are used on directional signs on public roads, viz : the double arrow and the red-and-blue roundel. The former is described as showing the location of a “railway station”, the latter as showing that of a “London Underground station”. Since by virtue of its separate semiotic identity the latter category is excluded from the former, and even TfL does not claim the Overground to be integral to the Underground, it follows that Overground stations are regarded by DfT as (who’d have thought it?) railway stations. And if road users are directed to them by the use of double arrow signs, surely it is logical that one should be displayed on arrival to show that they have reached the station they are seeking?
@Alison W: the issue of carrying the stored takings at the end of the day (or 2-3 day period) down to the platform to be collected via a ‘special service’.
Taken to an extreme for many years by the Paris Metro, who had a special train and connecting narrow gauge line to take the takings into their vaults every night.
Worth mentioning also that blank paper ticket stock needs special handling because of its obvious value to ticket forgers.
John Cartledge
Except that the DLR system, with no barriers or gates … works ( Like Berlin )
And vast numbers of people are still saying “it couldn’t possibly work HERE” (again) when it very patently does.
Um.
@John Cartledge – it was, in fact, Ridley who insisted on the DLR budget being set so low and so rigidly. Indeed, Ridley was quite prepared to go to Cabinet and oppose the whole DLR project (partly one suspects on the grounds that anything that Heseltine proposed should be automatically opposed), and had to be cajoled by officials into negotiations. The upshot was the rigorous cashlimit on the scheme – a limit which was specifically excluded from an uprating for inflation – another Ridley condition.
@Graham H – I have always believed it was Heseltine who got the £77m spend agreed for the initial DLR system, directly with the Treasury, with the support of PM Thatcher – the whole LDDC development apparently got kicked off with a discussion between them in a ministerial car which happened to be going to something in the Isle of Dogs, Thatcher said “what a waste of land”, Hezza said “We could fix it you know”, and Thatcher said “Put something together about it then”. I think that Transport (was it under DoE then?) and Ridley were cheesed off they had been bypassed, possibly the civil servants more than Ridley.
Heseltine knew Reg Ward, who was the first LDDC Chief Exec, who I believe actually had the DLR idea. Reg also had the “ridiculous” idea for an airport in the Docklands – he had done his National Service in the RAF and knew from then the chief pilot of an airline which had a short runway capability, hence the initial trial landing at Heron Quay commemorated by the plaque in the station there.
@Mr Beckton – Certainly, Heseltine thought he had got it fixed until Ridley intervened. Besides Ridley’s personal dislike of any further investment in railways – the card he intended to play with the PM at Cabinet was something along the lines of “we haven’t just renationalised LT to start spending on it” – there was considerable personal animosity over LDDC, which Ridley saw as punching a DoE hole in DTp territory.
LDDC did everything to foster this – those of us who had worked with Reg Ward in New Towns days knew he would brook no opposition in pursuing his frankly megalomaniac ambitions and had no idea of the meaning of financial control or public accountability (Indeed, his appointment sparked another major row at ministerial level at which some home truths about Ward were said in print). LDDC really really wanted to take over the planning and operation of all public transport in their area. Their first attempt was to try and promote a tramway – something for which they had no powers; their second attempt was to demand from DTp a trolleybus scheme under “the Trolleybus Act” . It was a mark of their lack of professional advice that they believed such legislation existed – I had great pleasure in telling them otherwise. It was the lack of LDDC powers that gave Ridley the leverage he wanted.
I believe you are wrong in suggesting that DTp civil servants were “cheesed” by LDDC – we were collectively much more concerned to fight a continuing rearguard action to save what we could of Londonwide planning and transport provision. There was also considerable anger at Ward’s past activities which, in the view of many of my contemporaries, bordered on the corrupt. I couldn’t possibly comment on that.
Well when I look at Canary Wharf today as the pinnacle of Reg’s “megalomaniac” ideals, world centre of finance, I can only say ‘well done’, let alone DLR, Jubilee to Docklands, Crossrail to Docklands, City Airport, etc. And, as you can probably guess, my house. The £77m delivered probably the best Bang For The Buck of any London transport project ever, including innovative bits like going across the middle of the West India Docks on a viaduct instead of the easy way round the edge. How valuable that has been.
I think PM Thatcher was far too alert to be taken in by Ridley’s ramblings.
Relevance to this discussion? Reg delivered a substantial transport system which has proved to London for the last quarter century that ticket offices are not required.
You are too kind to Ward – apart from the DLR in its early state, much of what has actually been built – the DLR extensions, the JLE – are the result of subsequent opportunistic interventions by third parties such as G Ware Travelstead. Crossrail to Docklands had absolutely nothing to do with LDDC. At the time of Ward’s manoeuvring, Crossrail simply went to Shenfield. And so on. The same goes for much of the financial centre. Remember – the original focus of LDDC’s plans was housing and Stratford, not a financial counterpole to the City and not about the Wharf.
As to whether Ridley had more influence over Thatcher than Heseltine did, the evidence of Cabinet discussions and the surrounding exchanges between Ministers, is that whilst she had a grudging tolerance of Heseltine’s flamboyance, she actually listened to Ridley and shared his agendas.
Do not rewrite history.
Well we have to agree to differ.
No wonder Reg never got an OBE or any government honour. Far too successful compared to the inaction over all the bombsites there since 1945 by the establishment. He died some years ago. Maybe Canary Wharf Management can get round to putting up a statue for him in Columbus Circle. Just don’t ask for any Whitehall support for it.
“subsequent opportunistic interventions by third parties such as G Ware Travelstead”
Just to make the point that when G Ware Travelstead, himself. said, at the first meeting, maybe they could put a proper large office there, everyone else at the meeting said “Of course not”, while Reg said “Absolutely”.
@mR Beckton – you will notice from your own point that the Wharf was a subsequent addition to the non-master plan for the whole area and that the initiative, again, came from outside the LDDC. Ward wasn’t in any sense a visionary but a fixer. If you want a visionary for the whole it would be Heseltine, not Ward. Ward was lucky to escape prosecution
@John Cartledge and others
If the underlying point here is that TfL have been making something of a “land grab” around London Overground (and the Elizabeth Line) then I think that’s fair charge to make. I suspect that someone at TfL reckons perception is 9/10ths of reality, and if they can present parts of the national rail network as pseudo tube lines, people will start to perceive them as tube lines and, in time, they may even become designated as tube lines. Certainly, TfL now have a political bulwark against any attempts to revert these services to a different authority.
I understand that some people feel the “National Rail” network should be retained as an immutable legacy of the BR era, and in this context it’s fair to react with horror at what seems to be a subtle erosion of that. But let’s not forget, the lines we’re talking about, particularly the original LO set, were wholly unloved – actually loathed – by BR and had to be saved from closure on multiple occasions. On the other hand they’ve flourished under TfL stewardship and that perception of them being conjoined with the tube network – much as it might be a land grab of sorts – has driven record ridership and significant uplifts in train lengths and frequencies.
The bottom line is that in public perception, certainly in London, the double arrows logo stands for a rail organisation or network which never did a good job of inner city metro services, and the roundel stands for one which has always done a much better job.
As for network benefits, I can see the logic here to an extent. But I’m not sure that many people know or care that one could buy a return ticket from Kentish Town West to St Keyne Wishing Well Halt, or whether doing so offers any tangible benefit, financial or otherwise over simply Oystering to Paddington and buying a ticket there (I can’t see that it does). From TfL’s perspective I can only imagine their share of income from such a ticket sale would be negligible and not worth operating the ticket office for.
Overall, I think TfL does have a strategy to play down the National Rail aspect of these services, but it’s grounded in trying to achieve the best outcome for their future and with consideration of the priorities and perceptions of the majority of people who use them. I can’t imagine that the ticket offices would stay open either way, and the ease of Oyster/Contactless payments within London means that through tickets are far less attractive than they once were.
The notion of “organisational correctness” let’s call it – is where I think some of us are just going to have to agree to disagree. I’m personally quite comfortable to let go of the semantics over what does or doesn’t constitute a National Rail service or not and how such a service should be advertised or signposted; the operator should do what works best IMO. I don’t think it matters to the vast majority of users, but I can see that it matters to some.
Re ticket offices :
I assume the suggestion that “Reg [Ward, of LDDC] delivered a substantial transport system which has proved to London for the last quarter century that ticket offices are not required” is intended as an Aunt Sally.
However, for the record, the absence of a ticket office (or equivalent sales facility) at most DLR stations no more “proves” that none is required at many National Rail stations than the presence of such an office at the Hastings West Cliff Railway “proves” that it is.
The DLR is (or at any rate began as) a small, compact, unvariegated network with a very simple fare structure, narrow range of ticket types, and limited through-ticketing facilities. If you offer your users few options, you can simplify the ticket-selling process, at the expense of narrowing their choice, and design-down the ticket-selling apparatus accordingly.
On the National Rail network, there are more than 6.5 million different possible possible (one-way) point-to-point journeys, even excluding through journeys to/from Underground and other non-NR rail networks. Tickets are offered for anything from a single trip to an annual season. Thanks to the industry’s long experience of market segmentation, there are variations available for peak vs off-peak travel, train (or operator)-specific vs interavailable fares, first vs standard class, adult vs child fares, railcard and group discounts, rovers, seat reservations, sleeper berths, advance purchase, etc, etc – even before opening the can of split-ticketing worms. The total number of published fares is around 55 million, or more than eleven times the number of journeys made every day.
The outcome of the current RDG-led consultation exercise on revising the National Rail fares system is awaited. But it is unlikely to result in anything resembling the (relative) simplicity of TfL’s pricing arrangements. So adequate means of purchasing the best ticket for one’s trip must continue to be available network-wide. Rightly, a proposal by the first Rail Regulator (Swift) to reduce the availability of universal ticket sales facilities from 1300 to 294 “core stations” failed in the face of overwhelming passenger hostility.
This does not mean that there has to be a staffed ticket office at every station (there never has been), or that ticket offices have to take the form of a traditional staffed counter or window. But it does mean that any passenger should be able easily to purchase what they need, before or during their trip, and that competent and knowledgeable staff should be readily available to assist and advise on the spot.
The sole purpose of a passenger railway is to meet the needs of its passengers. If providing good ticket sales facilities seems too much to ask, who else’s side are you on, and why?
Re : London Overground
It is a time-honoured strategy, when losing an argument, to misrepresent one’s opponent’s case and/or to set up a false dichotomy in order to demolish it.
Nobody would dispute that what is now London Overground has flourished under TfL’s sponsorship in a way that it did not as part of BR or of the Silverlink (and other) franchises. All that this proves is that if you invest in improving trains, infrastructure and promotion, and in creating new links and enhancing frequencies, you can attract more passengers. Of course, this is more likely to happen under political leadership which is more directly accountable to the inhabitants of the areas served by the lines concerned. That is why (inter alia) London TravelWatch has consistently argued (as, for that matter, have I) for other local London services to be brought under TfL’s wing, welcomed the McLoughlin-Johnson pact, and deeply regretted Grayling’s rejection of it for his own partisan ends.
But why should display of logos on totems be an either/or choice? Whatever the double arrow may have meant 25-plus years ago to those who were alive at the time, is irrelevant to today’s passengers. As the totem at (say) Bushey is required to bear both a double arrow and a roundel, what is lost by displaying both at Watford High Street too?
The hard fact is that the ex-BR emblem has been the brand logo for National Rail for a quarter of a century, appearing on tickets, railcards, websites, stations, and anything else which is part of the network it signifies and/or to which the associated benefits apply. It serves no other current purpose. The corporate image-makers at TfL may wish it otherwise (though it is speculative to suggest that the organisation is planning a land-grab), but in law and fact these benefits have been retained for Overground passengers. I am merely arguing that this should be celebrated, and publicised for their benefit. Apologists for TfL must have their own reasons for wishing to change this fact or suppress this knowledge.
No-one is suggesting that a ticket office (or equivalent sales facility) should be provided or retained at Kentish Town West simply to sell tickets to St Keyne Wishing Well Halt. That would be preposterous. The proposition actually being made is that if the facility (and the supporting technology) currently exists there to sell such a ticket, as but one of 6.5 million journey options, nobody loses and some people gain by retaining it. Computerised sales systems minimise the cost of calculating and executing such a transaction. Those who prefer to pay repeatedly in different places for every leg of such a journey are still at liberty to do so.
Was any fuss made about the loss of through ticketing and other network benefits when TfL’s predecessor took over stations like Epping and High Barnet?
Others will be better qualified to describe whatever ticketing agreements existed between LNER and LPTB. But the Overground has not become a TfL-owned subsidiary, or part of the Underground – conversely, a section of it has replaced what was previously an Underground line through Brunel’s Thames Tunnel. And my recollection is that rail tickets continued to be available between Mill Hill East and Edgware, which were valid on bus route 240A.
@John Cartledge:
If providing good ticket sales facilities seems too much to ask, who else’s side are you on, and why?
It is a time-honoured strategy, when losing an argument, to misrepresent one’s opponent’s case and/or to set up a false dichotomy in order to demolish it
Quite.
@John Cartledge: As the totem at (say) Bushey is required to bear both a double arrow and a roundel, what is lost by displaying both at Watford High Street too?
The distinction of knowing that from Bushey you can catch fast outer-suburban trains to Tring and Euston as well as metro-style services to the Junction and Euston, whereas that Watford High Street only has the latter? That seems like a useful thing for someone living in the bottom end of Watford to know.
Re totems at Bushey and Watford High Street :
The double arrow totem appears outside 2000+ stations nationwide, and conveys nothing about either the frequency or the destination of the trains which serve them. That’s what maps and timetables are for. The double arrow denotes that the services offered are part of a national network to whose users common benefits are available, which seems to me to be a useful thing for people living in or visiting the middle as well as “the bottom end” of Watford to know.
@John Cartledge: mildly useful, but not as useful as seeing at a glance what kind of transport service each station offers. Clearly you feel strongly about this so I will leave it there.
The discussion on totem and station rail services logos seems to have run its course. As stated, there are strong views on their meaning and significance, and prolonged debate would be circular.
Unless new information is brought up, further comments along this line may be removed without warning. LBM
London Travel Watch appear to have a few issues. The way this is reported suggests TfL will have to wait….
http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/rail-news/watchdog-forced-to-postpone-closure-of-london-overground-ticket-offices-after-unprecedented-and-overwhelming-response
@AP – except that these decisions are not within LTW’s absolute jurisdiction. The article is pretty poorly researched. Not that TfL don’t have problems but not as described.
The RTM article is based on a statement in which the RMT union implicitly ascribed to London TravelWatch powers which it does not possess and to which it does not pretend.
The correct position is set out in the papers presented to the board of London TravelWatch on 23 October. To read these, visit http://www.londontravelwatch.org.uk/calendar/event/view?id=1815, scroll down, and click on LTW592 and its two appendices.
More automation – impetus is to use Oyster beyond London.
http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/rail-news/rail-minister-urged-to-back-extension-of-oyster-and-contactless-payments-at-london-airports
London’s deputy mayor for transport Heidi Alexander has called for Jo Johnson to back the extension of Oyster and contactless payments to Luton, Stansted and Southend airports.
Gatwick, Heathrow and London City airports already accept card payments, and Alexander wrote that since pay-as-you-go systems were introduced at Gatwick in early 2016, it now accounts for a quarter of all trips from the airport.
This is especially important ahead of London hosting a total of seven games in 2020 for the UEFA European Football Championships, including the semi-finals and final.
In April, figures from TfL revealed that half of all London Tube and rail journeys were made using contactless or mobile devices.
There is a ticket office in the refurbished station at Forest Gate. Not yet in use; staff are still working in the “blue box”, outside in the bridge.
@Aleks: Commuters from Sevenoaks want it too and I’m fairly certain Epsom gateline staff would love it too…
But I ‘m fairly sure it will take a change of government to get it to either….
@SHLR
The MP for Epsom and Ewell has been inconsistent on this, not wanting TfL getting its sticky paws on his local trains, but conversely bemoaning the lack of electronic ticketing at the stations in his constituency (albeit 75% of them do have it………..)
One possible way of extending Oyster / Contactless beyond its existing reach is simply to charge the £50 penalty fare as the exit charge. That would soon publicise that it cannot be used outside the area it is intended for.
Southern KeyGo is valid at the stations in the Epsom and Dwell constituency not covered by Oyster / Contactless and presumably it is this form of electronic ticketing (ie TOC led) that will form the basis of electronic ticketing in the regions.
https://www.southernrailway.com/help-and-support/contact-us/faqs/keygo
While paper tickets remain available there isn’t much reason to adopt alternatives.
@SH(LR)
But Sevenoaks, Epsom, Shepperton, etc have little to offer Londoners, unlike the Airports. TfL and its GLA funders have little interest in making life easier for those who aren’t London taxpayers and aren’t using TfL services – especially if it costs them money!
It requires change at City Hall as well as Whitehall to get these obvious Oyster extensions happening…
@Si – what sort of change at City Hall would suddenly make them willing to use their taxpayers cash for the benefit of non-Londoners? The lesson of MLE is that even the most ambitious London politician has to be bought in such cases. Those Oyster extensions seem “obvious” only to those living there.
@Jonathanh – I’m not sure I follow the logic of your first sentence. BTW isn’t the Southern Key card state of the art 2003, which is why TfL is still ahead of the game? And which is why DfT is so signally failing to sell the idea unless they can find a victim and enforce it through the franchise agreement?
@si
Sevenoaks, Epsom, Shepperton, etc have little to offer Londoners
…..except people, who might want to come to London and spend money in its shops, theatres, etc.
….and education: the schools in all three places mentioned draw some of their catchments from across the border.
@Si, Graham H: Extending Oyster makes travelling less hassle…. That would hopefully translate to more travel for TfL…
Not only that but contactless should be cheaper as you can reduce the number of ticket machines. Those things are very likely to be very expensive!
@Graham H – a change where they suddenly become unconcerned about some 50 year old line on the map and the fact there’s no votes or direct tax income coming from outside them. ie, a highly unlikely one!
The extensions are obvious, even to those who don’t live there – especially when compared to Reading, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted and (above all) Southend Airport! That isn’t to say that people are that concerned whether they happen or not (unless they live there), nor that they are likely or politically easy to do!
@Timbeau – I don’t disagree, and I should have put ‘little’ in airquotes – however diffuse benefits of increased trips to London don’t shout as loud as public costs would. And helping Tarquin go to Grammar school in Kent/Surrey is a political barrier for voters and politicians not in the outer boroughs, rather than something seen as a benefit. 😉
Who cares that Sevenoaks has over 4 million passengers a year and is only two stops on the stopping service from zone 6, Southend Airport has the magic word ‘Airport’, despite only having just under 400 thousand passengers a year, being 6 stops beyond a special zone beyond zone 9 and served by trains that only stop once or twice within the GLA boundary before reaching their terminus….
@SHLR – There’s already not many ticket machines at the relevant tube stations (all of which are next to NR/TOC stations where Oyster cards can be topped up at the machines at those stations) and daytrippers from the commuter belt tend to get a travelcard added on to their paper ticket. The people who might need the ticket machines TfL operate are commuters who walk from the terminus and, on occasion, take a tube across Zone 1. But they can top up Oyster at various places near their office as well as their nearest tube station and they’d be more the sort of people who’d use contactless card anyway.
Don’t get me wrong – I’d love these obvious short extensions to happen, I just don’t think they are likely due to what will be an apathy-at-best attitude from London’s politicians and civil servants, aided and abetted by their counterparts serving at a National level who are apathetic-at-best for different reasons.
@Si – yes, obvious to those who would benefit; not obvious to those who would lose out or have to subsidise them. Not “apathy” at all, merely one set of taxpayers and their officials not spending time looking out for opportunities to give their money to someone else.
@SHLR “Extending Oyster makes travelling less hassle…. That would hopefully translate to more travel for TfL…”
Not for TfL if the travel is from Sevenoaks to Charing Cross, Epsom to Victoria or Shepperton to Waterloo.
“contactless should be cheaper as you can reduce the number of ticket machines” Again, those machines are at Sevenoaks, Epsom, Shepperton, and the main line stations at Charing Cross, Victoria and Waterloo. Not TfL’s problem, not TfL’s saving.
“And helping Tarquin go to Grammar school in Kent/Surrey is a political barrier for voters and politicians not in the outer boroughs, rather than something seen as a benefit”
Maybe so in Kent, but in Surrey it’s the other way round, as it is the SW London boroughs (Sutton and Kingston) which have selective schools and the county which is comprehensive, so the “Tarquins” you refer to are coming from Surrey, not to it.
It is those children resident in London who failed the 11-plus who are travelling out to schools in Surrey (and of course they are further disadvantaged because they are not able to use their Zip cards outside Oysterland).
And yes, getting in to state grammar schools these days is a function of parental wealth – competition is so intense that you are unlikely to pass the 11-plus without private coaching.
I was sceptical of the rationale for Oyster campaigning outside London because I heard confusion with Travelcard zoning or fare reductions.
In July 2015 Oyster was extended to Southeastern highspeed for the Rugby World Cup with no Travelcards, concessions, or capping. It is purely a convenience factor of not needing to research a fare and obtain a ticket. The result has been an increase of 76% in ridership between Stratford and St Pancras.
The Oyster case for travellers and visitors from airports has already been well made.
@Si “Southend Airport only having just under 400 thousand passengers a year, served by trains that only stop once or twice within the GLA boundary before reaching their terminus”
Stratford & off-peak Romford before LivSt, yet some Gatwick Oyster passengers go non-stop to Victoria. Southend is the ‘local’ for East Londoners so many will be transferring to TfL at Shenfield.
Southend Airport had under 400 thousand annual passengers in the 1950s when it was London’s third busiest airport. London Southend Airport opened in March 2012 with a new terminal, station, control tower and extended runway.
It has been voted best small airport in the UK for the last three years offering over 40 destinations by 6 scheduled airlines and is a hub for EasyJet, RyanAir, and FlyBe. The Terminal has planning permission to extend to 3mn pa and should handle 2mn next year.
Annual passenger numbers are:
2017 1,095,914
2016 874,549
2015 900,648
2014 1,102,358
2013 969,912
2012 617,027
For those interested these are the ranked annual passengers for London region air facilities in the 1960s. BAA opened a new terminal at Stansted in 1969.
London Region,1961,1962,1963,1964,1965,1966,1967,1968,1969,1970,1971,1972,1973
Southend,488383,551319,460960,539381,597441,594681,683283,488697,401122,423799,456436,316022,384842
Lydd,254954,229984,204277,155527,131009,169460,129608,102778,71045,46491,3252,4996,1576
Ashford (Lympne – closed 1984),111474,95927,107813,-,-,-,-,-,238522,204955,166672,166795,123803
Stansted,90611,101600,112095,93624,4590,7994,13629,146045,218794,490896,492316,310267,172931
Luton,8305,42186,123892,171091,206856,357109,412938,690610,1487685,1963570,2703392,3096294,3216522
Westland Heliport (Battersea),446,672,411,988,1217,1505,784,1104,1645,2635,3339,5289,8662
Cambridge,-,-,-,4110,4569,6565,7503,6365,5036,3984,3757,8833,7091
Manston,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,-,8306,6381
When Ashford Lympne closed the remaining flying transferred to Lydd which has adopted the Ashford designation. It plans to transform to a Southend style airport serving RyanAir type 737 and EasyJet A320 types.
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/romney-marsh/news/airport-expansion-hit-with-delays-184063/
I can’t be the only one who thought that Manston had put to bed the idea that London needs another airport so far into Kent it’s nearer to France. It’s hard to see how Lydd makes more sense.
Lydd makes less sense than Manston. But it happens to be owned by someone who is suspected (by outside observers) of pouring money into it for unknown reasons – perhaps as a very long term investment. It is also close to very little housing, hence little noise protest.
Manston only closed because it was losing money hand over fist, and those who were prepared to invest had dubious credentials, and in any case require permission for unlimited night (freight) flights. Such plans do not go down well with the neighbours, understandably. Being close to France (or even being rather a long way from central London) were not major issues.
@Malcolm – Manston made it on to the long short list during the 1992 RUCATSE study, but Lydd didn’t even get that far. Manston, of course, failed to get onto the short list. Given that the long short list even included Bristol and Bournemouth, that tells you something about Lydd..
@stewart “hard to see how Lydd makes more sense”
Different local catchment, shortest flying distance to continent as in Silver City days, no stacking congestion delays, no noise restrictions over Marshes.
But mostly (as with London Towers) LYDD (London Ashford Airport Ltd)) since 2001 is a subsidiary of FAL Holdings controlled by the Saudi Arabian businessman Sheikh Fahad al-Athel. As a director of Al Bilad he was a fixer for Saudi Arabia’s multi-billion Al Yamamah arms deal.
Planning permission is for a new terminal for up to 500,000 passengers a year with a target of two million travellers annually. The permission was initially given in the 1980s when Ashford was closing but the economy worsened.
A similar number could be supported by Oxford and Cambridge. Manston’s infrastructure is much larger with higher costs that needs ancillary freight operators to justify operation.
For south coast Luvvies doing a days work at the BBC Salford a Manchester flight from Lydd makes more sense than driving to Southend or Heathrow.
Another view for economic sense is that both Lydd and Manston are in deprived areas that desperately need jobs and investment, that airport capacity in the south east is constrained, and that existing infrastructure should be used and enhanced.
Siting and use of airports is interesting. But it is a bit of a stretch from TfL tickets offices.
Just saying.
But back to tickets and airports. I passed through City Airport earlier today. Confirm the ticket office there is still very much open.
While I completely take the point that TfL are not going to be spending their money on “adventures” in Oyster land the other key factor here is the DfT. Oyster only got extended to Gatwick Airport and intermediately due to huge political pressure from MPs and some stakeholder groups. When it was extended it was such a botch in fares terms that it undermined the previous “Oyster will always give you the cheapest fare” rule that had prevailed since capping was introduced.
Oyster is “not invented here” if you are a TOC or the DfT. That attitude stretches back to when I was sitting down with TOC reps in the relevant ATOC group well over 20 years ago. The fact that Oyster was delivered and is considered very successful has not really changed the prevailing attitudes because it is seen as a closed system with a sole supplier. The fact that ITSO, the DfT sponsored “open” alternative, is a mess at best and incoherent and hopeless at worst doesn’t seem to be an impediment to the DfT continuing to try to force TOCs to adopt the technology. Southern have taken it the furthest in terms of features and integration with buses but bizarrely there’s no great appetite with Thameslink or Great Northern to try to mirror these capabilities north of the Thames. No much has happened on SWT / SWR or GWR. C2C, South Eastern and Greater Anglia are only using it for season ticket holders and Thameslink’s use of it is patchy at best. No idea what London and Northwestern are required to do and Chiltern almost certainly have no obligations to trial or adopt ITSO.
You can’t actually divorce the use of Oyster from a simplified fares structure and implied zones as things stand today. That will not appeal to most TOCs who want to be able to “play tunes” with their fares and not be constrained. Quite what “Oyster for Crossrail” will bring in terms of enhanced fares flexibility remains to be seen. *If* it does bring more pricing flexibility then some TOCs may be happy to see it extended but the DfT certainly won’t. As DfT have to agree franchise variations I can’t see TOCs wandering off on their own to fund Oyster extensions to Southend or Stansted Airports. Anyway Greater Anglia have slightly bigger problems to deal with!
The only way you will see an extension to Oyster is if TfL are ever granted more franchise scoping and tendering responsibilities. There may be some tiny progress on that sometime after 2021 but I just don’t see anything happening in terms of Oyster stretching to more airports other than HEX joining the club sometime soon. There’s no funding, there’s no commercial upside for TfL and I doubt there is anything like the same political pressure grouping as there was for Gatwick.
WW
Oyster is “not invented here” if you are a TOC or the DfT.
And there, sir, you have hit the nail squarely on the head.
Because the UndergrounD and main line railways are fundamentally different. On the former you’re effectively stepping on and off a conveyor belt, on the latter you are boarding a specific train.
Walthamstow Writer, Greg Tingey,
Not a case of “Not Invented Here” but “Not scaleable to the rest of the country”. The decision not to support it might be misguided but was done out of a (perceived) major issue for the DfT/TOCs that they believe needed to and could be rectified. They have a point even if the solution has turned out to not really resolve it.
Island Dweller,
Thanks for the definite update on City Airport ticket office. I have updated the article appropriately.
@RogerB – That’s not quite true, is it? Some of the outer reaches of the tube have frequencies that are lower than some of the mainline railways such as the LTS – a route on which BR seriously considered abandoning a published timetable on the grounds that it was very frequent. The reality is that there is a continuous spectrum of frequencies from every 90 seconds to twice a day or even once a week. There is no sharp break at all. The best indicator is the tipping point at which the punters turn up and go without reference to the timetable – currently understood to be at the 15 minute mark. There are plenty of both Overground and national rail services which better that figure. It’s a functional, not an institutional, thing.
Interesting connection.
Steve Griffiths, most recently Chief Operating Officer for the London Underground at Transport for London, has been appointed Chief Operating Officer of London Stansted Airport saying “we will enable London Stansted to continue to be the fastest growing airport in London over the next 10 years, a period during which we expect more than 50% of all of London’s air traffic growth to come through London Stansted”.
And I guess even more so, the Netherlands has contactless throughout the entire country. So that is very much not invented here, I guess DfT and the TOC’s (excluding Abellio) will not visiting over there…
Re : Oyster fares
Gatwick to London is not the only instance of the “Oyster will always give you the cheapest fare” promise being untrue.
There are NR-only journeys which are cheaper if made with a ticket purchased for the trip because Oyster does not recognise Railcards in the evening peak. For example, an Oyster card holder with a Railcard will be charged £6.40 to travel from Blackfriars to Elstree & Borehamwood during evening peak hours, whereas the NR fare is £4.75.
A very inconspicuous footnote on the TfL Single Fare Finder site reads “If making a single or return journey including travel between 16:00 and 19:00, Monday to Friday, National Railcard holders may find that a discounted cash fare is cheaper.” But how many Oyster card users would have reason to look this site up, having been told that they’re always getting the best deal?
The DfT has declined to instruct TfL to correct this anomaly on the grounds that there have been few complaints – which is hardly surprising if almost nobody is aware of it.
Whether or not an Oyster card holder will actually save by buying a separate ticket is a lottery, because it depends on the cost of any other journeys they make that day. If their other travel has taken (or will take) them to less than £4.75 below the daily cap, then they will not be charged the full £6.40 and can save by not paying separately for this leg of their travel.
I think it is verging on the dishonest to put unsuspecting passengers in this situation.
More generally, if there are serious moves to extend general Oyster availability beyond Greater London, there is likely to be pressure to revisit the zone boundaries because of the existing discrepancies which will be accentuated. Historically, the Travelcard zones which govern Oyster pricing were defined by reference to the Underground network (and, originally, London buses). They were then superimposed on the BR network for the purposes of Capitalcard, without being fully redrawn.
The pattern of six (originally five) continuous concentric rings creates serious distortions, stemming from the fact that London extends much further from east to west than north to south. So for any given distance, it is cheaper to travel latitudinally than longitudinally, giving rise to frequent calls for stations to be rezoned. TfL is deaf to these calls, because they only come from those passengers (and their MPs and councils) who see this as a means to pay less for their trips.
A comprehensive zonal review could be designed in such a way as to be revenue neutral overall, but since as many passengers would find themselves paying more as would find themselves paying less, and the former are more likely to seek political revenge than the latter are to express political gratitude, it’s a risk which has not been worth any Mayor or Secretary of State taking. If such a review is ever conducted, though, the opportunity could be taken to draw all boundaries through rather than between stations in order to eliminate the disproportionate cost now borne by those making very short trips that happen to cross a zonal boundary.
@John Cartledge
“London extends much further from east to west than north to south. So for any given distance, it is cheaper to travel latitudinally than longitudinally”
By “longitudinally” I assume you mean along a line of longitude (north south).
But I’m not sure the assertion is correct. Outside the central area, which also extends further west to east than north to south, the rings are of similar thickness all the way round. They are thus all flattened ovals because the central area is that shape.
There are anomalies however – my local station is the only one within a ten-mile radius of Charing Cross which is in Zone 6 – many stations that close in are in Zone 4.
@JOHN CARTLEDGE
I did a nice diagram showing zone distance oddities…
https://ukfree.tv/styles/images/2018/Zone_Distances.jpg
@Brian
Very revealing. I was slightly puzzled by Ickenham (which is in Zone 6) being shown as the exemplar for Zone 7, until I realised that yes, indeed – the average Zone 7 station is as far out as Ickenham. (This is largely, I suspect, because the of circuitous nature of the route from central London to Uxbridge). My figures would be slightly different because I go by the straight-line distance, but Kingston still comes out as the Zone 6 station closest to Charing Cross – a ten-mile radius circle from the Charles I statue cuts right across the station.
Zones :
By definition, all ovals are broader than they are tall, or vice versa, so they are automatically flattened to some extent. So the distance between concentric ovals must be shorter in one dimension than another.
An eleven zone (straight line) N-S journey from Hadley Wood to Coulsdon South crosses a zonal boundary (on average) once every 2.1 miles, whereas a W-E journey from West Drayton to Upminster does so every 2.6 miles. The compression of the zones is particularly acute where the boundary of Greater London is closest to the centre, so a SW-NE journey from Worcester Park to Buckhurst Hill crosses a boundary every 1.7 miles . It is no surprise that calls for zonal boundary reviews have been loudest from residents of Kingston and Redbridge.
This is not simply an accidental consequence of the shape of Zone 1, because if the distances across that zone (from Kings Cross to Vauxhall and from High Street Kensington to Aldgate East) are omitted, the N-S journey still crosses a boundary every 2.0 miles whereas the W-E journey does so every 2.3 miles.
Brian Butterworth’s remarkable diagram helps to make this point very clearly. The stations at the left hand end of each zonal bar are generally north or south (or south west) of Zone 1, while those at the right hand ends are generally east or west of it. Individual discrepancies can largely be explained by his use of route rather than crow-flying distances.
BB
Are you sure that Heathrow is furthest out form Charing Cross?
Last time I looked, Epping was still in Z6 ….. ( As is Upminster )
Brilliant diagram, though
@TIMBEAU
Thanks. The maths for this follows the rule of being from Charing Cross National Rail station, rather than the well know road starting point.
I also followed the known location of rail junctions, and allow the “shortest route to Charing Cross” to use OSI, but only one at once.
I think that the only thing I discovered what how totally arbitrarily defined the Zone boundaries are. As the Zones were created in the 1980s as a way of simplifying the existing fee-per-distance fares as the tube was underused (it says here) it isn’t a shock that they are lacking in a primary definition.
I’m not sure if they could be re-done. Zone 1 should probably be extended slightly further south in the name of fairness, but the only thing that might seem comprehensible would be to just cut them back to three and just adjust the fares to keep everything more-or-less the same.
It is also notable how many Tube termini, despite being quite close to the edge of Greater London, are in Zone 5 rather than Zone 6. (Cockfosters, High Barnet, Edgware and Stanmore are all in Zone 5, Morden and Richmond in Zone 4)
Only Upminster, the extreme western ends of the Met, Piccadilly, and Central, and parts of Essex, pay Zone 6 fares on the Tube. And in South London most passengers have to pay the TOC premium as well.
@ PoP – who mentioned the “rest of the country”? I didn’t. The context of the discussion was about relatively modest extensions into bordering counties for rail services to London. That’s where the clamour has come from with the more recent addition of the usual “airport lobby”. The idea of applying Oyster to the whole of the country was never raised when I was involved a long time back. It would have been ludicrous for LT (as was) to suggest this given the spec contained no such functionality.
I agree that Oyster, as extended to NR in Gtr London, is not scalable to the rest of the UK. It was never intended to be. It’s a classic case of passenger and stakeholder expectations running far ahead of what the specification. It is just a crying shame that ITSO installations in TOCs have been so badly done. With some imagination and competence it could have been so much more and offered the basis of genuine nationwide smart ticketing. Sadly the complex product structure and huge fares on some routes present real difficulties with a product like PAYG on whatever card medium you choose.
Zones 5 and 6
When Travelcard was created, there were five zones. The outermost Zone 5 could be quite wide, because most Underground lines terminated some way short of the Greater London boundary, and only two crossed it. Subsequent superimposition of these zones on the NR network brought a lot more stations into Zone 5, including Elstree & Borehamwood that is actually located in Hertfordshire (but has two TfL bus routes).
This resulted in revenue loss to the TOCs. So Zone 6 was subsequently carved out of Zone 5 in order to increase fares from these outlying stations. This created some oddities, e.g. on the Midland main line where passengers have to pay to cross the (reduced) Zone 5 even though in the absence of a station they cannot alight there. Whether they regard the opportunity to admire the London Gateway (ex-Scratchwood) service area from the carriage window as they pass it non-stop is much compensation is a moot point.
Elstree (Village) had the county boundary running through the centre with the whole borough in the Metropolitan Police District. Similarly healthcare was covered by Barnet or Stanmore.
All border boundaries create anomolies but Borehamwood was built as a GLC estate served by LT. The oddity is the southern extension of influence by Hertford – a place never visited by the population inside the M25 or connected by transport links.
Re Elstree & Borehamwood
We are drifting some way from Overground ticket offices, but as a resident of Borehamwood and a former Herts county councillor for both it and Elstree, I agree that its retention (and that of Rickmansworth, Watford, Bushey, Carpenders Park, etc) in Hertfordshire is an anomaly long overdue for rectifiication. My fellow councillors at county hall (Hertford) had no comprehension of the realities of life in an ex-LCC overspill estate.
If the M25 (which runs north of these places) had existed at the time that the GLC was established in 1964, it would almost certainly have been used to fix the boundary of London. Unfortunately it only started to materialise a decade later. The Herbert Commission whose report led to the creation of the GLC devoted a whole chapter to “the problem of south west Hertfordshire”, and the situation it described remains largely unaltered today.
It took more than 30 years after Greater London was created to persuade the Local Government Boundary Commission to bring the whole of Elstree village into one authority, and several more then to to persuade the government to realign the police authority boundary with that of the county.
When the GLA reviewed its own functions some years ago, it refused to examine the boundary question, mainly because Labour in London sees any extension as likely to import hostile voters from adjacent counties. It is in an unholy alliance with Tory councillors in the home counties, who are terrified of finding themselves under the yoke of a Labour mayor. So any more substantial redrawing of boundaries is not on anyone’s agenda.
This is not a purely cartographic issue, since it has real consequences for passengers stemming from (e.g.) Hertfordshire’s refusal to fund TfL-sponsored cross-boundary bus routes which run at urban rather than rural frequencies and are now consequently at risk. And it provides the political context for the sad history of the Croxley Link.
There is a similar situation in the SW, where a big chunk of Middlesex went to Surrey rather than be incorporated into Greater London. Epsom & Ewell was also considered for inclusion.
It looks like the inclusion on so many lines of a zone boundary between the last two stations was a deliberate ploy to put a premium on travel from the terminus (High Barnet, Edgware, Morden, West Ruislip). These stations, because of their locations, attract railheading, so encouraging people to drive a bit further in eases pressure on the station car parks at these termini. The quality of service from a terminus is also better – not only are you almost guaranteed a seat, but you can sit in it whilst waiting for departure instead of standing on a draughty platform. (And skip-stopping your station is out of the question!)
The obvious problem with measuring zonal distances from Charing Cross (which is officially the centre of London), is that it is not the centre of zone 1. Where is the geographical centre of zone 1?
https://londonist.com/2010/01/where_is_the_centre_of_london_findi
Seems to be at the top of Haymarket. And the geometrical centre of Greater London is near the London Ambulance Headquarters in Waterloo
@CHRISMITCH
Both City and Westminster would claim a centre and opportunistically Midtown has tried to claim an intermediate location.
Londonist attempted to solve it in 2010 ” best approximation put the centre of gravity just south-east of Piccadilly Circus, perhaps at the top of Haymarket. That’s pretty close to the ‘official’ centre of London in Trafalgar Square”.
https://londonist.com/2010/01/where_is_the_centre_of_london_findi
@JOHN CARTLEDGE
There is a generation that have grown up with Barnet inside London and an isolated Potters Bar, Capitalcard was overlaid onto the original London Transport red bus pass zone, and Oyster London now looks like this
http://www.citymetric.com/sites/default/files/article_body_2016/01/london_boundary.png
@Chrismitch – the wrong question in fact, which is why you come up with an unsatisfactory answer. London has had two centres for at least the last millennium, however you choose to define centre. (One might add the Wharf these days, so – three centres). This is so particularly in terms of density of employment and station useage, or the agglomeration of economic functions. The duality of centres is also one of the reasons why London has tended to expand east-west rather than north south’ although for a brief period in the late C19, London was indeed bigger n-s than e-w
@Aleks
Love that map. If you include buses there are other outliers such as Dorking and Slough. And CrossLiz will possibly get Oyster right out to Reading.
Oyster boundaries :
Middlesex is long gone, and Potters Bar lies outside the M25, so it’s not obvious what bearing this has on a discussion about the boundary of London. Nor, as far as I know, has anyone seriously suggested that the bits of Barnet that used to be in Herts should be returned to it.
For rail purposes, the outer boundary of Zone 6 (previously 5) closely approximates to the boundary of Greater London (though since the introduction of zonal fares common pricing has applied on both in- and out-county sections of TfL bus routes, not least because the vehicles are no longer equipped to charge graduated fares).
Where additional (discontinuous) zones have been created outside Zone 6 to allow use of Oyster on particular cross-border rail services, it is possible to draw a boundary of sorts to reflect this, but strictly speaking it should be confined narrowly to the alignment of the out-county sections of the specific lines involved. And again, this has no administrative significance, unless it is being proposed that (e.g.) the Gatwick corridor is incorporated into London.
@CHRISMITCH
Doing the maths… using Earl’s Court, Notting Hill Gate, Edgware Road (Bakerloo), Marylebone, St Pancras, Hoxton, Aldgate East, Tower Hill, Elephant and Castle, Vauxhall and bounding co-ordinates for Zone 1, the Centroid formula gives (51.51102 N, -0.1295064 E) as the centre of Zone 1, which is the top right hand corner of Leicester Square.
This is 123 meters away from the Equestrian Statue of Charles I, which is the point from which the Road Network is measured .
@JOHN CARTLEDGE
Here’s an odd thing. Crossrail 1 will join up the only two points on the boundary of London where the M25 and Greater London Boundary are in the same place: Elizabeth Line users will think that the M25 is boundary of Greater London.
Brian Butterworth 07:42,
If you are going to get down to metres, could I point out that the London Road Network is measured from the original site of the Equestrian Statue of Charles which is not quite the same as the current location – a few metres different to accommodate the small traffic island on which it stands. And that is believed to represent the original site of the Queen Eleanor Cross which was the original location. And as one article on roads pointed out a few years ago, there are actually a number of these points – but this is by far the best known.
@Brian Butterworth 07:58
The points where CrossLiz crosses the M25 are both about 1km outside the GLA boundary.
I can find eight other examples of railways which have no stations between the GLA boundary and the M25. In some cases they can be several miles apart (see Knockholt. Merstham), but in four instances, (one each on C2C, Anglia, Overground and Great Northern) the M25, railway and GLA boundary do actually coincide
@PoP – for the avoidance of doubt, the Copperplate Map, which preceded the better known map by Agas, and which dates from about 1557-9, and is the earliest measured map of London, shows the Eleanor cross situated about halfway between St Martin’s Lane and Cockspur Street – so, somewhat to the west of any future site of the future King. (The junction between Whitehall and the Strand/Cockspur Street axis was much wider than it is now).
It is also worth noting that distances have also been measured at different times from the London Stone (now in Cannon Street) and Hyde Park Corner (there’s a milestone to that effect about 100m from my house for example), although those seem to date mainly from the era of stagecoaches.
@Graham H: Shouldn’t distances really be measured from the centre point of the road numbering? That would place it at the Monument Junction (and not the Monument itself)….
@SHLR – the road numbering system is much more modern, of course, than any of the other “centroids” of London. I wouldn’t argue that any of them is “right” (any more than there is a right definition of London – whether for Oyster, or any other, purposes!).
I suspect if you asked the man on the Clapham omnibus, he’d probably point to Oxford Circus (if he was on an 88) or the Bank but not much is measured by reference to either.
@Graham H – out of interest, what’s your source for what’s on the Copperplate map ? My copy of the excellent “London – A History in Maps” says only three plates survive, and they’re all well to the east of Whitehall. Or is it something you remember from your youth ?
@SHLR
It is the Bank junction, not the Monument, which was the hub of the numbering system, although curiously only one of the single-digit road numbers actually started there. (The numbers were A10, A11, A3, A3211,A40, and A501. The A3 passed through the Monument junction. (The A2 and A4 branched off the A3, the A1 and A5 branched off the A40, and the A6 branched off the A1)
When most roads in the City were declassified in the 1990s, the A10 was diverted to meet the A3 at the Monument junction, but it is no more a hub than St Martins le Grand, where the A1 and A40 both terminate.
It’s not the Copperplate map but either the Agas woodcut or the Braun and Hogenberg engraved map, both of which are thought to derive from it (see ‘The A to Z of Elizabethan London’ – London Topographical Society – 1972)
Vince – correct (it was the Agas woodcut that I was consulting) but as you say, the work for it and the data i used was supplied from the Copperplate map.
The milestones on the A23 refer to distance from Westminster Bridge I think.
@Jim R – sorry not to have replied to your direct enquiry, but see my response to Vince above. The London Topographical Society has published an excellent series of A-Zs (eg Elizabethan, Restoration, Georgian London based on contemporary mapping. If you do not already own these, I thoroughly recommend acquiring them (if the LTS doesn’t still have them in stock, I’m sure the usual suspects can supply a secondhand copy). The Survey of London is also available online (at least the earlier volumes) and this, too, is useful – at least for the volumes for St James Piccadilly onwards; alas, the St Martins in the Fields volume predates these.
@timbeau – indeed – I was stopped recently whilst walking round Parliament Square by a carful of French visitors who inquired how best to drive to Portsmouth. Whether my halting French instructions on how to find and then follow the A3 helped them is difficult to say – natives tend to go through the Wandsworth oneway system on autopilot. The numbers of those who use the road numbers in central London must be very small unless you are a satnav.
@Timbeau, SHLR
The A4 branched off the A3 at Monument (as did the A100), so it does have some importance.
Gracechurch Street remains the A1213 it has been since the late 20s when The City got road numbering (the original 1922 plan didn’t have any classified roads inside the Square Mile), though that number isn’t signed – the A10 wasn’t diverted. None of those road numbers are signed in that area, so it’s pretty moot. The Ring of Steel didn’t renumber anything, merely downgraded – as seen by the (A3211) signed at the north end of Tower Bridge: because the A100 continues along Tower Hill and Byward Street to where it used to continue along Great Tower Street and Eastcheap to Monument.
I’ve just been able find an online copy of “The Lawyer’s fare-well to Charing Cross” a royalist broadsheet song of the 1650’s. Referring, of course to said Eleanor Cross & Zero point …..
And, played to the Tune of: Prince Rupert’s March
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Undone! undone! the lawyers cry,
They ramble up and down;
We know not the way to Westminster
Now Charing-Cross is down.
Chorus:
Now fare thee well, old Charing-Cross,
Then fare thee well, old stump;
It was a thing set up by a King,
And so pull’d down by the rump.
2. And when they came to the bottom of the Strand
They were all at a loss:
This is not the way to Westminster,
We must go by Charing-Cross.
Chorus:
3. The Parliament did vote it down
As a thing they thought most fitting,
For fear it should fall, and so kill ’em all
In the House as they were sitting.
Chorus:
4. Some letters about this Cross were found,
Or else it might been freed;
But I dare say, and safely swear,
It could neither write nor read.
Chorus:
5. The Whigs they do affirm and say
To Popery it was bent;
For what I know it might be so,
For to church it never went,
Chorus:
6. This cursed Rump-rebellious crew,
They were so damn’d hard-hearted;
They pass’d a vote that Charing-Cross
Should be taken down and carted:
Chorus:
7. Now, Whigs, I would advise you all,
‘Tis what I’d have you do;
For fear the King should come again,
Pray pull down Tyburn too.
Chorus:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
@Graham H – you couldn’t have known this, but the LTS’s Edwardian A to Z was already tentatively on my Christmas list. Your recommendation moves it from tentative to definite. Thanks.
@Si
The Ordnance Survey shows Gracechurch Street as the A10, and Byward Street as the A3211
https://osmaps.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/51.51101,-0.08681,18
Likewise, the A4 was diverted along Fetter Lane and New Fetter Lane to terminate on the A40 at Holborn Circus.
Older (prewar) maps show the A1 continuing past the east end of St Pauls Cathedral to the A4 (Cannon Street) .
@Timbeau
Whoops, yes you are right about the A4.
However the OS isn’t right about Gracechurch Street (trap numbering?). TfL, who are the Highways Authority for it (as it is a Red Route) consistently give it the A1213 number on the rare occasions they talk about the road and give it a number. cf the 22 references in this document.
@Jim R – for a real treat, get someone to track down and give you a copy of the 1898 Baedeker for London – not only are the maps excellent, but it is full of the unexpected, such as a complete list of the horsebus routes in central London as well as notices of such curious services as a female escort agency for ladies visiting the capital. German Positivism has many advantages.
@Greg T – thank you for the ditty about the Whigs – almost certainly the first ever reference to the Whigs in English (as opposed to Scottish) politics and wholly unknown to Wiki (boo) and the dictionary compilers.
Looking at Aleks’s map, I see that Denham is included in the Oyster area, which is well and good because you can catch a 331 bus using it. Oyster is not valid at the train station, however: I suspect there are other places where a similar situation exists.
@Moosealot
Dorking, Epsom, Staines, and Slough come to mind, for starters
(Hoping this is the appropriate thread to add this comment – as this seems to be the most recent thread relating to ticketing.)
Press reports today that Citymapper are to launch their own transport payment card.
http://www.cityam.com/273547/citymapper-launches-london-commuter-subscription-service
If the press reports are true, it’ll be cheaper than a weekly travelcard. One has to assume this is an initial loss leader – I can’t see how they’d fund this long term if it is always loss making?
I’m guessing their aim is to get customers onto their service so they can then push their own ride sharing services.
Re Island Dweller,
Could simple be a contactless payment card from one of the new fintech type payment services that can do more as regards capping than a standard weekly travelcard? TfL have been trying to push people to use.
The standard has a slightly longer version, it has this as the last paragraph:
TfL said the subsidising of the travelcard cost intended to attract users will be covered by Citymapper. A TfL spokesperson said: “Citymapper have now confirmed that we will be paid the existing fares as usual for all journeys on our services as part of their proposals for a subscription service bundling together a number of transport options.”
So don’t expect the cost to remain lower… Note that it also applies only to Zone 1 & 2….
The whole of the press release seems to have been placed on Medium https://medium.com/citymapper/citymapper-pass-17c56da5dfa0
Just read the press release. It seems the aspiration is that the card will also work in other cities. Now that would be useful (and I’ll believe it when it happens…)
I am trying to find the opening hours of tube station ticket offices to top up my partner’s Oyster balance to make a one week travelcard (our local shop said this can’t be done but my partner recently did this)
I called the helpline and it is now automated.
A search on their website gave me a press release with a link to a broken page. (I am a website developer and am happy to fix this if they have sacked their website team)
This is the online post I found, and the news is very disappointing!
My partner starts work early and only wishes to top up her Oyster balance to make a travelcard and we need a ticket office that is open.
Unfortunately, the super-wealthy are sacking people and replacing them with technology.
And we wonder why this ‘austerity’ is going on!!!
Disgraceful!
TFL, you are supposed to be there for us – DO NOT close our ticket offices please!
Ticket machines in tube stations will allow you to ‘add’ a travel card to an oyster, or you can do this in almost any newsagent.
You cannot, though, as far as I am aware, use the balance ‘already’ on an oyster card to ‘top-up’ to a travel card.
@Brockney
“I am trying to find the opening hours of tube station ticket offices ”
According to official sources, here is a complete list of all Underground ticket office opening hours.
Harlesden: Monday – Friday 07:30 – 09:30, 16:30 – 18:30
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations_destinations/HDN.aspx
https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/improvements-and-projects/bakerloo-district-line-ticketing
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2019/2018-quiz-the-answers/ (see Q5)
@BROCKNEY
You can also just use the website https://oyster.tfl.gov.uk/oyster/entry.do and pick “Top up or buy season ticket” or use the Tfl Oyster app on your mobile phone or iPad (pick “Season tickets .. Buy” then “Travelcards”).
You can send a download signal to your Android phone from the Play Store here https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.gov.tfl.oystercontactless&hl=en_GB or iPhone here https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/tfl-oyster-and-contactless/id1179420088?mt=8
However, if your partner has a contactless card, the system of “weekly capping” will ensure that they never pay more than a weekly travelcard for a week of travel. Just tap in an out as normal, and you get a refund each week if one is due.
The contactless system will charge your bank card 10p at the first tap in during the day, and then the capped daily fare at about 1am.
10p charge
To be completely pedantic, the contactless process puts a 10p hold (not a 10p charge) on your card. (I can see this hold on my American Express app). You’ll never see that 10p on any statement – the 10p is always reversed and the statement charge is a always single amount for the day.
The hold process is typically used to check that a card is active and has credit available.
The hold process is also used by car rental companies (for example), who usually put a large hold on your card (hundreds of pounds) then release that and charge the finalised amount when you return the car.
Most merchant users of the hold process are reserving a chunk of your credit limit – to ensure that when the final charge is agreed there will still be sufficient credit available on the card. The way tfl use the hold process is different from many other merchants, as they’re only putting a trivial hold on the card.
@ISLANDDWELLER
Fair point. I’ve use Monzo so I see the “10p” arrive the moment I touch in using Contactless (using Android Pay). The actual 10p does disappear, but I can still see the “Active Card Check” in the transaction history.
The weekly cap only works out cheaper than a travel card if you travel into zone 1. If you travel in, say, zones 3 and 4 only, then it’s cheaper to buy a travelcard for your oyster, rather than rely on the weekly cap.
A card payment consists of two phases (let’s stick with the two main card types here):
– Authorisation
– Financial
The first blocks the money, the second shifts the funds.
However, would that all was that simple… An auth can be one of many:
– Simple, as used for a normal purchase
– Card check
– Address check
– Pre-auth (for hotels, these last longer)
– Automated Fuel dispensers
Due to limitations, in the past, merchants and the acquirers behind them, often used a small amount as the transaction amount, because 0 wasn’t a valid option, basically the merchants get ahead of the payment schemes and this is how we’ve ended up with penny auths and £1 auths and such like…
Other flags in the mesage then indicate the actual function.
Financials are similarly complex…
I’ll stop there because I could continue on for hours and nobody deserves that!
@CHRISMITCH
” If you travel in, say, zones 3 and 4 only, then it’s cheaper to buy a travelcard for your oyster, rather than rely on the weekly cap.”
I’m sorry, I don’t see how. The weekly cap is ALWAYS the same as the 7 day Travelcard price for any combination of zones.
Please compare columns 4 and 7 here – http://content.tfl.gov.uk/adult-fares-2019.pdf
But, it can be cheaper to use a Contactless because if you don’t travel for some reason (sickness or an emergency) you don’t have to pay.
Of course, you could just pay for an Annual Travelcard if you travel more than 40 weeks a year then you will save with a Travelcard,
But it you buy a 7-day ticket each week, the capping system is always the same.
Of course, **Oyster** has no 7-day cap it’s only **Contactless** at the moment.
Next stage in the ticket office changes. Ticket machines no longer accepting cash. This is an extract of an email I received from tfl earlier today.
“From Sunday 27 October, the ticket machines at Canary Wharf Tube station will be cashless. You will only be able to use debit or credit cards to buy tickets or top up your Oyster card inside the station”
I’m not clear if only Canary Wharf station is changing or whether this is a network wide change. (It’s my local station, so I presume that’s why I got this email from tfl)
The tfl email does point out that the ticket machines at the nearby DLR stations will still take cash.
One comment on District Dave refers to a lack of suitable/nearby parking space for cash collection vehicles, so it may be a security problem (for both staff and cash).
@Littlejohn. Interesting thought, but Canary Wharf must have more CCTV and security guards per square mile than almost any other civilian location in the UK, so I would be surprised if security really is a concern.
IslandDweller,
But I suspect they don’t think like that. There is probably a mandated requirement to minimise the unprotected walking distance of the cash-carrier. There is quite a walk just to get outside the station.
Methinks this is a ‘toe in the water’ job. Canary Wharf in some ways is easy to justify and probably the station with its customer base most amenable to using contactless technology. I bet this is closely observed by both London Underground and various user groups including London Travelwatch.
I bet some LU officials are already thinking of the station to try next if this is successful.
It would be interesting to know just how much ticket revenue actually comes from cash sales. IIRC, it’s now only 2 or 3%.
@Quinlet :
Cash may be 3% of total revenue, but for those who use it, it is of course 100% of their spend.
How do visiting teenagers from outside London put money on an Oyster card – no credit card.
And we have visitors to the house from overseas whose credit cards do not get accepted in the UK. I give them one of my Oyster cards, and show them how to top up with their cash when it’s used up.
I’m sure there are other situations. I suspect also it is the start of phasing out Oyster, and only allowing contactless, cutting out the intermediate technology.
Mr Beckton. They’re all very valid observations at the macro level.
But the demographics of the CW Jubilee line station are quite unusual. It isn’t the nearest station to any housing (and the nearby new Wood Wharf apartments under construction will only be occupied by those with a fistful of plastic at their disposal), nor is it the nearest station for any hotel.
It gets to be an issue when /if cash-free gets rolled out more widely.
At a broad level, the difficulty with not allowing cash transactions is that it excludes a material proportion of the population, who are already the most vulnerable and socially excluded part of the population. It’s similar problem to requiring people to provide photo identity for certain activities and transactions – since the state does not routinely provide or require everyone to have photo identity, it is the excluded who don’t have it. Probably not much of a problem at Canary Wharf, but more widely it can be.
It isn’t nice for foreigners either. I’ve been on the other end of this in several foreign countries, eg, paying my bank a £3 transaction charge on top of a €1.70 parking charge.
I presume one of the major factors at Canary Wharf is that very few people start their journey there – it is usually the return leg of a journey, so anyone using cash would already have bought a return ticket out in the suburbs.
…not that I’m in favour of going cashless at all. I value the ability to pay in cash for small items
Can legal tender be refused?
Taz
Under “normal” circumstances, no …
But there is a long list, gorwing unfortunately, where it can – like offering money on a London bus will get you nowhere ….
Taz: – how do we offer coins and notes to a machine that has no slots, just a reader? For the time being, corner shops still accept cash for Oyster top up, thank goodness.
We have covered this endless times before.
Strictly speaking, legal tender is only relevant when either it applies to a debt or is referenced (or implied) in a contract.
A contract is an agreement with the intention of creating legal relations that is freely entered into by both parties. As a public transport operator is more-or-less obliged to allow people to travel and cannot choose, travel by public transport is not covered by the law of contract.
As stated no end of times, it is the Conditions of Carriage (a statutory instrument) that determine things like the duty to buy a ticket or equivalent. As far as I am aware, there is nothing in TfL’s conditions of carriage that state that the passenger has the right to pay by cash.
However, a couple of things do concern me. As far as I am aware there has been no consultation – such as there was when cash was withdrawn on buses and, subsequently, on trams. I also wonder if organisations such as London Travelwatch and the Assembly Transport committee were even informed of this.
Pedantic point for Mr Beckton. I recently stayed at the Doubletree Hotel on the opposite bank of the river. The recommended travel route into the city was to take the ferry (free with a hotel key card) and walk to Canary Wharf station. That must create, ooh, four people a week who need to buy a ticket at the station. Although, of course, you’re probably not staying in a Hilton hotel if you haven’t got a selection of credit cards…
Forming a contract (which is what the purchase of a ticket is) is not settlement of an existing debt, so the concept of legal tender is irrelevant. A party to the potential contract can insist on a particular kind of payment, whether it be cash (e.g a machine only accepting £1, not e.g 2x50p), plastic only, or potatos. If you can’t or won’t agree to those terms, you can walk away, and no contract exists or has ever done so. (Pay-on-exit car parks have to accept cash because you are settling a debt – as do restaurants, where you settle the bill at the end of the meal).
@Island Dweller. People visiting Canary Wharf on business from abroad may be unable or unwilling to use plastic, for example because of high foreign transaction charges bank (and -pace Chris Mitch – may not have a return ticket if their itinerary is complex or they arrived by some other means such as taxi). Recently, visitors to my office from Germany bought tickets at the Tube station – with cash – for their journey back to Heathrow. What would they have done if my office was at Canary Wharf instead of in the City?
timbeau,
But as repeatedly stated (and backed up by the courts) a ticket for a railway or bus journey is not a contract in the usual legal sense. It would be for a ticket for a ferry service for a operated by a commercial company. Even these have to be careful to make their conditions of service available before you buy your ticket since writing ‘issued subject to …’ on the back of the ticket is too late – the transaction has already taken place and a contract is formed. Railways and buses have absolutely no need to bother to publicise their conditions of service (only make them available for inspection on request) since they are not tied down by contract law.
Simple experiment. Next time your train is late, don’t bother with delay-repay. Try and take the Train Operating Company to court for consequential loss (or anything else) arguing your rights based on the law of contract.
Don’t try this at home, kids?
Timbeau – ‘ What would they have done if my office was at Canary Wharf instead of in the City?’ Walked across to Heron Quays?
I’ve just discovered a new (?) unpleasant wrinkle, here.
My local station still has a ticket office, which used to be open until 19.,30 or 20.00 – not any more – mornings & lunchtimes only – or so I am told.
Couple this with the total inability, if you are a “Freedom Pass” holder to purchase “boundary Zone 6”-to-$Destination tickets from any machine ( Again as far as I can see … ) and we have a problem.
There must be tens if not hundreds of thousands of Freedom Pass holders, who cannot now buy the cheapest ticket, as should be available – by law or by custom – I’m unsure which?
Anyone got an easy solution to this one?
Other then doing it backwards from the Destination station, which might be of dubious legality?
Oops
See also:
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/rail-ticket-offices-rmt-union-passengers-b2369140.html
@Greg T
Can’t you just buy an return e-ticket from Trainline to cover the boundary station (by name) ? It has the capacity for all railcards (you can even keep a railcard in the app).
It’s not like the list of boundary stations are unclear (Elsetree & Borehamwood, Hadley Wood, Crewes Hill, Turkey Street, Enfield Lock, Hadley Wood, Upminster, Rainham, Slade Green/Barnehurst/Crawford, St Mary Cray/Knockholt, Coulesdon South (or East Croyden on the “fast trains”), Upper Walingham, Ewell West and East, Subrbiton, Hampton, Feltham, West Drayton, West Ruislip, Harrow-on-the-Hill and Hatch End).
Given the rules, you train has to stop at one of these stations to count as a Boundary Station and so you must be familiar with which one it is?
@BB You have always been able to buy a ticket from one station to another. There are no ‘boundary stations’ on the outer zones.
You would have to buy a ticket from one zone to another or beyond EVEN IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A TICKET FOR THAT ZONE.
This is the double charging that has been going on for decades.
What is a boundary fare?
If you already hold a Travelcard for any zonal combination, then you are permitted to use any services within those Zones (subject to time restrictions of the Travelcard). If you are travelling beyond what is permitted by your Travelcard or Pass then you can purchase a “Boundary Zone” ticket to or from the station outside of London.
The boundary zone is the proverbial limit of validity – not a station.
@Aleks
I was always the other way around: I lived in Hove and had an annual Gold Card to get to my Zone 1 workplace (supplied by the employer scheme). So I could travel into Zone 1 and then go anywhere in Zone 1 to (what is now called) Zone 6. So, if I wanted to go from Brighton to (say) Potters Bar I only needed to buy a ticket that went Zone 6 boundary to Potters Bar, and with 33% off if it was off peak.
Now I live in the Olympic Village, so I have also recently been given one of those “pick up at station” tickets to go from Stratford to Southend Central and it actually said on the paper ticket “any Zone 2 to 6 station” or something similar, which was useful as I started out from Stratford International DLR and my ticket was inspected!
My understanding – and it may be wrong- is the current legal practice is that you can use these extension tickets only on trains that stop within Greater London, so I couldn’t mix a Zone 1-6 travelcard with a Midlands Railway train to Milton Keynes because the first stop outwards would be Watford Junction and ditto the express services out of King’s Cross (LNER, Grand Central, Lumo etc) because they don’t stop within the Greater London area. Whilst the same is the same for St Pancras and Euston (Avanti West Coast, West Midlands Trains) many Liverpool Street trains do sometimes stop (Tottenham Hale, Romford) making the situation complex.,
Brian Butterworth,
My understanding – and it may be wrong- is the current legal practice is that you can use these extension tickets only on trains that stop within Greater London, so I couldn’t mix a Zone 1-6 travelcard with a Midlands Railway train to Milton Keynes because the first stop outwards would be Watford Junction
Yes you can. If you are buying two tickets (‘split ticketing’) for a journey from A to C with tickets from A to B and B to C then the train must be scheduled to stop at B. However, if the journey is part covered by a zonal ticket, zonal pass (e.g. Freedom Pass) or point-to-point season ticket then there is no requirement for the train to stop at the boundary station.
I think the logical of this is that split ticketing is an attempt to ‘beat the system’ whereas extending a passenger’s legitimate right to travel with certain zones is something to be encouraged and the passenger should not in any way penalised for doing so.
To add to the murk, if I remember my ticket training correctly from 22 years ago, PoP is mostly right, in that a Boundary Zone ticket does not need to be used on a train stopping at the boundary BUT the operator must be part of the Travelcard scheme, so for instance travel on LNER would not be possible but GTR would to the same place.
Al,
If the operator is not part of the Travelcard scheme and the person is relying on a Travelcard then the journey from A to B (in my example) was never valid in the first place. Assuming there is a station at the boundary, whether the train stops at the boundary the becomes irrelevant.
It’s easy to confirm that PoP and Aleks have got it right – see paragraph 14.3 of the National Rail Conditions of Travel. No guesswork, surmising or historical memories necessary!
PoP
Way back in 2019 (above) you wrote “a ticket for a railway or bus journey is not a contract in the usual legal sense”.
But the National Rail Conditions of Travel https://assets.nationalrail.co.uk/e8xgegruud3g/3Y9UXuFziljwsGFCUAwKAA/0aa50a101febffda28c070aae2572570/National_Rail_Conditions_of_Travel.pdf repeatedly refer to the arrangement being a contract, e.g. “When you buy a Ticket to travel on scheduled train services on the National Rail Network you enter into a binding contract with each of the Train Companies whose trains your Ticket allows you to use” (p4), and they contain no reference to the word contract being used in anything other than the usual legal sense.
This seems to be a bit of a disconnect.
Just reading the terms and conditions it also specifically says that 14.3 DOES NOT always APPLY because 14.1 says “Some Tickets specifically exclude their use in conjunction with other Tickets. This will be made clear in the terms and conditions when buying such Tickets”.
It also says… “In order to ‘split’ a journey with two or more Tickets under Condition 14.2 the services you use must be scheduled to stop at a station to allow passengers to alight and/or board that service, as permitted by the terms & conditions of the Ticket held. There is no requirement for you to alight and re-board the same service. If a combination of Tickets is ‘split’ at a station but that station Call is defined as for “pick-up only” in the National Rail Timetable and in journey planners, then the Ticket held to that station is not valid; likewise, if that station call is defined as for “set-down only” in the National Rail Timetable and in journey planners, then the Ticket held from
that station is not valid.”.
From memory these “pick-up only” stations are Watford Junction (Avanti West Coast), Wakefield Westgate (LNER) and Stratford (Greater Anglia).
Update / additional information …
Both IAN VISITS ….
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/government-confirms-plans-to-close-english-railway-ticket-offices-64007/
and
Diamond Geezer
https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2023/07/closing-rail-ticket-offices.html
Have posts on this subject & are worth the reads.
Just because a document, or for that matter person, says, “This is a contract” does not in itself make it a contract. There are certain tests to check. As I recall from my days in a personnel department, there can be documents “purporting to be a contract”.
On LR has there not been a similar discussion about the wording at car parks, and the status of any alleged or assumed relationship between the parker and the operator?
Twopenny Tube,
Yes. Contracts must be freely entered into with an intention of creating legal relations. But consumers generally don’t read (or understand) the purported contracts. So there is a lot of consumer regulations to prevent consumers being bound by over-onerous purported contracts and a lot of rules about how they are to be interpreted and what is and is not enforceable if one party is a consumer.
The phrase (whether stated or not) ‘this does not affect your consumer rights’ is often relevant.
Thanks, 2d and PoP – such considerations do apply to all contracts, whether stated explicitly or not (and the NR CoT explicitly refer to consumers’ legal rights in several places).
But I can still see nothing that supports the suggestion that the contract entered into when buying a train ticket (however defined) is not a contract in the usual legal sense. Offer, acceptance and consideration are all there, and it’s unclear how there could be less of an intention to create legal relations than with any other purchase, so what is it specifically that makes a train-ticket purchase contract different from other such contracts?
Betterbee,
My argument is that it isn’t ‘freely entered into’ in a legal sense. I base my argument on a ‘contract’ for supplying electricity prior to privatisation of the electricity industry. The judge (never overruled on this issue) argued it was not a contract because the person had no choice but to accept the terms if he was to have an electricity supply. He could not go elsewhere.
In the same way I would argue that when you turn up at a station you have no choice but to agree as you (usually) can’t choose who takes you on your journey and it is presumed that you have a basic right to use the railways. So not really ‘freely entered into’ – more like coercion. That, I believe, is why you have byelaws and conditions of carriage because not everything is enforceable in a contract.
As an example of the practicalities, there was a case a few years ago when a first class traveller wanted a refund for the difference between first class and standard class because, for various reasons, it was not a first class experience in his opinion. The railway company did not agree with him but the courts did citing a reasonable expectation of the standard of service to be received. Contractually, the passenger did not have a leg to stand on.
I note the mentions re Ian Visits and Diamond Geezer blogs on the current ticket office proposals. Other than that little has been said re the current controversial plans to close numerous ticket offices and utilise roving staff within the station areas.
Even the customer focussed stations extolled by the RDG as an ideal replacement are quite lacking as some of us have found.
https://londonrail.uk/main-line-railway/ticket-office-closures-2/