Petition against ticket office closures

[Chris M]

I've just seen a link on Annie Mole's blog to a petition on the Number 10 website against the London Underground ticket office closure plans.

petitions.number10.gov.uk/StaffOurStations/

London Underground plans to close or cut most of its ticket offices, and to reduce station staffing by over 1,000 staff. To provide customer service and safety, London Underground stations need more staff not fewer. Popular opposition stopped planned ticket office closures in 2008; now we need the same popular opposition to stop them again.

[happybunny]

Yes I would urge all on here to sign the petition, lets try and save our ticket offices !

[Deleted]

Sorry, I'm not going to sign it (yet)... there are plenty of places where you can buy your tickets. Machines aren't that hard to use and topping up your Oyster at a cornershop works as well.

If this was about leaving stations unstaffed I'd be against it, but I thought the plan was to still have staff but have them walking around the station instead?

[Chris M]

Having the machines and staff walking around is fine if one, both or the combination can fulfil all the functions that a ticket office can, including:
Issuing all types of ticket, including all pass and privilege tickets, travelcard extension tickets, etc
Advising on the best type of ticket
Advising on the ticket restrictions (e.g. when peak hours operate)
Resolving problems with tickets, including issuing replacements for damaged ones
Issuing new oyster cards, including setting young persons and similar discounts
Registering oyster cards
Replacing damaged oyster cards
Collecting excess fares
Resolving oyster issues
Printing oyster journey history
Refunding Oyster card deposits
Transfering PAYG balance between cards
Accept payment by all credit and debit cards (AIUI American Express cards don't work in the machines)
Accept payment by cash and give change

Some of these things can be done by the machines, some can be done by roving staff, a few can be done in newsagents (whose opening hours are not the same as stations, and aren't necessarily close to stations or easy to find). However many of them can only currently be done by staff in ticket offices, and I am not aware of any plans to install the infrastructure or other facilities to enable roving staff to do them. Nor do I imagine that doing so would be desirable or feasible. So in my opinion LU need to do one of three things
1. Retain staffed ticket offices to do them
2. Enable roving staff to do them
3. Eliminate the need for them to be done.

I don't see 2 or 3 as viable options.

[Deleted]

i use a ticket office maybe two or three times a year; there is really not that much that can't be done from a ticket machine... I know there are a bunch of things that still can't be done by a machine (see your list), but is it really worth having permanent staff at all stations doing that?
The London Underground is very expensive, and I personally would rather save a bit of money than have ticket offices at so many stations...

[londonboy]

Jan 20, 2010 19:24:25 GMT @sweek said:

i use a ticket office maybe two or three times a year; there is really not that much that can't be done from a ticket machine... I know there are a bunch of things that still can't be done by a machine (see your list), but is it really worth having permanent staff at all stations doing that?
The London Underground is very expensive, and I personally would rather save a bit of money than have ticket offices at so many stations...

Sweek
How do you personally expect to save money?
Do you think that closing the ticket offices will result in cheaper fares?

[Deleted]

Jan 20, 2010 20:21:30 GMT londonboy said:

Jan 20, 2010 19:24:25 GMT @sweek said:

i use a ticket office maybe two or three times a year; there is really not that much that can't be done from a ticket machine... I know there are a bunch of things that still can't be done by a machine (see your list), but is it really worth having permanent staff at all stations doing that?
The London Underground is very expensive, and I personally would rather save a bit of money than have ticket offices at so many stations...

Sweek
How do you personally expect to save money?
Do you think that closing the ticket offices will result in cheaper fares?

Well a 1,000 people times 25k or so would be a 25 million/year saving. I'm not expecting an actual cut in fares, but if they wouldn't go up for a couple of years that'd be quite a good thing! And that's not counting national insurance and any other costs that we pay for per LU employee

Or in other words: it would have paid for the original DLR system from Tower Gateway and Stratford to Island Gardens in 3 years! (Cost £77 million)

[Chris M]

I thought that all the people who work in tickets offices that will be closed were to become additional mobile staff at the station. If that is the case, then there will not be any net reduction in the employment costs.
If those people who currently work in ticket offices are not trained in all the tasks they would need to undertake as a mobile person (I have no idea) then there will be a short term net cost brought about by the extra training requirements of these staff.
There will be a reduction in the costs of maintaining the ticket offices, but the building will still need to be maintained, and some of the infrastructure currently in a ticket office will still be needed and thus still need to be maintained. It will become more critical that machines are maintained in full working order (and indeed there may need to be more of them) which could lead to more being spent on that maintenance. There will of course be a net reduction in cost, otherwise LU wouldn't be considering doing it, but I don't see it as being significant.

I don't know the ins and outs of course, and even if I did I'm not an accountant, but I don't see how there will be the very significant savings you talk about unless there is a very significant reduction in staff numbers. I may be mistaken, but I am under the impression that LU have been saying there will not be any significant reduction in staff numbers.

[Deleted]

Well I'm at a loss here then. The petition does say they would reduce station staffing by 1,000, which is what I was basing this on... If they would be trained to become mobile staff at the station, wouldn't they still be station staff?

I think we need a bit more information to judge here...

[21146]

If the staff were redeployed on platforms there would be no saving of money so that's not going to happen, even if LU give the impression it is.

This move will be "sold" on that premise however, so that the RMT and TSSA will appear to be against customer "reassurance" and "security", and what sane person could not be in favour of these things?

If you go to a suburban station now off-peak, the ticket office will often have a board in the window stating that it's closed, the collector's box is empty, and the gateline unstaffed or even open. Indeed there is no obvious staff presence. Sometimes you can see staff in the booking office, but a hand-written notice will state that they're not allowed to sell tickets at this time.

What sort of "world class customer service" is this? Paying people to sit and do nothing, making them turn window receipts away, or advising people to top-up at newsagants etc (i.e. ultimately putting themselves out of a job).

There was a huge campaign to encourage the take-up of Oyster Cards which was another staff-cutting measure (no need to process cash or change ticket rolls). Now that this has been successful, there is a minimum top-up fee at windows to "avoid queues". Why was there no worry about queues when the majority of transactions were in cash paid to booking clerks?

It seems ticket selling staff can't win either way. If passengers have to queue at a busy window, 'mystery shopper' surveys will mark the station down; if there's no queue there, the window is on the cards to be slated for closure!

[21146]

Jan 21, 2010 11:51:17 GMT @sweek said:

Jan 20, 2010 20:21:30 GMT londonboy said:

Sweek
How do you personally expect to save money?
Do you think that closing the ticket offices will result in cheaper fares?

Well a 1,000 people times 25k or so would be a 25 million/year saving. I'm not expecting an actual cut in fares, but if they wouldn't go up for a couple of years that'd be quite a good thing! And that's not counting national insurance and any other costs that we pay for per LU employee

Or in other words: it would have paid for the original DLR system from Tower Gateway and Stratford to Island Gardens in 3 years! (Cost £77 million)

No it wouldn't, because booking clerks (as they were then) were not earning £25,000 when the DLR was built in the late-1980s