BR Station Hours to be slashed.

graeme

Hornsey Journal
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/nudplt">story</a>
15 hours less manned per week.

I dread to think how bad it would be unless Ms Featherstone had fought this(?) . Hours of opening getting chopped. Not that the guy in there has ever been much use at announcing late runnings or cancellations.

The penalty fare bods will have a field day - you ever tried queing at the ticket maching at Hgy on a Saturday? You need to be there about 10 mins before departure to work the bleeding thing.

As long as we can all use the "I'm Ken Livingstone" excuse...

<a href="http://tinyurl.com/n8dw6r">kendo fare dodge</a>

staplejack

Harringay now to be closed all day on Saturday. Great. I had a few knockabout emails with both First Capital Connect and London Travel Watch when they first proposed this, the best reply from which was as follows:

"I appreciate your further comments and would like this opportunity to assure you that we have no plans to reduce the service that is offered by First Capital Connect, however we are proposing to do it differently. "

Service is clearly not equal to opening hours in their eyes.

andy

That's awesome. Where "differently" might mean "reduced", unless of course it didn't.

phantom_user

They really just need to hurry up and unsheath those Oyster readers. How hard can it be?

Liz

The Oyster readers are apparently due to be working by September: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_card_(pay_as_you_go)_on_National_Rail> As far as I can tell from the TfL site, they are still saying '2009' for the overall National Rail Oyster extension.

graeme

@Liz, that only shows that Oyster readers will be at stations from Finsbury Park --> Moorgate/Kings X

Can't see any mention of for stations further out. Was sure I'd read somewhere Oyster expansion had been bumped til 2010.

Liz

Finsbury Park to Moorgate/King's Cross stations are already done, and I think the table on the Wikipedia page says the rest of the First Capital Connect stations are due in 2009. There's remarkably little on this on the web though, so I can understand your scepticism!

tosscat

Quick, unsheath the oyster!

phantom_user

The Wikipedia entry for Harringay Station says 2010. The source they cite is an article FROM THE FUTURE <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harringay_railway_station#cite_note-10>; That'll do for me.

staplejack

More news from FCC, for whom one of the justifications of closing Harringay station on Saturdays was that 'some stations will benefit from longer opening hours'.

I asked for a list of these stations, and apparently the extended service basically means (just one example):

Arlesey: 0645 - 1210 from what was 0650 - 1200 Monday to Friday,
0745 - 1310 from 0650 - 1200 Saturday. {{by my reckoning, 15 mins extra during the week, 5 more on a Saturday}}

"Genius" way of extracting more from your labour force as the staff will already be onsite at these times anyway and they can therefore claim extension to hours, whilst closing a couple of offices on Saturdays entirely elsewhere.

In compensation, for 8 weeks only, FCC have commited to ensuring staff are on hand to 'help customers use the ticket machines' . Presumably after 8 weeks the machines will have been vandalised anway so we won't need any help.

staplejack

<a href="http://www.firstcrapitalconnect.co.uk/">ahem.</a>

lynnefeatherstone

Well - it's better than it could have been - but it's still unacceptable. I continue to push on this one. It's not just the announcements etc - but they keep telling us they want us to use public transport - but for that - we have to feel safe. A dark, empty, ummanned station is not going to create that kind of environment.

staplejack

To be fair, Harringay (at least) has always been unmanned after dark. My issues with closing the office on Saturdays are:

- renewing monthly & annual season tickets. The ticket guy at the moment will always ask you to come back on a Saturday to do so as it's much quieter and avoids holding panicky commuters up

- buying tickets when you already have a season ticket, eg if I want to go to Brighton for the day then I can get a ticket to cover the excess outside my season ticket (and save substantially on a full price, cross-London ticket). These are not available via machines or indeed in advance online.

tosscat

Raphael is very friendly.

Philistine'sMonster

"A dark, empty, ummanned station is not going to create that kind of environment." I read that as dark, empty Imam-ed station... The mind boggles. <http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgfpzttx_42gtrwxdgp>; The mind further boggles as to why, despite following the instructions, I can NEVER get an image to embed. Sigh.

tosscat

Perhaps your belly is pressing down on the space bar.

staplejack

Raphael is possibly the most upbeat railway worker I've ever met. And now he gets his Saturday's back instead of opening up the ticket office.

My concerns are entirely selfish, unless the change in opening hours means he gets shafted into working split shifts in multiple different offices to make up the full complement of hours elsewhere...