Après Bob, Le Déluge
It would seem that the successors to Bob Crow at RMT are out to inflict more pain on Londoners, than Bob Crow ever did, with five days of strikes in the next few weeks, as reported here on the BBC.
But Londoners will in the main survive and get on with their business, just as they did when Adolf gave the city, quite a few years of much more dangerous strikes.
As someone, who uses the Underground and Overground a lot, I pass by ticket offices quite a bit. Many are crowded with long queues at the ticket machines. Only a few stations seem to have long queues at the actual ticket offices themselves.
So to cure the problems of the queues at the ticket machines, Transport for London will introduce more and better machines at stations.
The ability to be able to use a contactless bank card as a ticket as well as Oyster, which is already happening and is supposedly working well on buses, will also contribute to a reduction of those needing the ticket offices.
If the machines and contactless cards do cut all the queues, then we could have have the situation of fully-manned ticket offices, where staff see hardly any customers at all.
Surely, the RMT should be stopping the installation of more ticket machines and the using of contactless bank cards as tickets, if they wanted to stop the closure of ticket offices.
Where else will this worrying new militancy turn up?
An Ideal Train Ticket For Football
I went to Brighton to see Ipswich Town play in the town, for the princely sum of £7.95 return.
This was the cost of my Senior Off-Peak ticket from East Croydon to Haywards Heath.
I didn’t need to buy the ticket to East Croydon, as that station is in the Freedom Pass area and from Haywards Heath to Falmer for the AMEX Stadium is covered by the match ticket.
I could have done even better, if there had been a chance the match would have not been played, as Southern offer an interesting offer.
Southern’s Money Back Guarantee
But I’ve checked on this Money Back Guarantee and it looks good. For instance, if you book online and elect to pick up your tickets on departure at your outbound station and say the clouds open and you don’t fancy your awful cousin’s barbecue in the pouring rain, you just don’t pick them up and they get refunded.
Visitors To The UK And The Two Together Railcard
The Two Together Railcard has just been launched in the UK.
I’ve since found out, that it is available to any two people, who habitually travel together in the UK, even if they aren’t resident here.
So it would be an ideal way for say an American, German or Vietnamese couple to get a third off rail fares, provided they didn’t want to travel before 09:30.
The Bilbao Metro
The Bilboa Metro is only about twenty years old, so it still has a new feel about it.
Note the name of fosterito in tribute to Norman Foster, who designed a lot of the architecture. Read more about the design of the Metro here.
I can’t understand why I’ve never seen fosteritos on other Metro systems, as they work superbly, as covers for the up and down escalators. They also stand out from a distance and act as locators for the stations.
I liked it except for a couple of small points.
I like to surf down handrails with one hand for safety and this was difficult, as the hand rail supports tended to catch my hand. The DLR is the same in places.
I also had some trouble with buying the Barik card, which is their version of London’s Oyster. I needed cash, as the system didn’t seem to work with any of my cards.
All Metro, tram and bus systems, should be like London’s buses and accept any bank card with a touch ability.
This is one thing that will happen worldwide.
The biggest advantage is that to top up my Barik card, I was constantly using up small change and notes, as I explored the city. With a bank card as a ticket, all you need to do is make sure you’ve credit available.
One piece of trivia for a pub quiz, is that the Bilbao metro map, must be the only non-UK map, with an English town shown as a destination. Look at the map in the pictures and you’ll see a ship labelled Portsmouth.
London Underground Goes Bilingual
There is not much bilingual signage in London. So I was surprised to see this.
London Underground Goes Bilingual
I must check, if the machines have instructions in various languages.
The Closing Of Underground Ticket Offices
The unions will have a field year of disruption over the closure of all ticket offices on the Underground, as is reported here in the Standard.
But the Underground must move on, and another story in the paper is more important, which reports that London tourism will be worth £77billion by 2025. This is a rise of over £30billion from today’s figure.
Many of these tourists will require help in the Underground, so those staff displaced from the closed ticket offices, will be needed in the stations and on the platforms.
I think the unions have a choice here; create some of biggest strikes we’ve ever seen or negotiate proper conditions for staff working overnight and outside of the ticket offices.
The Lack Of A Standard In Buying Train Tickets
I regularly buy tickets from lots of train companies. Over the last few months, I’ve bought tickets from GreaterAnglia, East Coast, East Midland, Southern, First Great Western and Virgin to name just six of them.
Today, I bought a ticket on First Capital Connect and duly registered.
I didn’t have any serious problems, but I do have some observations.
Why is it, that I can’t have a global account, that works with all train companies? That way, I wouldn’t have to deal with several different logins and I could have access to all tickets I’ve bought and it would probably be a lot easier, to book a repeat journey. I would probably use one credit card for all tickets, so that the only thing, I would need to book, would be the security number on my card, after choosing the tickets.
I always pick up my tickets from Dalston Junction, as it is a shortish walk from my house. But some companies don’t have it on the list of their stations, where I can pick up the tickets. That is a bug to me!
In an ideal world, all of these web sites would have the same feel, even if they were to be individually branded.
I never use the all purpose sites like TheTrainLine, as when I did once, I just got a load of spam, that could probably be traced back to them. I always find that cutting out the agent is the best way to save money.
Buses In Edinburgh
Whilst in Edinburgh, I travelled several times on Edinburgh’s buses. They may be understandable to those, who live in the city, but they don’t have the bus maps everywhere, that Londoners and most tourists like in London. So if you’re not with a guide, it can be difficult to find the bus and the appropriate stop for where you want to go.
I was staying with a friend, just outside the city centre, and she can take buses from two companies to get home. So, although you can buy a 24-hour ticket for each company, you can’t buy one for all of the buses that use Edinburgh. And of course, I can’t use my English bus pass in Scotland. I have wondered how many English, who fancy a weekend away, don’t go to Scotland, as their bus passes are not valid. Surely, every UK bus pass, should be valid all over the UK, to encourage tourism.
But the fact that there is no 24-hour pass for the whole of Edinburgh, was a total surprise to me. Many cities in England and of course London, have systems to give 24-hour travel to everybody, who wants it. Surely, this problem will be solved, when every city in the world follows London and allows a bank or credit card to be used as a ticket. There’s a lot here on contactless ticketing with bank cards.
Talking of tickets, will you need a third 24-hour ticket, for the trams in Edinburgh?
Edinburgh has the silly single door buses, that don’t announce their stops, that still persist outside London. Was this why on my several trips on Edinburgh’s buses, I never saw a mother with a baby in a buggy or anybody carrying anything heavy?
What summed up the badly planned nature of Edinburgh’s buses, was this timetable on a stop.
How Not To Do Bus Information
Note how to text to find the next bus, you have to type in an eight-digit number and then use a full mobile number. In London, which appears to be a much bigger city than Edinburgh, all stops are covered by codes that are just five digits and you text the same short number of 87287 at every stop.
I also think that as you can get the buses of two companies from the stop I was using, you actually have to use a different system to get the times for the other company. London,which has several bus companies, merges all the routes and companies together.
Buying Tickets To Scotland
Next weekend, I’m going to Edinburgh and Glasgow and then down to Bolton to see Ipswich play.
All journeys were booked on-line in First Class and purchased using my Senior Railcard. It cost me £64.31 for the trip up using East Coast on Thursday and £57.45 for the split journey down using Virgin.
The journey down is probably cheaper, as it is effectively a typical Premium Economy journey in First Class on Saturday.
As I can now collect tickets from my local station at Dalston Junction, I was able to collect the tickets, whilst taking a constitutional walk to the pub in the evening.
Would people use the trains more, if it were easier to pick up tickets?
Does The RMT Care About Passengers?
I travel on trains a lot and I’ve never had anything but courtesy and fair treatment from railway staff in the UK. I’ve even had one or two, break the rules in my favour, when perhaps I’ve made a mistake. One actually said, that it was his company’s policy to put customers first, when the rule breaking was minor.
But today, there is a story on the BBC about the RMT protesting about the possible closure of the Underground ticket office at Whitechapel. Here’s the opening paragraph.
Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) are protesting at Whitechapel Tube station against the possible closure of ticket offices.
Now I’ve just returned from Palermo to London by train and I only used a ticket office once. And that was in Geneva, where I couldn’t find a machine to sell me a ticket for Paris!
i’ve only used a ticket office, once in the last three years on the Underground and that was to get a free ticket wallet.
If we’re honest, I think it is true to say that ticket offices are virtually redundant, but station staff definitely aren’t. Stand by the barrier or on the platform on any Underground station and you’ll be surprised at how many people ask questions or request help as they pass along.
Bob Crow is reported as saying this.
The threat to the ticket office at Whitechapel is a line in the sand as far as RMT is concerned and we will fight this plan tooth and nail.
I don’t think many of those on the overcrowded Dalston Omnibus on a day, when the RMT call a strike, will agree.
The RMT has also got into the stupid row about a possible third class of travel on trains. The story is reported here in the Daily Mail, who are very negative. This is in the article.
Bob Crow, left wing leader of the RMT transport union said: ‘Now we know, the door is open for the train operators to introduce third passenger class as and when it suits them.
Incidentally, I travel third class regularly on trains. It’s called Premium Economy and very good it is too, on Eurostar.
You could also argue, that First Class at the weekend, is much more of a Premium Economy class, than a true First, on many trains.
The Anonymous Widower 