Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Harringay Station: Change to Ticket Office hours. Information from the LCSP
Dear All
First Capital Connect, which runs the train service through Harringay Station, has announced plans to cut ticket office opening hours as follows:
current M-Fri 06.20 -14.15
Sat 07.20 - 15.15
proposed M-Fri 06.20 -10.30
Sat closed
This is a serious deterioration in the service provided and could easily lead to a complete closure in the (inevitable?) next round of cuts. Similar reduced hours are proposed for Hornsey and Alexandra Palace.
As you know, the low level and secluded nature of the station platforms at all of the above locations make them potentially dangerous for passengers and there have been a number of recent violent incidents.
Hours should if anything be extended not reduced. The existing ticket machines are unreliable and will also discourage off peak travel, giving the company an excuse to reduce services.
I shall object on behalf of the LCSP, but it would be helpful to have as many individual objections as well. You can register your objections to any proposed reduction of opening hours and call for enhanced security measures by contacting First Capital Connect by 3 FEBRUARY.
email: customer.relations.fcc@firstgroup.com
Post:
Freepost RRBR-REEJ-KTKY
First Capital Connect
Customer Relations Dept
PO Box 443
Plymouth PL4 6WP
Best wishes
Ian
Chair LCSP
Discussion and further links here
The unions are also fighting this tooth and nail
First Capital Connect, which runs the train service through Harringay Station, has announced plans to cut ticket office opening hours as follows:
current M-Fri 06.20 -14.15
Sat 07.20 - 15.15
proposed M-Fri 06.20 -10.30
Sat closed
This is a serious deterioration in the service provided and could easily lead to a complete closure in the (inevitable?) next round of cuts. Similar reduced hours are proposed for Hornsey and Alexandra Palace.
As you know, the low level and secluded nature of the station platforms at all of the above locations make them potentially dangerous for passengers and there have been a number of recent violent incidents.
Hours should if anything be extended not reduced. The existing ticket machines are unreliable and will also discourage off peak travel, giving the company an excuse to reduce services.
I shall object on behalf of the LCSP, but it would be helpful to have as many individual objections as well. You can register your objections to any proposed reduction of opening hours and call for enhanced security measures by contacting First Capital Connect by 3 FEBRUARY.
email: customer.relations.fcc@firstgroup.com
Post:
Freepost RRBR-REEJ-KTKY
First Capital Connect
Customer Relations Dept
PO Box 443
Plymouth PL4 6WP
Best wishes
Ian
Chair LCSP
Discussion and further links here
The unions are also fighting this tooth and nail
Tags for Forum Posts: Harringay station, rail, ticket office
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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This was my contribution :
Passenger Focus,
FREEPOST (RRRE-ETTC-LEET),
PO BOX 4257,
Manchester,
M60 3AR
24 January 2009
Dear Sir/madam
Proposed cuts to services in Haringey
I would like to register my opposition to the slashing of opening hours to railway stations offices in the London Borough of Haringey. I oppose all the proposed reductions in opening hours and particularly my local station, Harringay.
I note that you are holding a consultation on these proposed cuts until 2nd February and that comments should be addressed to "Passenger Focus". Clearly your gaze on passenger services has gone out of focus: can I suggest that ticket offices are an essential part of maintaining a railway system?
I note that the former abuse of the English language, whereby "passengers" on the railways became "customers" has now been reversed for purposes of this passenger- and customer-unfriendly proposal.
Salami slices from services are a well-observed phenomenon by institutions where the object is total closure and the short-term tactic is to run-down a facility to the point where the whole facility is deemed uneconomic. This happened with the nearby Stroud Green Library and the community saw off that proposal, by the local council, also.
The proposals go precisely in the wrong direction.
Having a real human is a reassurance to the public and not necessarily only the travelling public. A manned ticket office can and normally does perform a lot of tasks besides solely selling tickets, although that is, wrongly, probably your only concern. The most costs could be saved by closing most ticket offices - and even having the trains miss out all the uneconomic stations - but that wouldn't be much of a service to the public, would it?
Harringay station
I would oppose the severe cuts anyway, but there are particularly reasons why this is undesirable at Harringay Railway Station. Is it not the case that passenger numbers using this station have more than doubled between 2005/6 and 2006/7 and with the rising costs of private transport, this trend may continue?
NR 2005/6 usage 0.318 million
NR 2006/7 usage 0.775 million
As recently as last week I needed to travel to Heathrow airport on the Piccadilly Line and the first leg of my journey was Harringay Station to Finsbury Park.
The ticket office was, typically, closed. I went to the southbound platform, to the ticket machine, ready and able to pay the high fare for the one mile and one stop journey. The machine reported that it was out of tickets and I should go to the ticket office. This is not the first time this has happened. How often does this happen overall, I wonder?
The service is functioning at a bare minimum. The proposed "cost" savings are wrong-headed: the whole railway is about an overall service to the public and if subsidies are required in some places, that should not be seen a bad thing but as a good and necessary thing.
Change direction
Can I suggest that you take the opportunity to forget about these cuts and seriously consider (a) extending the ticket office opening hours and (b) improving the appearance of Harringay Station.
Oystercard
Finally, can I please ask for an explanation as to why the Oystercard readers are not working? Two such machines appear to have been installed on at least the south-bound platform several weeks ago. Last week they still had some sort of cover over them. I asked the real human when they were likely to be working and he said September. This is ridiculous. I did not like the answer, but I was happy that he was there to give it. September is ludicrous. Please can you get your act together!
Yours faithfully
C D Carter
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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And how does all this square with an item I flagged up in March last year when it was announced that "Finsbury Park and Harringay are candidates for the National Station Improvement Programme, which seeks to improve station ambience."
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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London TravelWatch today objected to the First Capital Connect’s (FCC) proposals to close or reduce opening hours at its ticket offices.
At its public meeting this morning, the board agreed that the watchdog should write to FCC formally setting out its objections. At the board meeting, London TravelWatch also raised concerns about queuing times, the reliability of ticket machines and the ease of obtaining value or discounted tickets at ticket machines.
More on the Travelwatch website and a response from Lynne Featherstone here
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Permalink Reply by Guy Bentham on
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Liz mentions London Travelwatch's concerns about the 'ease' of obtaining value or discounted tickets at ticket machines. In fact it is impossible rather than difficult.
In the ongoing campaign perhaps someone might be able to make use of my experience at Harringay in May. I went with five visitors to Harringay Station to buy single tickets to King's Cross. Because the ticket office was closed I had to use the ticket machine. It was able to sell me five tickets in a single transaction but unable to offer a Groupsave ticket, which gives a discount when four or more travel together. I wrote to FCC to complain and claim the difference and today they sent me a rail voucher for £7.00, which is the extra I had to pay because I couldn't get the Groupsave ticket I wanted.
If FCC succeeds in reducing the ticket office opening hours further they will make more of their customers pay extra, and/or spend more time refunding those passengers who they have overcharged, and who can be bothered to complain about it.
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From this Lib Dem cllr blog I have picked up the following info:
"First Capital Connect had proposed to cut the ticket office weekday opening hours by almost 4 hours so it would close at 10.30am – but now it will only bve reduced by 1 hour 30 mins to close at 12.45pm. Unfortunately, the long term plan remains to stop the ticket office opening at all on a Saturday – but TravelWatch have insisted on an 8 week trial period to see if the ticket machines cope with the demand.
Similar changes have been made to the proposed office hour cuts at Hornsey Station. Full details of the revised proposals are here."
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