Why is this important?
Our ticket offices provide an incredible valuable service to residents and to the many thousands of people who interchange between tube and other rail services every day. The helpful staff sell tickets for any rail journey in the UK. They provide an enquiry and Oyster top up service, to fill the gap left by the closure by Boris Johnson of our tube station ticket office. They provide help for the many visitors from abroad who travel through West Hampstead. Members of the local amenity group, West Hampstead Amenity & Transport, have told us that, if they could not easily buy mainline tickets, they would go by car instead.
When our Tube ticket closed, the busy tube station at West Hampstead was - and still is - frequently left unstaffed with the barriers open. It seems that this was caused by former ticket office staff leaving and not being replaced. This in turn encourages crime and anti-social behaviour by allowing anyone to enter the system without a ticket. The same thing could happen on the Overground, which is one of the most successful rail projects anywhere in the country.
TfL's website states that this is a “Modernisation of Customer Service”, whereas in fact no improvements are specified in the documents that they have supplied, and the move will worsen the service for passengers who need help and/or those who need to use a ticket office. The proposals appear to have been based on inaccurate figures for the number of tickets sold and they fail to reflect the value of having a national rail enquiry office in local communities.
If this methodology were used on the whole national railway system, there would be hardly any railway ticket offices left across the whole country, and whole swathes of the UK would be without a retail facility for purchasing tickets.
Finally, if the ticket office at West Hampstead is closed we've been told that the ticket office in the new West Hampstead Overground station will be built! The station is under construction at the moment, and the design of the station will be changed to exclude a ticket office from the building project.
Therefore, we must fight the plans.
How it will be delivered
It will be delivered to the Deputy Mayor for Transport in London, Transport for London, London TravelWatch and Arriva Rail London
