You didn't want to buy a ticket from the ticket office, did you? Sorry, but by the end of the year that won't be possible at one-sixth of the stations on the London Underground network. TfL is bringing down the shutters, permanently, at another 40 lesser-used tube stations, to match the five ticket offices they shut down last year. You can blame Oyster cards for these latest closures. Now that most of us swipe and swish our way around the tube, there's no longer any need for people to sit behind glass screens waiting for us to ignore them.
There'll still be TfL staff at these 45 stations, of course, but they won't be able to sell you a ticket. They can direct you towards a ticket machine, or point the way to a newsagents down the road where they have an Oyster card reader, but they can't physically give you a piece of cardboard in exchange for money. These displaced staff will probably end up guiding mums with pushchairs through the sidegate instead. Or sitting in a back room watching 75 CCTV cameras. Or getting sacked. Such is the price of automated advancement.
Ticket offices to close by the end of 2007(or already closed) Bakerloo: Regent's Park Central: West Ruislip, Ruislip Gardens, South Ruislip, Perivale, West Acton; Barkingside, Fairlop, (Grange Hill), (Chigwell), (Roding Valley), Buckhurst Hill, Debden, (Theydon Bois) Circle: Temple, Mansion House, Cannon Street District: Chiswick Park, Ravenscourt Park, Wimbledon Park, East Putney; Upney, Becontree, Hornchurch, (Upminster Bridge) Hammersmith & City: Goldhawk Road, Latimer Road, Royal Oak Jubilee: Canons Park Metropolitan: Chesham, Chorleywood, Croxley, Moor Park, Northwood Hills, North Harrow, West Harrow, Ruislip, Ickenham Northern: Totteridge & Whetstone, West Finchley, Mill Hill East Piccadilly: Sudbury Hill, Park Royal, North Ealing, Boston Manor
Look at some of those stations whose ticket offices are permanently closing. The list includes 10% of the Circle line (including a central London rail terminus), two-thirds of Ruislip and most of the eastern end of the Central line. Then there's Regent's Park, currently closed for redevelopment, but which will be reopening in the summer with its ticket office designed out of existence. I'm particularly sorry to see Croxley station go, because I bought scores of tickets there as a child. And that's not the end of the closure list. Some stations with more than one ticket office, such as Seven Sisters and Oxford Circus, will be losing one of them. They're even closing the eastern ticket office at Canary Wharf - the gleaming new ticket office beneath the Canada Square entrance, opened a mere three years ago - which now seems like a ghastly waste of money. And then there's weekends...
Ticket offices to close at weekends(or on Sundays) Central: Sudbury Town; Wanstead, Hainault Circle: (Baker Street), (Great Portland Street), (Euston Square), (Barbican) District: Bow Road, Bromley By Bow, (Dagenham Heathway), Dagenham East, Elm Park Hammersmith & City: (Shepherds Bush), Westbourne Park Metropolitan: Chalfont & Latimer, (Rickmansworth), (Watford), (Northwood), (Pinner), (Northwick Park), (Eastcote), (Ruislip Manor), (Hillingdon) Northern: Mornington Crescent, Goodge Street Piccadilly: South Harrow, (Alperton)
More than a quarter of London's tube stations will be ticket-office-free on Sundays by the end of the year. There won't be a single ticket window open between Harrow on the Hill and Amersham on the Metropolitan line, or between Barking and Upminster on the District. These are all ticket offices which no tourist would dream of using, of course, frequented by limited numbers of everyday Londoners with online-purchased Oysters. Should anyone else hope to visit, I just hope that a local newsagent is open instead.
And there's more. A further list of stations will also see their ticket offices closed on weekday afternoons when demand is lighter. Take my local tube station, for example, which serves more than 3½ million passengers a year. The ticket office at Bow Road will soon be closing between 10am and 4pm, in addition to early mornings, and evenings, and all of Saturday, and all of Sunday. Spot the difference...
Sorry, this ticket office is closed
