A few days ago a passenger held a Zone 2-3 paper Travelcard and needed to travel from Queens Road Peckham to Canada Water. He discovered that a replacement bus service was running, he had just missed a bus, and it was a while until the next one (with no guarantee of when it would arrive or whether he'd be able to board it, or whether it would get stuck in traffic).
Another forum member has informed me that the wait for buses can be as long as 33 minutes, and the journey time will be considerably longer than the train would have taken.
Knowing that his journey could take a considerable time by replacement bus, he decided to take a much quicker route via London Bridge, as this is two trains of about 6 minutes each.
So he decided to use an alternative route. Arriving at London Bridge, the Southern staff would not allow him out of the barrier, saying "London Overground is no longer part of National Rail, so we have no obligation to carry their passengers". However he was able to exit from the Southeastern platforms.
He then proceeded to the London Underground gateline, and was told "London Overground is National Rail and nothing to do with us", and had to use Oyster PAYG to complete his journey.
The passenger accepts that he probably wasn't entitled to take the much quicker route, and isn't in a dispute. But it does raise some interesting questions such as:-
* Where a straightforward, alternative route exists using other operators, how infrequent & slow does the bus service have to be, before passengers should be allowed to use those alternative routes? (in this case, the journey time by replacement bus may be up to 4 times as long as the alternative route via London Bridge)
* Are London Overground effectively being disowned by other TOCs as 'nothing to do with us' while simultaneously not being considered part of the TfL family by LU, who also consider them to be 'nothing to do with us' ?
* Now that TfL will get control over more lines, does that mean that other rail operators may also extend their "nothing to do with us" view to those lines too? Could that have negative repercussions for passengers?
Edit: Sorry, I meant to say Queens Road Peckham
Another forum member has informed me that the wait for buses can be as long as 33 minutes, and the journey time will be considerably longer than the train would have taken.
Knowing that his journey could take a considerable time by replacement bus, he decided to take a much quicker route via London Bridge, as this is two trains of about 6 minutes each.
So he decided to use an alternative route. Arriving at London Bridge, the Southern staff would not allow him out of the barrier, saying "London Overground is no longer part of National Rail, so we have no obligation to carry their passengers". However he was able to exit from the Southeastern platforms.
He then proceeded to the London Underground gateline, and was told "London Overground is National Rail and nothing to do with us", and had to use Oyster PAYG to complete his journey.
The passenger accepts that he probably wasn't entitled to take the much quicker route, and isn't in a dispute. But it does raise some interesting questions such as:-
* Where a straightforward, alternative route exists using other operators, how infrequent & slow does the bus service have to be, before passengers should be allowed to use those alternative routes? (in this case, the journey time by replacement bus may be up to 4 times as long as the alternative route via London Bridge)
* Are London Overground effectively being disowned by other TOCs as 'nothing to do with us' while simultaneously not being considered part of the TfL family by LU, who also consider them to be 'nothing to do with us' ?
* Now that TfL will get control over more lines, does that mean that other rail operators may also extend their "nothing to do with us" view to those lines too? Could that have negative repercussions for passengers?
Edit: Sorry, I meant to say Queens Road Peckham
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