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London Overground: "nothing to do with us"

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yorkie

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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
 
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maniacmartin

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Regarding the specific example highlighted, I don't condone the passenger's decision to travel via zone 1 when there are local buses between the 2 stations, in addition to the late-running Rail Replacement Buses (which I have personally waited 33 minutes for), all of which would have been valid with his travelcard. In my opinion, London Underground were correct to force him to use another ticket to travel on the Jubilee Line, given that London Underground is not a TOC and not a direct party to the NRCoC.

However there is a systematic firmly-held belief by many rail staff at LOROL that London Overground is not part of National Rail or ATOC, and is instead only part of TfL, with shared ticketing with London Underground and the DLR. My own threads have highlighted this problem, and their refusal to cave in even when confronted with a copy of the NRCoC, so I'm not going to repeat myself here.

If staff members at other TOCs also believe that London Overground is not a member of ATOC/National Rail then that is very worrying indeed.

I believe that as a general rule, passengers should be able to use any reasonable alternative National Rail route instead of Rail Replacement Buses, regardless of the journey time difference, however this specific example is a bit more complex as the alternative route didn't consist of solely National Rail trains.

I have been warning people of this segregation between London Overground and other TOCs and how this will only get worse if LO take over more lines, but so far it has fallen on deaf ears. I don't think LOROL are competent enough to run their current ticketing operations as it is, without adding any more to them. However, London Overground ticket office staff who are former employees of other TOCs are generally much more knowledgeable in my experience, so if the existing staff were retained under TUPE arrangements, then some knowledge may remain in any new stations that they get their hands on.

Putting their new rolling stock to one side, from a ticketing perspective, London Overground is bad for passengers. One example is their keenness to withdraw point to point season tickets along their routes and insist everyone uses Travelcards, which cost more whilst giving extra validity on other lines and buses that many people don't want or need anyway.
 
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bicbasher

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Was there any indication that tickets were valid on London Buses, in particular Route P12 which operates between the two stations?

Incidentally, if you look at Southern's Improvement Works page on their website, there's some confusing information about validity on London Overground services, in particular when London Bridge is closed for Southern services.
 

IanD

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Was there any indication that tickets were valid on London Buses, in particular Route P12 which operates between the two stations?

He/she had a travelcard which is valid all on modes within the zones indicated and buses throughout zones 1-6.
 

Mojo

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As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter what association or group any other transport provider is associated with for regards to ticket validity during service disruption or engineering works. If there is service disruption or planned engineering works then one company will come to an arrangement with another [where relevant] for the conveyance of customers affected. There are plenty of examples of works, and service disruption on the Overground or Underground where customers can use their tickets on the Tocs, and vice versa.
 

CyrusWuff

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Ultimately, getting ticket acceptance during engineering work depends on the affected TOC requesting it.

So, for example, there were a couple of weekends during the West Coast Route Modernisation where coaches replaced trains between Euston and Rugby (IIRC), so journey planners were directing people to St Pancras to use MML services to Leicester/Derby/Sheffield for connections. As Virgin hadn't requested ticket acceptance, passengers had to buy an appropriate combination of tickets where the through ticket wasn't valid.
 
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