A cut in safety too

Sep 2 2010 Buckinghamshire Examiner

IT WILL be interesting to see the reaction to Transport for London's plans to cut the opening hours at Chesham Tube station's ticket office. An increasing number of people are using Oyster cards, so the need for tickets is falling - Chesham's office is selling only 11.3 tickets per hour.

It seems silly to keep the ticket office open when very few people are using it. However, passengers need to feel safe when they are using the service, and to know they have a point of contact should they need to make an enquiry or require help with their journey.

The ticket office is currently open for only four-and-a-half hours a day. It is difficult to condemn the decision to reduce this further - from a purely business point of view it makes sense - but it would be a shame to see the station without any staff for such long periods of each day.

Chesham Tube station needs to have staff there as much as possible to ensure safety and to help passengers.

If the cuts result in this not being the case, then the station could become a very undesirable place for commuters to use.