The Tube can be a risky place

Published: 1 April, 2010

• LIBERAL Democrat parliamentary candidate Ed Fordham is not alone in claiming that the Tube’s planned, hours-long, ticket office closures will have “serious issues for safety” (Shutting up for a siesta? Shock services cut at Tube ticket offices, March 25).
One trade union leader has called it a possible “muggers’ paradise”.
What lies behind this, is Transport for London wanting to cut 800 jobs on the system.
They cite as justification the “success” of Oyster cards.
Passengers (or “customers” in TfL-speak) have been forced on to Oyster because of price differentials with traditional paper tickets.
Oyster is the automation of ticketing, replacing people with computerised machines.
On the Underground this is dangerous.
A few years ago one of the escalators at Kentish Town station collapsed.
It was a miracle that no one was injured or killed.
Trains can get stuck in tunnels with passengers needing to be led along the track to the nearest station.
The Tube can be a risky place. The system needs humans not 2,000 more CCTV cameras in their place.
There are also privacy and surveillance issues. Oyster is the privatisation of ticketing. It was set up under something called the Prestige Project, with a number of private companies.
Journeys are recorded in detail and stored for at least two months. This is even the case with the over-60s Freedom Pass, which is based on Oyster technology.
They want people to register their cards so that personal details are linked up with journeys made.
Individual travel information can also be passed over to the police.
This was only admitted following a Freedom of Information request in 2007.
Transport – like town halls, the NHS and sundry government departments – is no longer considered a public service for a wider good, but is now viewed as just another “business” to be managed according to a cost-paring, bean-counting ethos.
Cutting staff on the Underground is not an “efficiency” measure, it is folly.
ERIC KRIEGER
Haverstock Road, NW5