LOROL Passenger Board

We were recently invited to the LOROL Passenger Board. While there were no agenda items for the East London Line, we were able to raise various points with them.

TVM Displays

LOROL have received a lot of complaints about the lime green colour scheme they chose for the Ticket Vending Machines outside the stations. As a result, they will begin down loading an improved colour scheme for the TVMs on Monday, which should make ticket buying easier. This is an interim change whist they continue to develop an optimum colour scheme and they would value any input to help them get the final solution right for their customers. Please provide feedback to us and we will forward it to them. The interim screens are shown below

Oyster Travelcards

LOROL has inherited the current ticketing system from Southern Railway. As a result, they have to operate two system; FasTIS on the core section (all stations north of Surrey Quays) and FAST on on the mainline section (all stations south of New Cross Gate). LOROL have just paid Shere the licensing fee to allow them to sell Oyster cards, weekly travelcards on Oyster and PAYG topup at the Ticket Offices. However, they will not be able to sell Monthly or Annual travelcards on Oyster unless you go to a station in the core section. This situation is most unsatisfactory.

Timetable

Peter Latham,(Head of Train Performance and Planning) from LOROL told us that the ELL service would reduce from 4tph on each route to 2tph after 2200. We raised the issue of evening trains with LOROL, especially our surprise that the ELL stops running before Southern service from London Bridge. At a meeting in 2009, we were lead to believe that the last TfL service would allow us to leave central London at about 0030. The current timetable shows that while the last Southern train will now leave London Bridge at 0036 instead of 0026 (Mon-Fri), the last train from Canada Water will be at 0017. LOROL pointed out that their services would be in addition to the 4tph that Southern currently run. They also stated that they would like to run later services, but would not do so until the Engineering and Maintenance strategy had bedded in. The earliest that they would expect a change was May 2011.

LOROL also announced that there would be 8 tph running to Highbury and Islington after May 2011. These would probably be the services from West Crotdon and Crystal Palace.

Station Upgrades

David Timmins spoke about the station upgrades. 'Phase Two' upgrades will be complete by 23 May at stations previously managed by Southern. This involves a deep clean, removal of grafitti and scratched paintwork and rebranding of the Station Name signs by temporary vinyl ones. Four stations had been signed off by RfL, with four still to be done (Forest Hill, New Cross Gate, Norwood Junction and xxx)

'Phase Three' will be started in July and hopefuly completed by December, although past experience has shown big overruns due to uncovering unexpected problems. 'Phase Three' aims to improve ambience and Systems.

Ambience improvements will improve signage, platform surfaces, seating and lighting. The new signs will be spaced every 30m on alternate sides of the train and should be more legible than the temporary signs. They will be large roundels, with the station name on the crossbar. Lighting levels will be 150 lux in 4 car area and ticket office, 100 lux elsewhere (similar to bar/restaurant lighting levels).

System Improvements will involve the installation of CCTV (with 90% coverage), Customer Information Screens on each platform, Summary screens in the Booking Hall and Help points and PA with induction loops. The PA System will also adjust its volume level based on ambient noise.