On Jan 28, 2:51*pm, martin wrote:

on BBC London News this lunchtime:
"Transport for London (TfL) has been called "stingy" and "Scrooge-
like" for imposing a £1 charge on rail passengers using a short-cut
through a station."

Full story at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...on/8484960.stm

What's the real deal here? Is this just a charge to enter one station
and exit another, or if I got the Jubilee to Southwark and exited
through an exit at Waterloo East, would I be charged an extra quid?
(I've never used Waterloo East, and think I've only been to Southwark
once, so I'm not clear on the layout of the station or this
'expensive' corridor.)

To be clear, the story appears to specifically relate to a £1 *paper*
"platform ticket" which is required if one wants to use Southwark tube
station as a shortcut between Waterloo East and the main entrance of
Southwark tube station on the corner of The Cut and Blackfriars Road -
what's more, the story says that "Oyster and travelcard users are not
charged" - whether that definitely includes Oyster PAYG users is not
100% clear.

To understand this, you need to have some knowledge of the geography
here. The Waterloo East platforms are accessed via a high walkway from
Waterloo mainline station (with an additional entrance to this walkway
up several sets of stairs from Sandell Street). This leads one to an
overbridge on the western side of the platforms. The station is not
gated (at least it wasn't v recently).

However, there is also an entrance to Southwark tube station on the
eastern ends of the platform. This leads down to the undercroft of the
viaduct, which leads on to a hallway where there is a set of gates
that gains one access to the tube station, which one gets to by then
descending some escalators. This hallway is actually at street level,
but there's *no* exit to the street at all - it sits beside and a bit
under the southside of the viaduct, between Greet Street and Hatfields
(another street). The reason for this is that it was a condition of
the planning permission of Southwark tube station that there wasn't a
public entrance/exit here - it's a quasi-residential area, so the
thinking presumably was to keep it quieter.

So, what people do is they use Southwark tube station as a shortcut
between the Waterloo East platforms and the main entrance of the tube
station on the corner of The Cut and Blackfriars Road, instead of
having to walk round the longer way up on to the high walkway and then
down to street level and end up backtracking on oneself.

If you got the Jubilee to Southwark tube station, you'd find the exit
to Waterloo East signed as being for "National Rail ticket holders
only" - how PAYG has been implemented on NR at Waterloo East I don't
know, i.e. whether one has to touch-out from the Tube through the
gates and then touch back in on a standalone reader. However that's
***totally irrelevant*** to this issue - if you're on the Jubilee line
and want to go to either Waterloo mainline station or the surrounding
area thereof then you get off at Waterloo itself, rather than getting
off at Southwark and making a long and unnecessary detour via Waterloo
East.

*This issue* is about people arriving at Waterloo East who want to get
out to Blackfriars Road / The Cut quickly. These are people who'll
have tickets issued to "London Terminals" (i.e. not Travelcards).

One further thing - LU used to offer a free gate pass for holders of
NR season tickets (i.e. issued to "London Terminals") for use at
Southwark tube station so they could take advantage of this shortcut -
the article is not clear as to whether such a thing is still made
available, does anyone know?