Neil Williams wrote:

On Mon, 02 Feb 2004 11:29:31 +0000, Ian Jelf wrote:

To be honest, I've never thought that paying at stops slows the service
down (relatively few people did so anyway and the flat fare made it
pretty painless).

It doesn't make *much* difference, but over the length of a route all-door
boarding (with two sets of doors on a regular length single-decker and
three on a bendy) and no requirement to purchase or show tickets to
the driver really does speed things up, as I saw in Hamburg.

TfL's current fudge, where a ticket needs to be bought off the bus but
shown to the driver, makes precious little difference.

I hadn't realised that was the situation - the bendy buses have all door
boarding, so I assumed that all cashless routes did.

Does this mean that the ticketless operation was brought in for a
different reason? One Crystals (now TGM) driver I spoke to was looking
forward to cashless operation throughout Greater London (as the drivers
had secretly been told would happen) because it would make it much safer
for drivers.

It either needs to be done properly, with lots of revenue squads out and
about and no need to even speak to the driver, or not at all.

I'd support having lots of revenue squads, as it means they'd be able to
properly enforce the smoking ban.