"London Buses are accepting tickets"-really?

[porp]

You know when there's an unexpected closure of a station or a stretch of line, there's an announcement that London Buses or National Rail are accepting tickets...How does that work? How do the bus drivers know? Are there limits to what's an acceptable route? How does it work in the case of Oyster or contactless?

Maybe I'm lucky, but I've never experienced this.

 

[8ball]

We get similar when they look in the shed and find the trams have escaped. I think they have a radio or something.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Yes, buses in London are fitted with radios so they can get messages from each bus depot's control or TFL's network control centre.

Outside London (I don't know about the system in London) if they have certain types of kit, bus company control rooms can send text messages to drivers via the ticket machines.

There will be some form of payment from railway to bus operator if this happens (not sure quite how the finances work in London when it's all TFL) - suspect that bus drivers are fairly flexible in interpreting what a valid rail ticket is, as fairly sure they won't be briefed in all the possible varieties of train ticket.

 

[8ball]

Yeah, I expect the rule of thumb is “accept anything that looks like a ticket”. Not their job to police the rail company’s shit and a lot of people might be flustered and pissed off.

 

[A380]

Yeah, I expect the rule of thumb is “accept anything that looks like a ticket”. Not their job to police the rail company’s shit and a lot of people might be flustered and pissed off.

But it had cross on it!