Just a quick site notice to let any readers who work directly for TfL know that you can now get the digital version of LR Magazine sent directly to your inbox for free. This also includes a TfL-exclusive discount for those wishing to upgrade to a personal print subscription.
If you work at TfL and wish to sign up for this, you can find full details here.
How about for others that work in sorting out London’s transport problems?
@quinlet – are there any such? (No, really…)
Well now I’ve got the system set up to support corporate digital sub sends it’s easy enough theoretically to do it for other organisations large or small, so it’s worth pointing your employer/university etc. in the direction of our [email protected] email address. To be honest, we price digital corporate subscriptions pretty cheaply.
Each month? Unless John Bull wants to increase his workload significantly…
Graham, you may need to take another dose of scoff mixture!
@quinlet 🙂
I can already imagine the Standard headlines…
GRASPING TFL EMPOLYEES GET FREE MAGAZINES FUNDED BY YOU
@ Other Malcolm – I won’t provide the Sunday Sport alternative headline. 🙂
Other Malcolm: Whereas if the said employees, for some unaccountable reason, require copies of the Standard, they must pay the full cover price…
@Malcolm
Which is, of course, the same amount as they pay for the LR download.
I don’t think John Bull wants to increase his workload we are still waiting details (numbers of questions correct etc) of last christmas quiz winners.
Only TfL? What about Network Rail? They own, operate and maintain a large amount of rail infrastructure in London. They are delivering a significant number of the rail enhancement schemes in London too – Crossrail (Surface), Thameslink…
NR also plays a significant part in formulating London transport policy in partnership with TfL, GLA and DfT.
You’ll have no disagreement from me there, Anonymous.
I suspect my suggestion for Network Rail employees is that they should let their internal subscriptions managers know that a similar arrangement to this is something they’d like to have. We can then work with them to make it available.
I don’t think John Bull wants to increase his workload we are still waiting details (numbers of questions correct etc) of last christmas quiz winners.
Yes – as I think I said at the time, it’s clear these days that with everything else going on I should probably delegate out the responsibility for the general site update on people totals and public winner announcement etc.
To that end, Pedantic has volunteered to take on that duty this year!
“To that end, Pedantic has volunteered to take on that duty this year!” – retrospective to last year’s results by any chance??
While this is a really generous offer, it does show a mentality that we see so often when people think about the railway: it excludes all the operational staff who don’t have access to email while at work except on our unpaid 30 minute meal break.
Most of us drivers simply do not want to spend our meal breaks sat at work computers, and when I last surveyed them, 80% of people at my depot never logged in to the TFL email system and thus their accounts were suspended, or they simply never signed up for one.
Operational staff are forbidden from using auto-forwarding, so we cannot set up a subscription that can then be sent to us at home. Most station staff I speak to also don’t use TFL email, and such staff wouldn’t even be able to tell you what their original TFL email address was.
It’s a real shame that people like me are completely excluded from this offer. As I said, this happens all the time – the only people who are included in these things are those who work in offices and can spend their day at a screen. I’ve seen so many situations like this where the voice of operational staff is excluded and political, cultural and even historical discussions are skewed completely away from the experience of operational staff.
I have a solution for this, but it would take time: ask staff to scan (or take a photo of) their staff pass and email it in. Perhaps then do a random check each month of 10% of subscribers, so it takes just 2-3 minutes a month. Over time everyone would be verified.
Is this offer open to London Underground staff as well as TfL staff?
@Circle line driver: you can access your TfL email through webmail.tfl.gov.uk from any browser, so if your account is still active you can access it from home (or your mobile) if you want to be able to take advantage of the offer but don’t have easy access at work
@Anonymous: London Underground is a subsidiary of TfL, so even if your contract is with LU, you are still a TfL employee
Is this offer open to London Underground staff as well as TfL staff?
Assuming you use your tube.tfl address to signup, it’ll work.
Circle line driver – suggest you speak to IM about your email address and password if you don’t know them. Then you can use webmail on your own PC/phone (I’m not going to give the address on a public forum) and then enjoy the same offer as us office bods. 🙂
Station staff on LU now have iPad minis, as part of ” Fit for the Future”, we can access emails 24/7 unless maintenance is occurring.
Thanks for the replies, but the point is a large number of us simply don’t have intranet accounts. Accounts used to be terminated if they weren’t used for 6 months, which accounts for most of the people I speak to – you can’t get the password reset on those old accounts, you have to get a brand new account. It’s a joke but a real one.
So, yes those who have access and can get a password can access webmail from home. But that’s a small percentage of people.
Since writing my post I’ve checked again and there’s a huge number of drivers who have absolutely no internal accounts at all. There’s never been a need
What can we do? Given that it’ll be a small number of people, can’t my idea be considered? I’d be happy to help out.
Totally understand where you’re coming from. Trouble with your idea is that it instantly pushes us into handling personal data territory.
Basically, the key thing I think is for us to try and encourage LU to pay for a full sub. That way we could then hand over the files to them to distribute or even perhaps allow them to have a “secret” link internally through which drivers such as yourselves could submit non-TfL email addresses.
Or even, ultimately, just take some physical copies which can then be made available at depots.
Suspect with that it’s a case of lodging an internal request with Employee Comms for them to take out a proper sub. Someone else emailed me about that recently, so if you drop me an email I’ll happily send you the info I sent them.