All railway ticket offices in England to close?

[Watershed]

The point I'm trying to make is there are lots of apparently "edge cases" which need to be resolved or removed, before you can entirely get rid of ticket offices.

For example:
- CIV
- platform tickets
- warrants
- rovers, rangers etc. (as pointed out before)
- excess fares
- heritage rail tickets
- refunds (eg. bought wrong ticket at TVM)

I think you resolve these issues by radically simplying the fares system and removing the complexity - some of these things are archaric and quaint but completely inappropriate in a modern railway that needs to cater for the needs of most people.

I accept what's been said before about staff training and ticket offices not necessarily being able to help with complex ticketing issues...but I think that's more the fault of the system, than the staff.

Exactly. Ticket offices might only be truly needed by 5-10% of customers, but that still means an awful lot of people who would be inconvenienced and potentially overcharged if they have to buy online or at a TVM.

If TVMs could sell every ticket that ticket offices could, and could provide advice on tickets for those who are unfamiliar (e.g. "don't buy the Avanti only ticket, it's only 10p cheaper than the Any Permitted") it wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem. But they don't and there is no indication that this will change anytime soon.

Most countries have moved to the model of having ticket offices only at major stations and I think that's the endgame here. Certainly the days of having ticket offices at every Merseyrail/GMPTE/WMPTE etc. shack are numbered.

The low-cost airlines (easyJet, RyanAir etc) seemed to have successfully managed to 'train' their customers into exclusively e-ticketing/print at home type system and even the not so low cost airlines were moving to self service checkin machines (till covid came and added loads of hassle that has to be checked by a human)
Granted you cannot quite compare international air travel with domestic rail - rail should be simpler and more accessible.
Ironically many of the low cost fares are much cheaper than long distance rail travel in the UK, which is probably discussion for elsewhere, more that the irony to me is that airlines show up rail by offering cheaper tickets and really embracing e-ticketing (because it is cheaper/more profit for them)

There's a fundamental difference between airlines (particularly low-cost ones, which generally don't offer flights involving connections) and the railway. Airlines are compulsory reservation and "Advance" only, whereas the railway still offers flexible tickets and doesn't mandate reservations.

For as long as the railway retains this flexibility it will retain a degree of complexity that requires a staff presence, at least at the major stations and interchanges.

 

[windingroad]

One of the reasons for the decline of the Goblin line and its subsquent resurreection was people's reluctance to use unstaffed stations in an urban area and Ken Livingstone's pledge that Overground stations would always have a member of staff on duty. Just today there was a problem on the DLR when a mentally unwell homeless man in a rather distressed state kept getting on and off trains, with nobody at stations to intervene.

That's a very fair point, and in an ideal world most stations would be staffed. I suppose my own view on this is in the context of financial pressures, as I think it will be a struggle justifying staff which don't directly bring in much revenue. My assumption would be that it's hard to quantify the value of a staff presence in cash terms, and so that will be a hard case to make successfully.

 

[Birmingham]

Well that in itself is better than once being told that I couldn't upgrade the return route to 'any permitted' but would have to buy a brand new single.

Was told they’d never heard of excesses at a ticket office recently. The clerk on duty’s colleague in earshot felt it appropriate to comment they’d ‘been here 30 years and never done that!’

 

[stuu]

As a teenager in the 2010s, I only knew two fellow teenagers who had bank cards, and I opened my first account when I was eighteen. It might be a regional thing.

Really? I had one when I was about 13-14, in 1988. Most of my friends did too, from what I remember. We didn't have any money though!

I see loads of teenagers paying with cards/phones these days. Prepaid cards are easy to get hold of, and more secure than cash

 

[gabrielhj07]

Granted you cannot quite compare international air travel with domestic rail - rail should be simpler and more accessible.

Should it though? Airlines generally offer single-leg, point-to-point itineraries, which are booked in advance and require compulsory reservation. Any fool can print an advance ticket, but the railways offer significantly more choice, for which it is often useful to have staff on hand to provide useful advice.

I counted 42 seconds at Paddington from arriving at the window to having my Thames Valley rover in my hand last week, I doube any TVM could match that!

 

[theageofthetra]

The Southern TOCs certainly has much better service than the Northern ones!



That's what I feel as well. It's like stepping back in time decades once outside London.

But back to the topic.

When the ticket office is closed how do passengers find assistance?

For example, in Hong Kong, ticket offices don't sell normal (single) tickets. However, it is the contact point for any ticketing problems or passenger enquiries as it's the place where the staff is located apart from the station manager (who isn't passenger-facing but mainly for safety and operational reason). Ticket offices also sell season tickets, visitor tickets, first class tickets for travelling on East Rail Line first class from a non-East Rail Line station, Octopus cards, top up special Octopus cards which can't be done on the TVMs, etc. Some newer stations don't have ticket offices but a help point is available there, however this results in some ticketing operations not being able to be done at those stations.

I will say that it's impractical to get rid of all ticket offices. There should be one every few stations apart where staff can be easily contacted or dispatched for assistance.

At certain unstaffed Japanese stations there is an assistance point with a video screen, and if a foreigner you are transferred to an English speaker.

 

[Runningaround]

Will the TVM's be numerous enough so I can get my London Underground only allowed CCT style tickets in time for the train or will I need to turn up 45 minutes early while each passenger reads through the T & C on each of the 25 ticket types ?

 

[185]

My personal opinion. Booking offices on Merseyrail may be costly but make for a much safer environment.

Compare Liverpool's urban railway (Merseyrail)
= Staff on each station, low incidents of crime. Reassuring.

with Manchester's urban railway (Metrolink)
= No-one. WW3, Crash Helmet necessary. Horrid.

 

[Jurg]

My personal opinion. Booking offices on Merseyrail may be costly but make for a much safer environment.

Compare Liverpool's urban railway (Merseyrail)
= Staff on each station, low incidents of crime. Reassuring.

with Manchester's urban railway (Metrolink)
= No-one. WW3, Crash Helmet necessary. Horrid.

I'll declare that I'm for the retention of staff at stations. But I've been on both of those at night time, and I found some of the staff on Merseyrail more threatening than the passengers on Metrolink.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

And lets not forget the foreign tourists.

I've just got back from a tour round the Alps, and didn't visit a single ticket office.
Of 12 journeys, 5 were e-tickets bought in advance, and 2 were from ATMs on the day.
The others were accessed using a free local transport ticket issued by my hotel for the duration of my stay.
A day transport ticket for Turin (bus, metro, tram, local train) was also bought from an ATM.

 

[FR510]

My TOC has already started not to fill ticket office vacancies and many are often closed when they should be open. I think the process has already started.

 

[185143]

So barrier it fully and keep the garbage out.

Because no one has ever forced their way through a barrier, with the staff watching who are told not to intervene...?

 

[uglymonkey]

They only just spent a load of money on refurbishing Exmouth's Ticket Office a few years ago ( after 40+ years) . That will go down well with the chattering classes if they shut it!

 

[scarby]

I'd be interested to hear whether people think Sweden is some sort of railway disaster for closing 100% of its ticket offices.

Well, that depends on who you ask.

It was driven through as a fait accompli, leaving a lot of people who do not have access to a computer or smartphone feeling marginalised. Especially as in many places it has been accompanied by getting rid of ticket machines. The ultimate aim is undoubtedly to take everything online - you can no longer obtain paper timetables (apart from digging them out online and printing them) and stations don't have posters showing daily departures.

The ticketing system is also much much simpler. You basically buy a ticket from point-to-point, or a zonal ticket for urban local transport. There is in essence no such thing as a "return ticket", therefore no cheap day returns, etc (though there are some summer rover tickets). There is no peak and off-peak. All inter-city stations, and most other stations are open, with ticket checks (and in some rural parts, sales) carried out on trains. The only place I have seen barriers in Sweden is on the Stockholm metro and commuter rail network, and even then parts of the system are without barriers.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Do any of you actually understand the issue with e tickets. Do you know why we scan them?

The potential issue is people refunding them when they have been used, and this is avoided by them being scanned. It's not unique to e-tickets, though, as re-use of unmarked paper tickets is rife, it just isn't as visible.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Jun 2022 ==

My personal opinion. Booking offices on Merseyrail may be costly but make for a much safer environment.

Compare Liverpool's urban railway (Merseyrail)
= Staff on each station, low incidents of crime. Reassuring.

with Manchester's urban railway (Metrolink)
= No-one. WW3, Crash Helmet necessary. Horrid.

Booking office staff aren't necessarily the whole reason for this, particularly as many of them are very distant from platforms. Metrolink is a completely open system, has one of its main stations right next to a hive of serious ASB (Piccadilly Gardens) and does not have guards. It also as a whole covers more "rougher" areas than Merseyrail does. I suspect the gatelines on the central Liverpool stations (which will not be removed) contribute more to reduced ASB on Merseyrail, alongside the New York style "zero tolerance" enforcement of Byelaw breaches.

A fairer comparison might be Manchester's urban heavy rail (e.g. the likes of the Hadfields, Marples, Atherton etc), and having used it I don't think it has any more or less ASB than Merseyrail does, despite having fewer staffed suburban stations and almost none staffed in the afternoon/evening when most ASB happens.

 

[AlterEgo]

Well, that depends on who you ask.

It was driven through as a fait accompli, leaving a lot of people who do not have access to a computer or smartphone feeling marginalised. Especially as in many places it has been accompanied by getting rid of ticket machines. The ultimate aim is undoubtedly to take everything online - you can no longer obtain paper timetables (apart from digging them out online and printing them) and stations don't have posters showing daily departures.

The ticketing system is also much much simpler. You basically buy a ticket from point-to-point, or a zonal ticket for urban local transport. There is in essence no such thing as a "return ticket", therefore no cheap day returns, etc (though there are some summer rover tickets). There is no peak and off-peak. All inter-city stations, and most other stations are open, with ticket checks (and in some rural parts, sales) carried out on trains. The only place I have seen barriers in Sweden is on the Stockholm metro and commuter rail network, and even then parts of the system are without barriers.

Thanks for the insight.

You mention “feeling marginalised”. Is there any sense that people *are* marginalised or the railways are somehow materially failing in their duty to provide public transport by doing this?

Genuine question, btw.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

In my experience they do. I have been at the back of the queue that never moves and at the front as the machine either keeps on saying, unexpected item in bagging area, or please replace item in bagging area. I have been held up so many times in all the major supermarket chains.

In my experience, that's a Sainsburys speciality. I don't meet that problem in Waitrose, M & S or Tesco.

 

[baz962]

In my experience, that's a Sainsburys speciality. I don't meet that problem in Waitrose, M & S or Tesco.

I have it quite a lot in Tesco and Morrison. Don't really shop in m&s and Waitrose, I'm a peasant don't you know

 

[HSTEd]

Merseyrails core stations cannot be destaffed due to health and safety concerns so will likely remain barriered regardless.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Merseyrails core stations cannot be destaffed due to health and safety concerns so will likely remain barriered regardless.

Gatelines are staffed separately from booking offices on Merseyrail anyway, and no smaller single-staffed stations are gated (Merseyrail's revenue protection relies on most journeys going to/from central Liverpool, as they indeed do, and considers letting a bit of low-fare fare dodging for local journeys go as not worth the cost of enforcement bar occasional RPI stings). There is no proposal to remove gateline staff.

In the 1990s booking office staff used to do ticket checking but they haven't done that for years, primarily because introducing PFs meant they couldn't spend significant time out of the booking office.

 

[prod_pep]

I'm not overly convinced that staffed booking offices have much of an effect in reducing anti-social behaviour. Some stations are unpleasant to wait at after dark, staffed or unstaffed. On Merseyrail, Birkenhead North and Bidston are two definite examples; extremely grim places at night. West Kirby station is another to attract rowdy behaviour in the evenings, almost every time I go there. It's not that I find it in any way an unsafe network to use, but there are a few hotspots.

The offices at some Merseyrail stations are regularly closed due to a lack of staff anyway. My local was shut three mornings last week, and evening closures are very common.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not overly convinced that staffed booking offices have much of an effect in reducing anti-social behaviour. Some stations are unpleasant to wait at after dark, staffed or unstaffed. On Merseyrail, Birkenhead North and Bidston are two definite examples; extremely grim places at night. West Kirby station is another to attract rowdy behaviour in the evenings, almost every time I go there. It's not that a find it in any way an unsafe network to use, but there are a few hotspots.

The offices at some Merseyrail stations are regularly closed due to a lack of staff anyway. My local was shut three mornings last week, and evening closures are very common.

The booking offices are very remote from the platforms at many stations anyway. Aughton Park is a good example - about 10m higher and down a long winding path. No doubt some people wait inside the booking office for a feeling of safety, but these days they could use a smartphone to see exactly where the train was and arrive at the exact right moment as an alternative to waiting at all. The time it takes for a given person to walk a given distance is very consistent - often to the level of a couple of seconds.

 

[northwichcat]

Any kid that doesn't have a bank account and is old enough to be out on their own needs one - it is that simple!

I wouldn't necessarily say bank account in that situation. In some cases a pre-paid card would be more appropriate.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I wouldn't necessarily say bank account in that situation. In some cases a pre-paid card would be more appropriate.

Yes, true. However all children should have a bank account so as to encourage saving and financial management from an early age. My 3 year old nephew even has one, though I doubt he knows he does!

It might even be worth the railway doing a deal with one of the prepaid card companies to offer a "GBR Card" which would be a prepaid card which can only be spent on rail travel, a bit like Oyster but without them needing to do all the work. Funding these being issued for free could even be cheaper than having to accept cash at TVMs, the cost of which is massive. For those wishing to use cash, such cards can be charged up at Paypoints and Payzones, which is near enough every local shop in the country.

 

[scarby]

Thanks for the insight.

You mention “feeling marginalised”. Is there any sense that people *are* marginalised or the railways are somehow materially failing in their duty to provide public transport by doing this?

Genuine question, btw.

It is hard for me to be able to give an answer, I can only give as an example a question put by a member of the public to the Minister of Trade and Industry Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson (translated from Swedish)

I live in Gävle and can travel with X-Trafik within Gävleborg County. Longer trips are impossible for me. It would be good if I could take an SJ train. But then it is required that I have a valid ticket. But where should I buy it? In the good old days, I bought my tickets at the train station. Several years ago, that facility was closed. Instead, buy the ticket online or from a dealer. But the problem is that there is no such seller in Gävle. Online shopping is impossible for me. The reason for this is that I do not have internet banking, no Bank ID and no smart mobile phone. A call to SJ's customer service confirms that you can not physically buy a ticket if you live in Gävle and want to pay with cash. A check on SJ's website of ticket resellers shows that it seems to be missing in many places in Gävleborg and in Sweden. My question to the Minister of Trade and Industry Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson in connection with this is: What does the Minister intend to take for measures to ensure that even those who do not have a bank ID, internet banking and / or smartphone should be able to buy a physical ticket from SJ in cash and thus travel with the state-owned company?

 

[RPI]

I've only skim read this so far, but I think one of the points being considered isn't necessarily the destaffing of stations but just closing actual ticket offices, ie someone sat behind a tiny window that randomly disappears. It has been talked about for a while of having staff floor walking with portable machines, there will ultimately be a degree of multi skilling where one person may do the job that two do now, customer assists will still need doing etc. I'll be interested to see exactly what is proposed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It is hard for me to be able to give an answer, I can only give as an example a question put by a member of the public to the Minister of Trade and Industry Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson (translated from Swedish)

I live in Gävle and can travel with X-Trafik within Gävleborg County. Longer trips are impossible for me. It would be good if I could take an SJ train. But then it is required that I have a valid ticket. But where should I buy it? In the good old days, I bought my tickets at the train station. Several years ago, that facility was closed. Instead, buy the ticket online or from a dealer. But the problem is that there is no such seller in Gävle. Online shopping is impossible for me. The reason for this is that I do not have internet banking, no Bank ID and no smart mobile phone. A call to SJ's customer service confirms that you can not physically buy a ticket if you live in Gävle and want to pay with cash. A check on SJ's website of ticket resellers shows that it seems to be missing in many places in Gävleborg and in Sweden. My question to the Minister of Trade and Industry Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson in connection with this is: What does the Minister intend to take for measures to ensure that even those who do not have a bank ID, internet banking and / or smartphone should be able to buy a physical ticket from SJ in cash and thus travel with the state-owned company?

Well, get one then.

Does X-Trafic not have (card only?) TVMs, even?

 

[RPI]

What % of train journeys that you personally make where you have no visibility of a conductor?

Quite a high percentage on SWR west of Salisbury, I don't think I've ever seen a WMR guard, you could be forgiven for thinking the West Midlands was DOO!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Quite a high percentage on SWR west of Salisbury, I don't think I've ever seen a WMR guard, you could be forgiven for thinking the West Midlands was DOO!

A lot of people do think the south WCML is DOO with very rare ticket inspections. Most guards work from the cab and never leave it.

 

[Sonik]

It was driven through as a fait accompli, leaving a lot of people who do not have access to a computer or smartphone feeling marginalised. Especially as in many places it has been accompanied by getting rid of ticket machines. The ultimate aim is undoubtedly to take everything online - you can no longer obtain paper timetables (apart from digging them out online and printing them) and stations don't have posters showing daily departures.

I'd compare this to the UK decision to move to direct bank transfer for welfare & pension payments instead of collection of cash from the Post Office counter.

It's actually easier in the long run for those being paid but it required many people (who didn't already have one) to open a bank account. Many banks offered special accounts as a consequence and it wasn't really a problem once everything settled down.