All railway ticket offices in England to close?

[mrd269697]

Easiest way to do Rovers would be a dedicated website issuing them as e-tickets or by post and phone for the few that can't do e-tickets. They're a niche product.

The reason Avanti are reducing the number of TVMs is because hardly anyone is using them, by the way! Nothing appalling about that.



Indeed so. Merseyrail's ticket offices are an utter waste of money now - switch to offering contactless (and an Oyster like product for children) and they would serve pretty much no purpose at all.

It's an easy cut to make, too, because strikes would do nothing to affect daily operations, as enough people already book online or use TVMs.

They are not a waste of money. On a Saturday afternoon I could take several thousand pound at Hooton, one of the busiest stations. No TVM could cope with the sheer volume. Commuters in the morning, whilst not what it was, there are still big queues. Some stations are busier than others, yes. Manor Road - quiet - Birkenhead North - even with a TVM - is still a busy station. And we do more than sell tickets. Your point only really stands for evening shifts, when few tickets are sold.

 

[pemma]

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.

Historically it would have been easier for people to get cash at the Post Office. There wouldn't have been cash machines and not all places would have accepted debit card payments. It also would have been harder to check your account balance, so you wouldn't know if a payment got delayed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

They are not a waste of money. On a Saturday afternoon I could take several thousand pound at Hooton, one of the busiest stations. No TVM could cope with the sheer volume. Commuters in the morning, whilst not what it was, there are still big queues. Some stations are busier than others, yes. Manor Road - quiet - Birkenhead North - even with a TVM - is still a busy station. And we do more than sell tickets. Your point only really stands for evening shifts, when few tickets are sold.

If one TVM wasn't enough, have more than one! But if contactless and e-tickets were introduced, people would switch to those in droves. Most people under the age of about 35 want to buy their ticket on their phone or just tap a reader. Merseyrail refuses to let them for some reason I simply cannot understand. They'd not even lose the commission if they contracted their own app/sales site.

 

[RailWonderer]

A blanket closure on ticket offices is a stupid idea. My local station keeps one open and it constantly has customers, myself included and apart from the local youths who use the machine, everybody else uses the t/o. If they make enough to cover the cost of hiring staff on shifts, why close them?

 

[mrd269697]

A blanket closure on ticket offices is a stupid idea. My local station keeps one open and it constantly has customers, myself included and apart from the local youths who use the machine, everybody else uses the t/o. If they make enough to cover the cost of hiring staff on shifts, why close them?

Exactly. Perhaps change hours or even close some small stations, but blanket ticket office closures is beyond stupid.

 

[Watershed]

If they make enough to cover the cost of hiring staff on shifts, why close them?

If you could make the same money without the cost of hiring staff, why wouldn't you close them?

Obviously it's not as simple as that, but in a purely commercial world you wouldn't have ticket offices at all, and it would be ticket machines only, as it is on most metro systems around the world.

 

[pemma]

On a Saturday afternoon I could take several thousand pound at Hooton, one of the busiest stations. No TVM could cope with the sheer volume.

If you mean volume of transactions, you could make the interface simpler to speed things up. For example, on Merseyrail offer a day ticket on the first screen so for those wanting that ticket it's a case of press that button, select the quantity (for both adult and child), pay and print.

 

[sor]

I know analogies with other industries aren't always helpful, but I think you should look at my industry (banking) as a sign of things to come.

When I joined the industry, there were bank branches in most reasonably sized settlements and suburbs, and this was after several rounds of closures had already happened. Now, outside of city and town centres there are very few branches. This is becuse most customers have changed their way of banking. There are far fewer cash and cheque transactions now, account servicing can mostly be done on line and new accounts are mostly opened online.

When we close a branch, we hear all the same arguments. What about Auntie Mary who needs to withdraw cash because she doesn't like using the ATM or paying for her shopping with a card? What about Uncle Bob who needs to pay in a once a year cheque but doesn't have a smart phone and doesn't trust the Post Office? What about someone who loses their card and needs some cash while they wait for a new one?

The truth is the industry found solutions for most of these problems, that didn't involve keeping an expensive branch open and staffed for the benefit of what was often 10 customers a day.

Yes, the railway needs to find solutions to marginal cases like ticket types that cannot be bought online, passengers who struggle with TVMs etc, but these are not particularly difficult. And I am almost certain they won't involve retaining a ticket office.

I make quite a lot of rail journeys. The last time I used a ticket office was years ago, back when Delay Repay used to be paid using paper vouchers. Of all the journeys I've made since then, I've never had need to use a ticket office and neither have I incurred penalty fares or threatened with prosecution due to a flat phone battery, a faulty TVM or any of the other scenarios people are suggesting.

Although the Post Office's own re-org/closure/stealth privatisation programme has re-created the issue. Cash and cheques are the perennial issue, and in this village the PO has gone from a more or less 5 day per week operation to 2 hours per week. I'm not sure it's even demand related, it was busy enough with actual postal stuff beforehand, and the impression is that the change went ahead despite the sub-postmaster's objections. This is also why I refuse to use the so called "challenger" banks for anything serious. They don't even do proper online banking, it's all tied to a phone app.

I have had one minor issue with the obsession with "digital". I have a 26-30 railcard which is of course smartphone only, and there was one time I needed to bring it up for inspection but the card had simply disappeared from the app. Fortunately the guard/RPI was happy to come back later, but what if they were a bit more (for lack of a better term) "jobsworth". Restarting the app brought the card back but it does show that it's not foolproof. The rules and regs are not written for the changes in technology, all the responsibility is dumped onto the end user & even if you get the excess fare refunded then the railway makes it sound like they've done you a favour rather than apologise for their failure. At least plastic cards didn't suddenly turn white when you took them out of the wallet...

I'm no "my only phone was installed by the post office in 1957" type but I think there's a better balance to be struck.

 

[pemma]

If one TVM wasn't enough, have more than one! But if contactless and e-tickets were introduced, people would switch to those in droves. Most people under the age of about 35 want to buy their ticket on their phone or just tap a reader. Merseyrail refuses to let them for some reason I simply cannot understand. They'd not even lose the commission if they contracted their own app/sales site.

Merseyrail's refusal to allow them was a bugbear of the MD of a former employer of mine. He had to collect tickets for business travel from the station near the workplace (managed by Northern) because on the day he would commence his journey from a Merseyrail station in Sefton.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If you mean volume of transactions, you could make the interface simpler to speed things up. For example, on Merseyrail offer a day ticket on the first screen so for those wanting that ticket it's a case of press that button, select the quantity (for both adult and child), pay and print.

I can't remember how they're laid out (though it is the standard Scheidt & Bachmann UI) but yes, Merseyrail's ticketing is incredibly simple and so could very easily be represented on one screen on a TVM, plus a button for "journeys outside Merseyrail" where you could type your destination and get a UI more like you get elsewhere.

 

[RailWonderer]

If you could make the same money without the cost of hiring staff, why wouldn't you close them?

Obviously it's not as simple as that, but in a purely commercial world you wouldn't have ticket offices at all, and it would be ticket machines only, as it is on most metro systems around the world.

A lot of people need advice from the manager which ticket is best to get, if they are travelling to London for a day trip or beyond, especially older people or even a couple who seldom use the train dont want to buy online or at a machine and find they have the wrong ticket.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Merseyrail's refusal to allow them was a bugbear of the MD of a former employer of mine. He had to collect tickets for business travel from the station near the workplace (managed by Northern) because on the day he would commence his journey from a Merseyrail station in Sefton.

They do now allow ToD collection at booking offices (took them long enough) but the mind boggles as to why they don't just fit scanners to their small number of gatelines (it must be fewer than about 40 gates in total on the whole thing) and do e-tickets for everything.

A lot of people need advice from the manager which ticket is best to get, if they are travelling to London for a day trip or beyond, especially older people or even a couple who seldom use the train dont want to buy online or at a machine and find they have the wrong ticket.

Those same people manage to book an easyJet or Ryanair flight online using a surprisingly similar user interface.

Most such passengers just want the cheapest fare = an Advance. While I know the quality of booking sites varies a bit, this is not hard to do online at all.

Some TVM UIs are inexcusably bad (yes, you, Avanti), but this is easy to fix.

 

[mrd269697]

If one TVM wasn't enough, have more than one! But if contactless and e-tickets were introduced, people would switch to those in droves. Most people under the age of about 35 want to buy their ticket on their phone or just tap a reader. Merseyrail refuses to let them for some reason I simply cannot understand. They'd not even lose the commission if they contracted their own app/sales site.

Do you know how much they cost to install? Around £40,000 per TVM if I am correct. Believe me, two TVM’s, 3 wouldn’t be enough at Hooton for example. Try that at Maghull or Blundellsands and it would cause absolute chaos. And I can tell you, they frequently break down - and a human being can sell a ticket far quicker than a TVM. Yes, e tickets are a different kettle of fish. And eventually, over time, there will be a point where most tickets on our network will be sold this way. But at the moment they aren’t. Passengers don’t moan about having to be served by a person, most shifts more than cover their wage in transactions, they are also in change of:

- changing bin bags
- brushing/blowing leaves
- applying grit
- changing posters
- passenger assistance
- calling the emergency services if someone is injured on site

We all have our different opinions, but I notice you have a particular hatred of merseyrail stations being staffed. And it’s not nice to be told your job is pointless. Especially when you know it isn’t.

Sure, there needs to be changes to how the ticket offices operate in the future, but I think keeping the stations staffed is incredibly important. And so many people in this region pay with cash. Something you can’t do online. Anything like closures needs to be gradual, not sudden. And at the moment, I see no need for any change. They make money.

 

[Watershed]

A lot of people need advice from the manager which ticket is best to get, if they are travelling to London for a day trip or beyond, especially older people or even a couple who seldom use the train dont want to buy online or at a machine and find they have the wrong ticket.

Hence why, as I've said, simply closing all ticket offices has negative externalities. But the Treasury is not particularly interested in that, it is interested in the cold hard figures of how much the staff wages cost.

 

[mrd269697]

Offering passengers difffent options on how to collect/purchase their tickets is one thing. Forcing everyone to go digital instantly is another.

 

[RailWonderer]

An idea, this probably needs a new thread, is to bring back the Stationmaster role. They do a bit of cleaning up and maintaining everything from potted geramiums (if the station has them) to cleaning the toilets. They could man the ticket office at busier hours, and clean toilets. Pay them a bit more and you save on both cleaners and ticket officers.

 

[Bletchleyite]

We all have our different opinions, but I notice you have a particular hatred of merseyrail stations being staffed. And it’s not nice to be told your job is pointless. Especially when you know it isn’t.

I'd be less against it if I received quality service at booking offices, and Merseyrail ones have a particularly bad reputation for this. I've never used Hooton booking office so you may be one of the good ones, but so many of them are, I'm afraid, terrible.

Offering passengers difffent options on how to collect/purchase their tickets is one thing. Forcing everyone to go digital instantly is another.

Merseyrail, of course, does the opposite by preventing people from going digital, many of whom want to. It's bizarre.

An idea, this probably needs a new thread, is to bring back the Stationmaster role. They do a bit of cleaning up and maintaining everything from potted geramiums (if the station has them) to cleaning the toilets. They could man the ticket office at busier hours, and clean toilets. Pay them a bit more and you save on both cleaners and ticket officers.

Smaller station booking office staff do often do this, to be fair. Not cleaning the bogs, but Bletchley station staff do grit the platforms when there is ice.

 

[Runningaround]

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.

One station I know of has a member who goes to sleep, reads a newspaper or goes off to move some station furniture, even as passengers begin queueing within the 30 minutes of a train departing.
Before purchasing a mobile I'd use the ticket office to collect online purchases or splits and a few times have run it close once needing to buy a six point split off the guard who printed off enough rolls of paper I could have done the spare bedroom with it.
He's encouraged me to
I still need to use the ticket office if travelling at short notice through London as it's the only place I can get CCT format tickets. And to get my local railcard.
If TVM's are to replace Ticket Offices then those staff need to be redeployed to assist TVM users or would that lesser the chance of buying an expensive ticket that the passenger didn't need or buy the wrong one and find they need to buy again or get done by an RPI.

It's a TFW station so is unless the Tories get into Cardiff less likely to close(I wonder if TFW run English Stations will lose theirs it'd be a coup for Labour in Westminster if they can compare two similar nearby stations one with and one without).

 

[Lampshade]

Nine pages (so far) reacting to Murdoch clickbait, it's definitely worked.

 

[Sprinter107]

Do you know how much they cost to install? Around £40,000 per TVM if I am correct. Believe me, two TVM’s, 3 wouldn’t be enough at Hooton for example. Try that at Maghull or Blundellsands and it would cause absolute chaos. And I can tell you, they frequently break down - and a human being can sell a ticket far quicker than a TVM. Yes, e tickets are a different kettle of fish. And eventually, over time, there will be a point where most tickets on our network will be sold this way. But at the moment they aren’t. Passengers don’t moan about having to be served by a person, most shifts more than cover their wage in transactions, they are also in change of:

- changing bin bags
- brushing/blowing leaves
- applying grit
- changing posters
- passenger assistance
- calling the emergency services if someone is injured on site

We all have our different opinions, but I notice you have a particular hatred of merseyrail stations being staffed. And it’s not nice to be told your job is pointless. Especially when you know it isn’t.

Sure, there needs to be changes to how the ticket offices operate in the future, but I think keeping the stations staffed is incredibly important. And so many people in this region pay with cash. Something you can’t do online. Anything like closures needs to be gradual, not sudden. And at the moment, I see no need for any change. They make money.

I agree with everything you've put. I had reason to use the booking office at Port Sunlight a while back, and the lad there was excellent, and couldn't have been more helpful. I do think that a manned ticket office does deter much anti social behaviour. Ive worked on the railway for many years, and ive seen it increase across the years, especially at stations that were once staffed and now arent. Many of these stations are isolated, and can feel quite menacing after a certain time of day.

 

[Deafdoggie]

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.

Really? All the major supermarkets removed "unexpected item in the bagging area" some time ago. Just as cashiers have a target of items an hour to scan, so the person in charge of self scan tills has a target of delays to keep under.
I don't think the problems are quite as bad as made out.
In much the same way, ticket office use isn't really needed. Yes, some people might prefer it, but very many of us manage perfectly well without. Just as I can't remember when I last went in the bank, I can't remember the last time I used a ticket office.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Nine pages (so far) reacting to Murdoch clickbait, it's definitely worked.

I would be astonished if this was made up by Murdoch. Indeed, I'd bet a considerable sum that it is a genuine proposal and will happen.

Really? All the major supermarkets removed "unexpected item in the bagging area" some time ago.

Could have fooled me, but what I have found is that the setup and the staff are very quick to react to it and cancel it.

Waitrose, Marks and some Sainsburys (e.g. the one at Euston) got rid of it by binning the scales on the basis that it costs more staff time to deal with it than they'd lose through pilfering. I guess your average Waitrose shopper can be trusted!

FWIW the one I really like is Decathlon, where the price labels are RFID tags, so you just put your basket in a slot and it automatically rings up the lot instantly. Would love to see that in supermarkets, but I guess the price of the tags are currently prohibitive for low priced items. Much easier/cheaper to implement than the "checkout free" thing.

 

[sor]

Really? All the major supermarkets removed "unexpected item in the bagging area" some time ago. Just as cashiers have a target of items an hour to scan, so the person in charge of self scan tills has a target of delays to keep under.
I don't think the problems are quite as bad as made out.
In much the same way, ticket office use isn't really needed. Yes, some people might prefer it, but very many of us manage perfectly well without. Just as I can't remember when I last went in the bank, I can't remember the last time I used a ticket office.

Scan-as-you-go is also a huge step forward for those with bigger shops. And when they do their occasional security checks, at least the supermarkets don't threaten to haul you into court because you genuinely forgot to scan that 74p reduced sandwich...

 

[scarby]

Well, get one then.

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

X-Trafik is the local operator; there you can pay with card on its trains. The person's problem was with SJ, the inter-city operator. One thing that I find aggravating about their approach is that they have also taken away ticket machines at many of its stations, including in some quite large towns. That means you can only buy online, or through an agent, usually in a convenience store. But in this particular case, the town did not even have an agent.

 

[Bletchleyite]

X-Trafik is the local operator; there you can pay with card on its trains. The person's problem was with SJ, the inter-city operator. One thing that I find aggravating about their approach is that they have also taken away ticket machines at many of its stations, including in some quite large towns. That means you can only buy online, or through an agent, usually in a convenience store. But in this particular case, the town did not even have an agent.

If there isn't any means of buying at the station then I'd agree this is a bit much. A TVM could and should be provided if there's nothing else.

On the other hand, you can't buy a NatEx, Megabus or Flixbus ticket at most boarding points, so there is precedent - and that's even in coach travel, which is going to have a disproportionately high level of usage by older, non-techie people and by people who wish to pay cash (as the desire to pay cash tends to arise most in older people and people with more limited incomes, who are by far the biggest demographic for coach travel). I believe NatEx sell tickets via the Post Office which is a fairly useful compromise. You could sometimes pay the NatEx driver but that assumes there's space and that they still do that.

 

[Moonshot]

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.

With that in mind, are guards making themselves obsolete?

 

[prod_pep]

I'd be less against it if I received quality service at booking offices, and Merseyrail ones have a particularly bad reputation for this. I've never used Hooton booking office so you may be one of the good ones, but so many of them are, I'm afraid, terrible.

Are they? I can honestly count on one hand the number of times I've received poor service at a Merseyrail ticket office in nearly 20 years of regular travel at five different stations. I'm all for ticket vending machines at Merseyrail stations and have been for years, but your claim is totally at odds with my experience.

 

[Bletchleyite]

With that in mind, are guards making themselves obsolete?

I certainly think WMT ones are, yes. I'd only excuse them on the Marston Vale where it's impossible to keep time unless you work from the back cab due to the already-well-discussed slow doors issue.

Back on the thread, the significant number of bad booking office staff are doing the same.

 

[yorkie]

.... and kids old enough to travel alone can have debit cards or prepaid cards. And cash is dying - at different rates, I will give you - in London it is in its final death throes.

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 don't disagree that they can and possibly should, however today I did a survey of about 25 Year 8s (i.e. aged between nearly 13 and nearly 14), and around 60% said they do not have one. A couple they had one but had lost it, another said they are about to get one, and some said their parents won't let them; one said their parents had said it is "too expensive" and one said their parents had told them they can't have one "until they are 18" (this may have been a misunderstanding).

I think you would get very different proportions depending on the backgrounds of the kids, so another group of kids the same age could end up with a very different answer.

However I don't think this makes a material difference to whether or not ticket offices should remain open; the option to buy on board with cash if there is no facility at the station is not going to go away anytime soon. The ability to pay with cash needs to be maintained for the forseeable future (I'd argue indefinitely) but that doesn't need a ticket office.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

I can't remember how they're laid out (though it is the standard Scheidt & Bachmann UI) but yes, Merseyrail's ticketing is incredibly simple and so could very easily be represented on one screen on a TVM, plus a button for "journeys outside Merseyrail" where you could type your destination and get a UI more like you get elsewhere.

I was a big fan of this old (and seemingly little-known) PERTIS-like ticket machine design:

Almex British Rail ticket machine at the National Rail Museum, York

Explore David Jones' 9587 photos on Flickr!

www.flickr.com

Turn knob to destination. Press ticket type button. Insert money. You're done in a few seconds.

With contactless payment it'd be quicker still.