Could a surcharge be introduced for when passengers choose to buy from ticket offices?

Philip · 18 Mar 2025

Backroom_boy said:
Put it the other way around; is it fair to increase the cost (either via fares or taxation) of the railways for everyone so some people can have their preferred way of the

Closing tickets offices won't necessarily lead to a lowering of fares or lower increase of fares. As far as it coming out of people's taxes, well this is to pay for a service. It's open to debate about how efficient that level of service is and how cost effective, but I maintain that my examples show that they are still efficient in some cases.

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Philip · 18 Mar 2025

My comments may come across as arrogant and biased, but I have many years' experience working in two busy booking offices, to offer opinion from experience. More significantly, when the question of their status and future was put to public consultation 18 months ago, an overwhelming majority voted in their favour. I suspect a public consultation on ticket office surcharges today would deliver an overwhelming negative response.

Bevan Price · 18 Mar 2025

HSTEd said:
Ticket offices are a significant cost centre for the railway - they employ a significant fraction of the entire industry workforce.
Meanwhile the number of tickets they actually sell is now quite small and shrinking.

A surcharge for ticket offices to reflect the cost of providing them (or at least make a nonzero contribution towards it) would encourage the passenger base to move towards alternative methods without providing a hard break point that will generate a backlash.

And for some of those, the alternative might be to stop using trains..........

Stossgebet · 18 Mar 2025

Philip said:
My comments may come across as arrogant and biased, but I have many years' experience working in two busy booking offices, to offer opinion from experience. More significantly, when the question of their status and future was put to public consultation 18 months ago, an overwhelming majority voted in their favour. I suspect a public consultation on ticket office surcharges today would deliver an overwhelming negative response.

Surely any consultation is about how you frame the question and purpose.
Asking if people would accept a small charge verses mass ticket office closures, would presumably deliver an overwhelmingy positive responce in favour of a small fee and keeping the booking offices.

Of course, on it's own merits, almost no one is ever in favour of additional costs and charges in any area whatsoever. No one likes to pay more.

Is there a way to introduce this that doesn't disadvantage people, by maybe waiving it on tickets purchased with senior or disabled railcards ect.

Before coming to any conclusion about this concept. Does anyone have any real world data and statistics from Germany that can make the case one way or another?

Bald Rick · 18 Mar 2025

Philip said:
We're talking about the present situation here and believe me a good proportion of our customers don't have a clue how to use a TVM or book online, quite a few can't speak English and need us to speak into their translator to understand, not something Northern's TVMs can currently help with. Quite a lot more people are using the ticket office and paying with cash compared to even just before the pandemic.

Sorry, you are missing the point. I have no doubt what you say is true about the capabilities of people who use the booking office to use other forms of ticket purchase. What I am saying is that from your viewpoint of the booking office, you surely will not know how many people are buying tickets for journeys that use your station by means other than your booking office and (probably) your TVMs.

Given that nationally less than 10% of rail ticket revenue comes through ticket offices (I can’t remember where I saw this, sorry) and less than that through TVMs, it is reasonable to assume that a significant majority of customers using your station do not use a ticket office or TVM. And of those that do (by your own account), a decent proportion appear to be able to use other methods but choose not to. Therefore it seems to me that those who need to use your ticket office will be but a small proportion of all travellers travellign by train to or from your station.

HSTEd · 19 Mar 2025

Bevan Price said:
And for some of those, the alternative might be to stop using trains..........

Only a small percentage, given that ticket offices already only represent a small portion of tickets sold. It was 12% in 2023 and it will almost certainly be lower now.

Only a portion of those people will cease using the railway, and I think it unlikely that the number who would do so would reduce the railway's revenue by more than the costs are reduced by the staff reductions it enables.

Philip · 19 Mar 2025

Stossgebet said:
Surely any consultation is about how you frame the question and purpose.
Asking if people would accept a small charge verses mass ticket office closures, would presumably deliver an overwhelmingy positive responce in favour of a small fee and keeping the booking offices.

If it was framed like that, then it would likely produce a more sympathetic response, but the jist from the idea of this thread feels like a cynical attempt to hasten the closure of ticket offices, by putting off the remaining people who use currently use them.

Bald Rick said:
Sorry, you are missing the point. I have no doubt what you say is true about the capabilities of people who use the booking office to use other forms of ticket purchase. What I am saying is that from your viewpoint of the booking office, you surely will not know how many people are buying tickets for journeys that use your station by means other than your booking office and (probably) your TVMs.

Given that nationally less than 10% of rail ticket revenue comes through ticket offices (I can’t remember where I saw this, sorry) and less than that through TVMs, it is reasonable to assume that a significant majority of customers using your station do not use a ticket office or TVM. And of those that do (by your own account), a decent proportion appear to be able to use other methods but choose not to. Therefore it seems to me that those who need to use your ticket office will be but a small proportion of all travellers travellign by train to or from your station.

I don't know the current station footfall figures so I'm unsure about the exact proportion of people who use the ticket office here, against total number of passengers. All I know is that between 07.00-19.00 there's probably an average of about one person using the ticket office every couple of minutes, so it still gets regular use albeit not to the point that we're rushed off our feet.

yorksrob · 19 Mar 2025

Ultimately it's a terrible idea. It would discriminate against people with complicated journeys who may want the reassurance of consulting with someone in the ticket office.

The only way I could see this being remotely acceptable would be if the country removed this need by moving to a overwhelmingly simplified "climate ticket/subscription" fares model.

Halwynd · 19 Mar 2025

yorksrob said:
Ultimately it's a terrible idea....

It is - and if it were ever seriously considered I'd first want to compare the loss of revenue facilitated or made easier by e-ticket fraud with the costs of keeping Booking Offices open - and the value of the service, tangible or otherwise, that they provide.

yorksrob · 19 Mar 2025

Halwynd said:
It is - and if it were ever seriously considered I'd first want to compare the loss of revenue facilitated or made easier by e-ticket fraud with the costs of keeping Booking Offices open - and the value of the service, tangible or otherwise, that they provide.

I don't know how much that is an issue, but it should certainly be taken into account in any decision.

Could a surcharge be introduced for when passengers choose to buy from ticket offices?

Philip

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