HSTEd
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 14 Jul 2011
- Messages
- 16,722
Even a £40,000 TVM is going to have a dramatically lower lifecycle cost per ticket sold than a ticket office staff member.
Even a £40,000 TVM is going to have a dramatically lower lifecycle cost per ticket sold than a ticket office staff member.
To be fair, about half* the posts are just the one person telling anyone who makes even a passing suggestion that this might be a bad idea that they are, in fact, wrongNine pages (so far) reacting to Murdoch clickbait, it's definitely worked.
All places that have completely or almost completely abolished ticket offices have simplified their ticketing structure a lot before removing the ticket offices. For example, the Netherlands abolished return tickets (moving to singles only) when introducing the OV-chipkaart. The UK has a very complicated ticketing structure, combined with the fact that some tickets can be either impossible or hard to buy online or at TVMs, and that's why, at present, we need ticket offices. This could be fixed, but that would require actually doing that before closing the ticket officesI imagine many of the potential complaints used as roadblocks have been dealt with in the other systems that have gone ticketless, such as Sweden and London Underground. What must DfT/NR learn from them that might not be obviously necessary for success?
Thank you! And yes - very true. I alighted the train the other day and a gentleman has collapsed. Passengers mainly ignored him. I alerted staff who were on duty who raced out to his aid.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.
I’m very sorry you received poor service. Personally, I try to go above and beyond for my passengers. As I cover different locations, I’ve been moaned at it by colleagues in busier stations (where there is more than one member of staff serving) for being too chatty and not dealing with the queue.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.
Merseyrail, of course, does the opposite by preventing people from going digital, many of whom want to. It's bizarre.
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.
One question I Had myself is what is making up this 500 million saving? If you go for 3 staff per office, 1000 offices and average wage plus overtime of 27K you still only come to around 81 million in wages, what makes up the other 300 million?
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.
I agree - it isn't a secret that I think keeping cash as an option is absolutely essential
While it's not uniform throughout the country, I don't think ceasing to accept cash in the London area would be a problem. Pretty much nobody uses cash in London any more. Most people don't even carry it. You get looked at funny if you try to pay cash for things in London.
There is no way it costs anything close to £500m to staff all ticket offices. £500m might instead be the total level of savings the government is seeking to achieve by a combination of ticket office closures, Network Rail redundancies and so forth.For one thing it is generally reckoned to cost roughly twice the salary to employ someone. That gets you to 160m at least.
It's also a fair bit more than 3 staff at many of them, typically it'll be 2 shifts x 3 or 4 windows at bigger stations.
While it's not uniform throughout the country, I don't think ceasing to accept cash in the London area would be a problem. Pretty much nobody uses cash in London any more. Most people don't even carry it. You get looked at funny if you try to pay cash for things in London.
This is far from the case in Manchester; around Wilmslow and Stockport area it seems to be mainly card transactions, but in the centre of Manchester I would say more people pay with cash than card.
There is no way it costs anything close to £500m to staff all ticket offices. £500m might instead be the total level of savings the government is seeking to achieve by a combination of ticket office closures, Network Rail redundancies and so forth.
A well-informed commentor (who I daresay was once an active forum member) opined that a small, single-shift ticket office might cost £120k a year to run including all ancillary costs. Given that by far the majority of ticket offices fall into this category, even £160m seems way off the mark.
Voluntary redundancies could get a lot of the way there. But I agree, £500m a year seems ambitious unless they have more up their sleeves.If there are going to be no compulsory redundancies then it will be a tiny fraction of £500 million in savings.
Yes, those rates are still correct. "Profitable" is probably the wrong word though because, in the context of a booking office owned by the rail industry, the commission is a cost. And it is a cost that is avoided if tickets are sold through other means, such as ticket machines, where overheads might only amount to 1 or 2%.Apologies if it's previously been mentioned as I have only skim read through the previous posts but a thread from 2011 stated that the company owing the booking office got commission on ticket sales of 2% on seasons and 9% on everything else:
Is this still the case ?how much commission for selling a ticket?
you can buy train tickets from stations, online, travel agents etc how much commission do they get 1%, 5%, 10%? how much of the actual ticket price goes to the toc running the service?www.railforums.co.uk
If so are any ticket offices profitable based solely on the commission they receive ?
If profitable, presumably the owning company would not want to close them.
A well-informed commentor (who I daresay was once an active forum member) opined that a small, single-shift ticket office might cost £120k a year to run including all ancillary costs. Given that by far the majority of ticket offices fall into this category, even £160m seems way off the mark.
Really? I've lived in London since 1986 and have never experienced what you state in your last sentence. I do agree though that most younger folk seem to pay for everything via their phone.While it's not uniform throughout the country, I don't think ceasing to accept cash in the London area would be a problem. Pretty much nobody uses cash in London any more. Most people don't even carry it. You get looked at funny if you try to pay cash for things in London.
In my home town one bank went over to machines and advisers only with no cash handling. It hasn't closed yet, but it lost many account holders to other nearby banks who will handle cash. Their advice was go to the Post Office to deal with cash. With 20 minute queues already that wasn't an attractive idea. One bank who still handle cash thought they had gained over 200 accounts in a few weeks. Many smaller heritage groups still rely on cash and cheques. ( After experience trying to add extra signatures and online access to the account for one small group we gave up once we had the extra signatories assigned. That took over a year.)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.
To pipe up for Hooton, they are a good bunch in the ticket office, and know their way round the national ticket system - I often buy a Lancs/Cheshire Day Ranger, or tickets for obscure day trips.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.
I think that move would result in fewer staff on the payroll. A booking office which has three staff on duty could be covered by one or two general station staff - don’t forget there are also dispatchers and other station staff who might be rolled into that role.That's a fair point, and I'd tend to agree, but I was assuming (possibly wrongly) that part of the impetus for closing the offices was to reduce staffing costs. From a cost saving point of view I could see it being hard to justify redeploying people to roles which don't generate much revenue.
All the bank branches to the south and west of Sheffield have closed so no service at all. HSBC at Chesterfield no longer seems to deal with cash directing customers to central Sheffield or the Post Office.In my home town one bank went over to machines and advisers only with no cash handling. It hasn't closed yet, but it lost many account holders to other nearby banks who will handle cash. Their advice was go to the Post Office to deal with cash. With 20 minute queues already that wasn't an attractive idea. One bank who still handle cash thought they had gained over 200 accounts in a few weeks. Many smaller heritage groups still rely on cash and cheques. ( After experience trying to add extra signatures and online access to the account for one small group we gave up once we had the extra signatories assigned. That took over a year.)
Cheques were supposed to have been phased out by 2018 but look set to be with us until 2030 or later.
You'd barely even need to do that. It could be effectively a big Android tablet running the same app that is offered to the public, with some minor customisations (i.e. taking card payments from a card reader rather than entering a number, and printing the ticket from a thermal printer).You'd also need to develop the software, but you'd only need to do so once.
When making comparisons, you'd need to take care to consider the total cost of ownership (TCO); open source operating systems (OSs) still need to be configured, maintained and supported.One thing that particularly surprises me is that lots of TVMs run Windows. I realise a Windows license is a tiny proportion of the cost of a TVM, but it must be a tremendous waste of money if you add it all up.
I suppose it might be better in that respect. But it does still seem improbable to me that TVMs couldn't be brought down in cost by using off the shelf kiosk hardware and the ticket sales apps that already exist - if the estimates often quoted on this forum are accurate, then they are tremendously expensive for what they are.When making comparisons, you'd need to take care to consider the total cost of ownership (TCO); open source operating systems (OSs) still need to be configured, maintained and supported.
They're tremendously expensive because there is a (comparitively) very small market for a highly specialised piece of hardware that requires accreditation, must be accessible, weatherproof, vandal-proof etc.I suppose it might be better in that respect. But it does still seem improbable to me that TVMs couldn't be brought down in cost by using off the shelf kiosk hardware and the ticket sales apps that already exist - if the estimates often quoted on this forum are accurate, then they are tremendously expensive for what they are.