The ticket office closure con

Saturday 8th July 2023

The delusional Rail Delivery Group reckon it’ll be better than ever.

Moving staff from somewhere everyone knows where to find them (ie something called a ‘ticket office’) to “out of ticket offices and onto station platforms and concourses to support better, face-to-face interactions” is not only plain daft, it’s illogical.

New multi-skilled ‘customer help’ roles “will mean staff are able to help more customers across a whole range of needs, from buying tickets, to offering travel advice and helping those with accessibility needs”.

It’s said that 12% (10% has also been mentioned) of passengers use ticket offices. But that’s an average figure across all of England. Which means for low usage stations, eg Berwick in East Sussex (pictured below) the numbers buying tickets including from the ticket office will be considerably lower than at say Euston or Birmingham New Street, both up for closure along with other ‘big name’ stations..

An average figure in matters like this is completely meaningless. There was one extreme example quoted on the radio of a station selling one ticket a week. Well close that ticket office down then, but don’t use that as a justification to close say, Manchester Piccadilly. What a completely foolish and non-sensical way of making a proposal.

There may well be justification in closing offices where use has reduced to single percentage figures. But that’s no justification for closing offices where sales are much higher.

In any event, that average figure of 10% or 12% of passengers using ticket offices is for a reason. Maybe they don’t want to use online, apps and ticket vending machines (TVMs) because it’s harder for them to buy tickets through these methods than from a knowledgeable and helpful member of staff. Or maybe their ticket isn’t available through those channels.

This proposal comes at a time when passenger numbers are still struggling to reach pre Covid levels so you’d think the last thing DfT and the rail industry would want to do is make it harder for people to buy tickets and access the railway.

It’s likely a good proportion of the 12% may well decide not to travel at all or use a car instead thereby worsening the downturn in passenger numbers.

The RDG reckon 99% of transactions currently taking place through ticket offices can be done on a TVM. That may be the case if you know what you’re doing. But many passengers don’t and that’s why they use a ticket office to guide and help them through the minefield of ticket complexity and restrictions and are just happy and reassured someone will sell them a ticket.

A leading rail ticket retailer quotes there are 2,822 ticket types with 901 unique ticket names, 655 restriction codes and 1,288 route codes in the rail ticketing system and this complexity has only got worse since Covid as Train Operating Companies have introduced even more ticket types. No wonder passengers when given a choice, as below at Cambridge station when I visited recently, shun the TVMs and queue for human interaction at a ticket office.

Can you imagine Tesco deciding to do away with staff at checkouts because x% of their customers now use self service check outs or scan-and-pay? It maybe a declining proportion of shoppers who use staffed checkouts but that’s their preference and Tesco and their competitors are in business to fulfill customer preferences and do so.

Is closing ticket offices just a cost saving measure? We’re constantly being told rail industry costs need to be cut and the DfT have tasked the Train Operating Companies to achieve savings but if ticket office staff are simply moving from being behind the glass to being “customer facing” how is that going to make cost savings?

If it’s not about cutting staff numbers then instead of moving staff out from behind counters to help passengers struggling with the TVMs why not just let the staff sell tickets to passengers directly from their own machine in this thing called a ticket office?

The DfT and RDG take us for fools if they think we swallow the idea this isn’t about cutting the number of staff. I hear statutory notices advising of jobs under threat are already being issued to staff in some companies and Northern, for example, is reported to have openly admitted staff numbers will reduce.

The whole thing is a complete con dreamt up by the Department for Transport which instructed the Train Operating Companies to coordinate their announcements and use similar flowery language about a better environment for customers in their justifications.

Here’s an idea. Instead of having staff help passengers struggling with TVMs why not make TVMs easier to use, then, in the fullness of time more ticket offices might be so little used they could be closed?

Although things have improved with options for cheaper tickets now shown more clearly on the screen others have become way too complex with passengers required to specify far too much information, including return journey times, before buying a simple ticket.

There are still examples where passengers need an advanced degree in TVM Manipulation to work around bureaucratic restrictions originally introduced to limit fraud but with the advent of online ticket sales are now irrelevant.

Here’s just one example: buying a ticket from a station within the Network Railcard area (broadly London and the South East) to a station outside of that area – eg my home station Hassocks to Great Malvern (which I did on Thursday) will default to not allow you to use a Senior Railcard before 09:00 with the option being greyed out when you press ‘Add Railcard’.

The workaround is to press “One Step Back” from that screen to the ‘change date and time’ icon on the previous screen and instead of the current time, kid the machine it’s really 09:00 by entering that time, then return to the ‘Add Railcard’ option and lo and behold the Senior Railcard is no longer greyed out.

This is a real faff and takes time while other passengers queuing behind you politely tut tut. It’s immensely frustrating for everyone.

And it’s all so unnecessary since there’s no question of Senior Railcard holders trying to defraud the system by using their Railcard when they shouldn’t as the ticket gates won’t accept a Railcard enabled ticket pre 09:00 anyway so your ticket gets inspected by the staff member on the gateline.

Of course, in the nirvana world inhabited by the out of touch civil servants and Ministers at the DfT there’ll be happy, smiling multi tasking staff floating around to point out all these workarounds to you.

Except the reality is there’ll be occasions when there’s no staff available or they’ll be busy helping passengers with accessibility needs on and off trains in this new multi tasking world, and we all know the reality is staff numbers will be cut. That’s the purpose of this exercise.

The RDG’s website features a couple of embarrassing videos showing how wonderful the new ‘ticket office less’ way of working will be.

These feature Oxford Parkway and Bicester Village, opened in 2015, (see above) as well as Reading Green Park, opened May 2023, (see below) both of which have an open desk style counter in place of a ticket office. Apparently it’s the wonderful future that awaits us all …

… and is all very nice but how many stations are modelled on, or have room for, that open style layout?

That’s a rhetorical question.

Take Burgess Hill…

.. one station up from Hassocks on the Brighton main line (see above and below).

There’s barely enough room for the ticket gates in the ticket office area let alone a reception desk for a relaxed smiling multi-tasking member of staff to sit.

And the coveted TVM? That’s outside. So much for a wonderful passenger environment.

What’s the point of moving staff from inside the ticket office, where they can efficiently do their work, out into the open and outside, where they’ll be exposed to inclement weather, only to help passengers buy tickets at that TVM, when they can more easily buy them from the ticket office within the building?

Only in the rarefied out-of-touch-with-reality world of the Department of Transport and their lapdogs at the RDG can this be considered an improvement and something that stands up to logical scrutiny. It isn’t and it doesn’t.

Which brings me to the location and number of TVMs. Take Hassocks for example. It has one slimline TVM in the open outside the Brighton bound platform (albeit with a small cover above it – see below) which on sunny mornings is completely unusable as the sun shines directly on to the screen which faces due east making it impossible to read, while in the rain you get soaked just waiting to buy a ticket. Customer friendly? I don’t think so.

The other TVM is outside the London bound platform, but at least it’s under cover (see below), but whenever the ticket office is closed because Southern managers haven’t arranged cover for the two regulars having a day off there’s a frustratingly long queue in which you wait your turn in a nail biting race against when the train is due.

I’d really like to know how long Southern recommend passengers should allow between arriving at the station and their train departure to buy a ticket in such circumstances.

I understand in the rush to implement these changes there are no plans to install more TVMs. Anywhere.

This is real ‘cart before horse’ stuff.

This isn’t the London Underground’s simplified zonal fare system with Oyster and then contactless when Sir Peter Hendy oversaw the closure of ticket offices for Mayor Johnson in 2015.

This is a national rail network with a Byzantine complex array of fares, tickets and prices which the Government and rail industry have failed to reform despite countless promises and consultations. The fare structure needs sorting before doing away with the very people in a place (called a ticket office) where passengers know they can get help and be sold a ticket for the right price for their journey.

When only two of Slough’s four TVMs were in use with the queue for the ticket office outside the door.

And those TVM anomalies need sorting out to actually make it easy to use so you don’t need staff to help you.

And please, do away with those TVM algorithms and online that make you specify a time for a return journey before you can buy a ticket. I just want an off-peak return coming back when I choose later on. End of.

And how can I buy a London Travelcard on an app or online? Oh; I know, let’s do away with those popular tickets too. That’ll solve that problem.

Make no mistake this is about cutting costs and making it less attractive for passengers to travel and stifling off demand, so there can be more cuts and the all important subsidy to the rail industry can be reduced. That’s what the all powerful Treasury are demanding.

The consultation closes on Wednesday 26th July. A copy of the somewhat basic consultation response form is available here on the Transport Focus website.

Merseyrail got it right years ago by repurposing ticket office spaces in its key stations to convenience stores that continued to sell rail tickets.

Roger French

Blogging timetable; 06:00 TThS and the occasional Su which is fast becoming DRT blogging day, including another one tomorrow.

99 thoughts on “The ticket office closure con”

  1. Why not have shops at stations where the staff are also trained to sell tickets? This is what happens in Denmark and Sweden. The Dept of Transport should look across the Channel. But there will need to be a lot of expenditure on re-modelling stations first and a lot of re-training of staff. It could not be done quickly.

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  2. Roger
    An excellent summary of the issues and problems. My regular journey is Colchester to London, but I make it at different times of the day or week and for different durations, and for a simple journey there are over 20 permutations of ticket, some of which are not sold on the TVMs.

    So I think not only a cost cutting but revenue raising exercise, passengers who are confused or realise their train is imminent will buy a more expensive ticket so that they don’t get stung with penalty fares if they get it wrong.

    For this to proceed there needs to be a simplified ticket offer, standardised conditions such as what is peak or off peak, and far better information on ticket types written in plain English.

    Have the savings that this plan will achieve been published?

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      1. Colchester and Liverpool Street are two of a tiny number of stations which are at present not proposed to lose their ticket offices. It’s certainly not “most major stations” keeping their ticket offices.

        All Avanti operated stations are losing their ticket offices, which includes such minor stations as London Euston, Birmingham New Street and Manchester Piccadilly. It’s difficult to tell which other stations are losing their ticket offices as the TOCs are deliberately obfuscating the information in the so-called consultations, presumably at the behest of the DfT.

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    2. Just left an Ask Andy open forum in Moseley with Andy Street CBE was asked about ticket office closures; I was there to answer specific about bus services in the West Midlands Combined Authority; but Mr Street answered the question will he join the other Metro Mayor’s in action to stop ticket office closures. Mr Street was clear the answer was NO as the statistical data held by Transport for West Midlands shows a little as half dozen tickets are being issued by ticket offices in West Midlands County where there is an exception he is currently in advance talks to keep these offices open. Perhaps this should be the way forward on case to case basis .

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  3. Again, the premise behind this review is generally good, but here are
    some things to consider. There are 2 million people who have a visual
    disability that cannot be corrected even with the use of glasses in the
    UK, not just the obviously blind people, like me, but many with some
    vision but not great vission. Then there are dyslexic people and others
    who need predictability because of disability. They generally think that
    10 oer 15 percent of the populatin has a disability now. The vast
    majority of these are people who cannot drive and who currently travel
    by rail. Imagine being blind and knowing there are all these staff,
    somewhere, but where? They could be a foot away but if they don’t
    identify themselves we have no idea. Now granted, some journeys could
    become possible using apps, but ticket machines are going to be
    completely unusable for very many of these people. And take my station,
    Preston, the main customer service point is half way down platform 3 and
    4, busy platforms with all sorts of obstructions along them like seats
    andwhatnot you have to find your way around, and often the platforms are
    too busy for a person with a wheelchair to get past the people, and
    there’s no way a blind person could know when they get near this
    customer service point as it’s just a door in the wall that we can’t
    trail along. All this to say, the railways will lose more passengers
    than people realise due to this stupid idea. If you’re going to get rid
    of ticket offices as a specific thing, turn them into the main customer
    assistance point, that happens to sell tickets. Also, remember, long
    distance intercity services are not like Merseyrail, where a blind
    person can pretty much turn up and go, we have to find the right seat,
    even the right coach is impossible much of the time. So, I am opposing
    this idea because I know what’s behind it, but I’m not against
    modernisation per se, just do what passengers actually need.

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  4. Leicester City Council gives us oldies 50% off train tickets to the first major station outside of the county ( e.g. Derby, Nottingham, Nuneaton ) . The ticket machines aren’t able to recognise this ( they can’t ‘see’ the passes ).

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  5. I agree with this criticism about closing ticket offices. A lot of people who don’t have to use the train will just jump in the car and go, rather than go through a lot of hassle to buy a train ticket. Anyone who believes that ticket office staff will all go onto the platform to help people is being a tad naive. In reality, most stations will soon be unstaffed. TVM s are all very well, but sometimes they don’t work, and there are some tickets they don’t sell, plus the fact that in true British customer non-service style there won’t be enough of them. So, you can’t get your ticket by the time the train comes in. You have to get on it to get to work or interview. I wish you luck with the conductor/ RPI – the customer is always wrong! ‘Why didn’t you get to the station an hour before your train was due; then you’d have been in time to get your ticket’.

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  6. To close ticket offices is absolutely ridiculous. Maybe it’s justified in certainly locations but how does the passenger buy an advance ticket or a season ticket for 2 months 17 days from a TVM? Are TVMs able to explain the complexities of the routing guide? Of course they aren’t. It’s hard enough for many booking clerk’s to understand them. Since privatisation of the railways the BR “any reasonable route” classification has been swept away. No ticket offices at most stations need to remain open.

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  7. I believe that Transport for Wales are intending to leave ticket offices open at stations they run, including some in England such as Chester and Hereford.

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  8. Forcing customers to use TVM’s is far from acceptable..

    My local rural station in Cumbria (Ravenglass) became unstaffed around fifty years ago and tickets could be bought on the train.

    Nowadays passengers are forced to use the TVM by threats of a fine if they board the train without a ticket which may only be purchased by card, not cash.

    During the season we are visited by tourists who frequently have no experience of using TVM’S. and very are often baffled by the machines.

    Waiting for a train a few days ago I ended up assisting three passengers with their bookings otherwise they would have risked fines from conductors who may or may not carry out their duties correctly.

    To put it into perspective on my outward eighteen mole journey the conductor came through the train after almost every step to ensure passengers had tickets.

    On my return journey no checks were made. In my experience on my local line which frequently has passengers travelling to and from well outside the local area, we have a number of excellent conductors, and some very lazy ones together with some in the middle.

    We don’t want the few existing offices where people often go for help closing.

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  9. In the real world, we won’t get smiling, ruddy-faced railway staff eager to help us with our ticketing requirements. We are much more likely to get the roving squads of revenue protection goons beloved of Northern Rail. Nightclub bouncer types outsourced from the cheapest possible provider and incentivised to hand out penalty fares by challenging every passenger aggressively, from school kids to little old ladies, whether or not the ticket machines are working (and they often aren’t). By far the worst aspect of travelling by train in the North of England, but likely to be the future.

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  10. When Victoria Vic Line TO closed staff would be available to help. Often there are many people using the machines (many foreigners ex Gatwick) but the staff congregate round the gateline. So what does someone do -go to them and lose their place in any possible queue or call out help and people might start to panic.

    I have a London freedom Pass. Some years back Southern removed the boundary zone 6 from the ATM so people have to queue at the ticket office. SWR have very good machines at Clapham Jct (a busy interchange station planned for TO closure). However you cannot put in “boundary zone 6” but need to know the last station – OK but….. I want to go to Oxford – out Marylebone (Chiltern) and back Paddington (GWR) so I need boundary zone 6 on the ticket. Staff at MYB may try to save you a small amount by putting one of the Ruislip stations on the ticket but that is no good to return on GWR.

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  11. I know passions run high when railways matters appear here, and yes, wholesale closures, particularly at main stations are ridiculous. But there is certainly some scope for reductions, noted only yesterday at Elstree and Borehamwood station. Sitting in the booking hall for about 40 minutes in this busy station, not one person used the office fronting the entrance, all making a beeline for the two ticket machines in spite of frequent problems and having to enlist the help of gate-line staff. It was quite interesting, as Thameslink has already posted prominent notices about the “Closure Consultation” (not that a Soul stopped to read them of course) and yet for all the World, it seemed as if the “future” had already happened.

    Machines may well work in many suburban locations where travel is mostly to City centres, but no machine can ever cope with the complexity of railway pricing, unless of course the DfT are really going to return to the BR days of a standard pence per mile. Perhaps this is the future thinking? This has similarities with the 1970s, when the National Bus Company converted all remaining bus services to OPO with intricate fare scales having to be coped with, resulting in a massive slowing of the service and resultant huge passenger losses.

    And in spite of information screens around every station, and staff at all barriers at most locations, passengers still insist on holding up the queue to ask the Booking Clerk for detailed platform information. Perhaps they are going to introduce AI machines that can answer the multitude of questions many ask rather than merely looking at a screen?

    As a British rail staff card holder, I am wondering how I will be able to buy privilege tickets when making impromptu journeys through barriers , not having previously produced and printed my own from home. And what future for the multitude of “Rail Rovers” and similar products unless you have a computer?

    Interesting times ahead!

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    1. “As a British rail staff card holder, I am wondering how I will be able to buy privilege tickets”

      You’ll be “encouraged” (read forced) to buy them from the online Staff Travel website and have a PDF on your smartphone. If you haven’t got a phone capable of showing the PDF? Tough: you’re not wanted, same as I’m not and no other members of staff are.

      We’re talking an industry which threatens to discipline members of staff for using their duty travel smartcards to pass through ticket barriers at the same time as threatening to discipline members of staff for not using their smartcards to pass through ticket barriers. Why would they care about annoying old farts (as they see us) with BR privs having issues?

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  12. This proposal originates from the same geniuses who want to withdraw WiFi from trains. Meanwhile the whole network struggles on rudderless; after years of pretending to plan GBR even that can is being kicked down the road; instead time and effort is wasted on ridiculous proposals like this. The incompetence and stupdity of DaFT is breathtaking. Roger Ford’s excellent analysis in Modern Railways this month shows the shallowness of the idea that the railways are costing more to operate than a few years ago.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Train lovers – and I am one! – are generally in simple denial about this. The railways are already hugely expensive compared to the mode share they have in the UK – AND they are generating much less revenue than a few years ago pre covid! If you were running a business, would you totally ignore productivity issues?

      Click to access passenger-rail-usage-jul-sep-2022.pdf

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  13. In August 2021 we went by train to a town about 80 miles away; outward on Sunday 1st, return on Thursday 5th. We boarded at the local unstaffed station which didn’t have a TVM (although it has now).

    When the conductor came round after the next stop, we asked for return tickets and he said did we have Senior Railcards. We hadn’t because our train use at that time didn’t justify them. Never mind he said, I can sell you the tickets with that discount. Thank you I said; but then the train arrived at another stop and he excused himself from the conversation.

    When he came back I asked how we would manage the return journey without producing any railcards. You ‘ll be all right on my train he said, so we then discussed his shift pattern for the week and it turned out that Thursday was to be his day off. Don’t worry he said, I will write something on the tickets.

    About 30 minutes later he returned again with the tickets, on which he had written “issued at discount rate because of ticketing delays due to problems with comms access” which he signed and dated. Then I paid him.

    The episode was both cheering and concerning – and needless to say the return tickets were never inspected.

    However I imagine we would now be expected to buy tickets from the TVM.

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  14. Fill form to oppose closure of booking offices .All your article have excellent look forward to many more

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  15. I know two people who hold Senior Railcards. As these were purchased from station ticket offices they can only be renewed on-line if the holders have a driving licence and/or passport. They have neither so renew their railcards over the counter at the nearest manned station’s ticket office. What will they do in the future?

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    1. Not true they have an active online account no ID is needed if not several other documents to prove age are acceptable

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      1. Not sure how they access an active online account if they don’t have access to the internet

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  16. I agree with your views of the matter completely.

    I am over 70 years of age but still fit enough to travel for leisure purposes which I do by train. I always buy tickets from a ticket office which already involves additional travel as my local stations no longer have them. I am no longer adept enough to master the use of mobile phones and my experience with ticket machines has never been good.

    If this proposal goes through then I shall have to abandon leisure travel as the hassle involved in dealing with machines and apps will completely negate the objective of travelling for leisure. I suspect that most of the 12% probably use ticket offices for the reasons that I do.

    I have been told that Northern’s proposals for Workington and Whitehaven stations is to provide a “Journey Maker” for only two hours and not even every day. That 0means if you need help the freedom to choose your time of travel is lost unless you have the time and ability to visit the station twice once to buy your ticket and the second to travel at a time of your choosing.

    In addition how is the “Journey Maker” system going to work for a station like Burnley Manchester Road which has two platforms but no footbridge. so that it would take most elderly people five minutes and probably more to walk from one platform to the other via a main road bridge and a lengthy ramp to one of the platforms. Any traveller unfamiliar with the layout would probably miss their train unless they arrived an hour in advance of their train to ensure they could get the help they needed. Even then they would not have the same assurance of getting help which currently is provided by the ticket office’s opening hours. Will a telephone e service to the “Journey Maker” be available for those who need help to ascertain the potential difficulties in advance will contact with a local member of staff to advise be lost?

    A considerable amount of money has been spent in making it easier for disabled people to travel by train but the proposed scheme is clearly going to make it more difficult for them again. Where is the sense in that?

    Automation is not customer service and never will be. It cannot provide the help when things go wrong, (currently the railways are unable to get things right to an acceptable extent) and in terms of providing security it is useless. Managers seem to think that customer service can be provided and problems can be solved by saying the right things which is a total fallacy.

    Only doing the the right things can improve customer service. What those in charge say in this day and age is too frequently spin which often has little compatibility with fact and truth.

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  17. Excellent and timely article – this slow car crash of a policy is absolutely reflective of the state the industry is in. What a mess.

    One minor point though regarding your comparison with Tesco and the railways. In my experience in shopping at a wide range of small to medium sized supermarkets, whilst staffed counters are often available, they are generally not staffed consistently in the manner of a ticket office window. Staff are expected to be off stacking shelves, organising the stock room or (more often or not) dealing with issues on the self service ticket machines. This means anyone unable or unwilling to use the self service machines (or who are attempting to purchase something not available from said machines) often has to stand around looking hopeful. Ditto when “computer says no” on the omnipotent machines and you’re stood around looking hopeful trying to spot a member of staff, despite your big red flashing beacon of distress. This is the future of ticket retailing.

    One other small point – where a station is barriered, my understanding is that a member of staff must be present for safety reasons. Therefore at a small station as shown above I’m assuming the member of staff present does bothe the job of barrier staff and ticket retailing? By forcing them “out from behind the glass”, how will they be expected to both manage the barrier and any queries at the TVM? And of course, there’ll still have to be sheltered PNB facilities for any staff, so you’ll probably end up with people based in the ticket office but unable to sell any actual tickets.

    Kafkaesque insanity. Welcome to the brave new world of GBR….

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    2. “at a small station as shown above I’m assuming the member of staff present does both the job of barrier staff and ticket retailing?”

      They’ll also be required to do any passenger assistance duties (such as handling the wheelchair ramps). In the East Midlands EMR ticket barriers are already left open half the time because EMR refuse to recruit enough staff to operate the barriers **and** carry out other station staff duties, so this farce will just mean that the barriers will be left open even longer.

      Once this comes in the next target will be train guards who are already being undermined on certain TOCs by managers deliberately making it difficult for guards to collect ticket machines, meaning they can’t sell tickets even if they want to.

      We’ll end up with a Dutch-style set-up where barriers are completely unstaffed but have a help-button and camera so you have to show your ticket to a remote operator in a call centre somewhere if it won’t operate the gates – or just jump over the gates as I witnessed plenty of people doing in Breda last winter.

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  18. It’s YOU that is delusional, do you really think things can continue as they are? See what happens in much of mainland Europe. Posting a few ‘suitable’ photos does nothing for your argument. this is typical ‘I want I want’ with no clue about the reality.

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  19. Two thoughts:

    1/ Make it easier for any shop or post office to sell tickets (have a version of the national rail website or trainline that allows the shop to sell tickets “on account”, customer pays cash or payment card to she shop to the shop doesn’t handle customer’s payment card). With a suitable printer (a receipt printer that can print clear barcodes would do). This mitigates exclusion due to inability to use a TVM, although there will be issues with fare complexity (although some shops will develop reputations for getting minimum price, especially if the website helps spot the “split ticket” opportunities and similar)

    2/ Reduce the number of tickets that need to be sold (and make them easier to sell) by implementing a multi-modal fare scheme similar to the “Deutschland pass” in Germany (Monthly €49 valid for any bus, tram or regional train across Germany). There could be a reduced price version for senior citizens, disabled in recognition that buses are already free for those groups, and with a simple pricing structure it would be easy for any shop to sell them.

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    1. I seem to recall that at one time some travel agents were rail ticket agents. Is this still the case?

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  20. Change – most people hate change. However it is about time the Rail operators stopped wasting money and as always commentators should actually read the proposal details and not just the headline. Supporting the few does not justify having dedicated staff sitting around all day when their are more flexible ways of doing it.

    Abroad very few booking offices exist in modern countries. In Hong Kong I walked hesitantly up to a TVM and within 30 seconds a lady was standing next to me asking how could she help. She showed me how to do the first ticket and then left me to do the rest. The London Underground and Merseyrail amongst others don’t do ticket offices.

    I may be 70, but I haven’t used a ticket office in years. I do it all on line – choose routes, split fares, find when super off peak starts etc. I have a choice of going to Paddington or Waterloo and the fare difference can be over £100 or not much, but the booking office is unlikely to discuss the options.

    The local Devonlive news actually lists all the statistics for all Devon Station booking offices. It notes that booking offices will be retained at Exeter St David’s, Newton Abbott and Plymouth. My experience in Devon is that few people use the booking office. Last time I was at Honiton the clerk was busy taking in frozen food for an elderly couple and putting it in the station freezer. At Taunton there were 3 sitting in the booking office doing precisely nothing at 6pm and the 3 on the barrier line being very busy with all sorts, including selling penalty tickets from their ipads. The one exception was Dawlish, busy just selling local tickets to Exeter, Teignmouth, Plymouth, which is unnecessary, but lazy way out. The bigger the station the more online tickets are used.

    Better TVMs and fewer ticket choices are already happening – see LNER fares.

    More staff in the booking hall and on the platform doing multiple jobs to support the passenger will be far more beneficial.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Try finding a staff member on LUL outside zone 1 or 2 since ticket office staff were “redeployed” in public areas for “reassurance” roles. Never could work out how you could cut 1200 roles, simply move them elsewhere, and yet apparently save money.

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  22. What is particularly egregious in the RDG ‘rules’ is a clause that states if you have to board a train without a ticket as there is no ticket office and the TVMs do not sell ‘walk up’ PT fares (as opposed to collecting pre-ordered tickets bought online) you must “actively seek out” the onboard member of staff and offer to pay, otherwise you may be deemed guilty of committing fare evasion. Who do they think they are? Do they really expect people to walk the length of a unit, or even train, maybe in crush loaded conditions, to find a conductor-guard, on-board supervisor etc? How do we even know the particular TOC employs such staff post-DOO, and if so whether the duty has been covered? – Given that trains can now run without a second staff member.

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  23. Can TVMs and Websites issue PlusBus add ons, or tickets to TfL fare zones? And how do you do it?

    Also, if the justification is that “most” people book online or use TVMs, that means “some” people don’t or can’t. These people cannot just be excluded from travelling, that is discrimination when applying to those with special needs, and those without Internet.

    I wonder if there will be a legal challenge to these plans.

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    1. Some (TOC) websites can definitely issue PlusBus (at least for destination)

      Where I have seen this it comes as an “upsell” once the basic tickets have been selected and you are in checkout process. Ditto London Travelcards.

      I have seen (and complained about) website glitches in the past where the Plusbus upsell didn’t appear, e.g. if using a railcard (especially an operator specific railcard like a Club50). And I am not sure the websites will correctly sell “Origin” plusbus or “double” plusbus (origin and destination)

      London zonal Boundary fares and London zonal fares are a gap (and I seem to recall 2 group action court cases on the lack of ability to buy boundary fares straightforwardly rather than working out nearest station to boundary)

      Currently it is possible to buy plusbus on arrival as an addon to the just completed from a ticket office but not a machine.

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  24. Thank you for posting your email, It is totally correct , I agree with it fully. My local station is a Northern station, The Ticket Office is usually open about 11 hours from early morning to teatime, In Northerns own report the Staff will only be on the Platform for 2 hours a day from 1000 to 1200, what use is this. as a permanent wheelchair user to have no information other than in these 2 hours if something goes wrong is disgusting. This is nothing but cost cutting by the Government and another another way to fleece the Railway traveler. It is also correct that all types of tickets are not available on these Ticket Machines. It puts an end to many special offer tickets, including the tokens you can collect from Newspapers for tickets and some Rover tickets, Not to mention split ticketing. This is a Total idiotic plan and members of the Government are still telling us on TV interviews that the Stations will be staffed on the platforms as normal. Totally Wrong and disgusting.

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  25. As a nation we don’t do change particularly well. We tend to oppose it or be suspicious of it by default and there is very little in the way of considered and balanced commentary to be had when, in reality, there is almost no change that is all good or all bad.

    If 80%+ of tickets are now bought away from ticket offices then something has to change. It makes no sense for a ticket office person to be sat still on his/her backside for most pf the day. I don’t need to see any more pictures of queues taken in the rush hour in the 10 minutes before the train arrives thanks. I could just as easily show one taken in the off-peak in the 25 minutes after the train has left on a 30-minute route with no one . We need to set a level of ticket sales per hour at which it makes sense to have a permanent manned post. There will be few outside the major hubs, I would suggest.

    If there are 2,822 ticket types with 901 unique ticket names, 655 restriction codes and 1,288 route codes then please don’t try and kid me that a ticket office person is aware of them all. If he/she has access to a system then that system should be available to the public, ideally built into the TVM. We all know that 95% of journeys are very predictable and the sale for the ticket very automatable and these are generally options offered on a single click on the first screen of the TVM. I feel we have to take care not to oppose all change based on minority outlier situations, just ensure we have ways of properly dealing with them.

    Opposers of change go straight to the “not everyone can use the machines”/”what about the disabled”/”what about the obscure combination ticket that the machine can’t work out” arguments and forget that the intention is that a person will still be there to advise, assist and sell a ticket, just also on-hand to do more. There are some very knowledgeable ticket office staff but that knowledge isn’t needed to sell the 1000th “return to London” of the day.

    The union position will always be to oppose change if there is negotiation leverage to be gained. The Government (RDG/DoT) are clearly looking for a victory over the union, especially given the disruption of the last 12 months, hence neither should be listened to. Doubtless proposing this number of closures, even where it makes no sense, is an opening position and that a compromise will be found.

    Looking to retail as I often do, Macdonalds seem to have got this right. They never withdrew counter service, they just introduced ordering screens in sufficient quantity which offer all the options and which are reasonably easy to use. I can have my burger made without the gherkin, as part of a meal, get my points, use my voucher and tie it back to my on-line app account. The result is almost everyone uses the self-service machine by choice. Oh, and if you’re having trouble, there is someone floating around who quickly appears to help those who need it. I guess this person used to stand behind a till. Think Macdonalds isn’t a good comparison? Ok look at airline check-in. I could point to many others.

    The world changes and jobs change with it. The market for tickets has changed and a new solution had to be found.

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    1. You mention airline check-in … It’s a very different mode of transport and (virtually) no walk-up tickets are sold.

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      1. I use it as an example of where self-service technology has become the norm and is widely accepted. There are staff around to help those who need it and for exceptional circumstances.

        Sometimes self-service check has felt like a pain, until I remembered the queues for the old style check-in that is!

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        1. Fair enough and I’m sure it works well for people who only have hand luggage. However my experience has usually been of going on holiday, where the “bag drop” seems little different from the old-style check in and usually involves lengthy queues.

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          1. I can’t speak for everywhere, but I’ve just completed a return from Bristol to Edinburgh on Easyjet and the bag drop is now self service too! There was no queue at either end.

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        2. Where the analogy with other retailers falls down for rail is the sheer volume of products that you itemised in your first post. McDonalds sells what, maybe 100-150 items, utterly standard across every branch (though with at least two levels of pricing – railway stations and central London seemingly higher-priced than elsewhere).

          Compared to “a ticket to London” from anywhere in the south east, that will come in six or more varieties. I’ve made mistakes at machines even at this simple level of ticketing, and have been fortunate to have them rectified at a ticket office.

          The model in London was clear – simplify fares, then close ticket offices. We don’t have – and probably never can have – simple ticketing on a national network with over 2550 stations, and assorted other options (such as ferries, PlusBus, rovers etc etc).

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      2. Airline tickets used to be sold walk up by all airlines – Guernsey to Jersey was every 30 mins and you just turned up and bought a ticket, just like a train. If you wanted Heathrow to New York, you just turned up and tried the ticket desks of the likes of Air India or one of the middle east airlines until you found the cheapest flight that day – simple.

        On line booking and security concerns deleted all this a long time ago – it is time for trains to change.

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        1. Rail transport is a more everyday thing for most people. I’d hate to see railways follow air transport – show up 2 hours ahead, check in and have your luggage x-rayed for security, go through a metal detector, have to take your shoes and belt off first, etc.

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    2. I was in a McDonald’s last year and a lady was refused her purchase by the staff, being told she had to use the machine. She stormed out without purchasing anything.

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      1. I’ve never forgotten my shock on my first encounter with my local McDonald’s self ordering screens. The counter was unstaffed as they were hiding out of sight. I found it a right faff as I just wanted a quarter pounder snd fries, but everything is set to offer meal deals, and I had to press multiple buttons to find the individual items. So I am 59, I know how to use this technology, same for self service supermarket checkouts, but I just don’t want to. So I only use McDonald’s in a dire emergency, and only use the self service checkouts if buying a couple of items.

        As for rail travel, the whole advance booking, searching for a deal and bring tied to specific trains leaves me cold. It deters me from spontaneously wanting to travel.

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    3. “The result is almost everyone uses the self-service machine by choice. Oh, and if you’re having trouble, there is someone floating around who quickly appears to help those who need it.”

      You should visit the McDonalds in Lincoln and just watch how long it takes people who need to pay cash (of which there are a surprising number) to even be acknowledged by a member of staff, let alone served. You wouldn’t be claiming the new set-up is so wonderful, that’s for sure.

      Like everything else, it’s all great on paper but it’s not necessarily so good in practice.

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    4. Some changes need to be made for the current proposals for some major
      station. These could have a ticket office/Information office for bus and rail service and in some cases could also be a tourist information point

      There is no real justification for keeping minor station ticket office’s open as they are hardly used

      closing the ticket offices needs to be done in conjunction with simplifying the current over complex fare system

      The closed ticket office in many cases could be used for retail which would bring in more revenue for the railways

      So far in the consultation I have not found out what is happening with Kings Cross

      The consultation itself is poor you have to know who operate the ticket office to find out the information and every TOC presents the information in a different way

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      1. In fact Mc Donald’s have a “pay at counter” facility on the Touchscreens, all you have to do is press the cancel transaction promt and it displays a pay at counter button it then generates an order number which you the thell the counter person where you hand them your cash. I do this on the rare occasion that I use MC Donalds

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  26. Dear Roger,
    I agree with you that it is wrong to close ticket offices at “busy! stations. It does not take into consideration mentally impaired people who would not understand how a T.V.M. works, let alone what to do if asked a question they do not understand ?

    There are many “ordinary” folk who struggle with machines – understanding what is required of them. We all think in different ways !

    Will the “platform” staff be there to aid physically disabled passengers on and off trains from the very first train to the very last ? I doubt it.

    Would there be “platform staff” be there to attend passengers who have had an accident, or who fall ill (i.e. have a stroke or heart attack) and to record the relevant details ?

    And what happens when a T.V.M. fails to recognise a request – thinking of your recent journey to Marsh Barton – not recognised on T.V.M`s.

    Are T.V.M`s able to issue season tickets ? And what about the suggestion of part week tickets for workers who no longer travel five days a week.

    Being of a certain age, I expect to be served ! Not to have to use an impersonal machine
    This gets to me, I do not work for these businesses (I`m thinking supermarkets) neither do they offer me a discount (as a form of payment) for having to do all the work myself

    It would/will put me off using public transport.

    It is OUTRAGEOUS that Go Ahead want to change the colour of buses in Brighton !
    Supposedly to better reflect they locality – phooey ” If one follows this “logic?” Then shouldn`t ALL Go Ahead`s buses be green and stone coloured ? Green to reflect the countryside, and stone to reflect brick and concrete in towns and cities ? The red and cream buses are an icon of the area, recognised by those from far away, in similar fashion as red buses are to London. This decision must be revered !! If not then those responsible should be taken to the Tower of London and hung.

    Thank you for keeping us entertained thru your blogs.
    best wishes on a happy and healthy future.
    Brian Hawkins,

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  27. This is currently a consultation on what needs to be provided for implementation before 2025. What issues would need to be covered – most probably are already covered by existing customer service staff – they do exist!

    Stations have bands – Honiton is band 1 – platform staff part of the day. Axminster is band 3 – staff all day. I don’t know what the bands really mean. Building work may be needed. Who says customer staff will have desks and chairs other than in their office as per current platform staff. This is to be an active job, not a sedentary one.

    Most of the population use smartphones and/or computers – using them for tickets is more reliable than booking office staff. Where are National Express, Megabus, Easyjet, British Airways, booking offices? I Used to buy airline tickets from a ticket desk at the airport just before check in; reserve a seat over the phone or just turn up and find a cheap seat.; that has long gone.

    As a local rail booking clerk said “I don’t know, I never use the train”. He commuted to the station by car, sat in the office upstairs and lived in a town served by a different railway company. For some it is just an office job cum till operator. The TVMs will have to sell all tickets – that isn’t hard. The ticket line staff have ipads for information, ticket sales, etc. as do on the train staff.

    Wheelchair users will have platform staff to help – not someone stuck in an office downstairs or somewhere remote.

    Tesco have reduced their checkout staff – only 1 or 2 in use in big stores. You use self checkout, like a TVM, with a member of staff on hand.

    Ticket offices don’t use the routing guide, ticket manual and paper and pencil to work out fares as they used too. They just use the computer and not their brain. The routing guide is an interesting document(s) when you get your head round it – it can be downloaded.

    The closure of most ticket offices and employing more platform staff, TVM supervisors or as needed, may well have benefits now that most tickets are sold elsewhere.

    Liked by 1 person

  28. One other point, when I last travelled to London I overheard a discussion between a passenger who’d bought the wrong ticket on line and station staff. She’s bought her ticket on thetrainline.com . Once the problem was explained she asked whether she was better off in future to buy her ticket at the station. The reply was “we always recommend the GWP app”.

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    1. No need to organise a petition. The Consultation is being organised nationally by Transport Focus, the passengers’ watchdog. (Or if you are in London, by London TravelWatch). You have until 26th July to send your comments, objections (or support) to Transport Focus or London TravelWatch – See http://www.transportfocus.org.uk

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      1. Petras, as you will see from the link you posted, there are 13 separate consultations, none of which are being organised by Transport Focus.

        It’s pretty important to get such basic facts right.

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  30. Reality is so they don’t have to pay staff. I must admit I don’t know how to use the ticket machines.

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  31. Roger is as you point out the sweeping closure of all ticket offices is another reduction in the quality of life for those who require a warm friend!y customer focused interaction with knowledgeable staff for assistance. U are completely correct in saying its ultimately somebody’s idea to cut another layer of staffing thus saving on salary cost i think dff need to serious!y think of the customer.
    I was always and am encouraged to listen to people as the customer is a!says RIGHT
    This topic is a COST saving exercise. And makes my blood boil

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  32. This comment isn’t about ticket office closures or ticket office-less railway station operation, but I didn’t realise that “waffle ceilings” were still made new in 2023. Or any year after about 1993.

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  33. I am very sorry Roger, but while some of your detailed comments are valid concerns, only in a totally crazy world could you imagine that governments saving money is of absolutely no importance, or even sinister.

    Admittedly having printed money and having near zero interest rates for years, we’ve pretended across the political spectrum, that there is no problem that cannot be solved be spending more money. The concept of opportunity cost, which all of us instinctively apply to our everyday household budgets (money is simply a proxy for time and resources – we can’t both do a DIY project and take the kids to the seaside at the same time!) is lost to this perspective.

    We all love railways – so do I – but they are a vastly expensive method of transport both for farepayers and taxpayers. They aren’t of relevance to the daily lives of the majority of citizens, and becoming less rather than more so with more people working from home more often. Of course any government has to respond to this. As Roger knows, only a tiny fraction of political attention or indeed funding is applied to the bus industry, which is of more relevance to a greater number of ordinary people in a much greater range of places.

    This applies both to eye-watering capital and revenue costs. Has anyone noticed the large numbers of staff milling around who are pleasant enough but rarely of much help to passengers?

    Exactly the same hysteria was applied by the way at the time of the TfL ticket office closures. I have many times bought a ticket from a portable ticket machine, without

    Let’s use the train to save the planet. Stop flying. Not at typical return prices of £400-£600 to European destinations we won’t! This applies just as much to the often much better quality rail services in Europe.

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    1. The fares system on TfL is infinitely more simple, with its fare zones, than the National Rail fares system where you have to know which way the train is going and who the operator is before you can make a judgement on what ticket you need, particularly if you want the cheapest ticket. The TVM don’t have the ability to issue the range of tickets that can be purchased at a ticket office. On some TVMs you can purchase a ticket from another station, or for another date, but not both. You can only purchase a ticket for off-peak travel from 0930 – try getting a ticket for the 0931 departure as I have to – there’s only one TVM on the London-bound platform at my station. Rover tickets cannot be purchased, nor can tickets to Boundary Zone 6 in London. Season ticket and railcard holders will not be able to but their tickets from the TVM. If someone suffers from Parkinson’s, as my friend does, they find it impossible to accurately select the touch sensitive buttons owing to their shaking. Those ticket office that do only sell a handful of tickets probably should be closed anyway, but there are significant numbers of tickets sold from many offices, certainly up to midday, and they should at least be staffed until then. At least people could then buy their tickets in advance if they need them later. There should be a major simplification of the National Rail fares system, as the Government promised but seemingly found too difficult, before considering the closure of ticket offices. All the various routeing restrictions and operator specific fares should be removed, with a simple A to B fare whichever way you go and wherever the train stops, and single fares should be half the return fare, across the network, but just 10p less! For those that can cope with online and machine purchases it’s fine, but for anyone with disabilities, problems, or the sheer inability to get the right ticket, they will be put off using the railways and will either not travel or will, if they can, resort to using a car. So much for the environment and getting people out of their cars.

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      1. I am not suggesting there are no issues with the proposals, which
        I expect will be modified the detailed proposals will.

        I’m all for pragmatism, but not for a head in the sand “stop the world I want to get off” we should keep things exactly as they are forever, people can’t use technology, ambulant staff will be just like bouncers (!) – etc etc at whatever cost to both tax and fare payers (concessionary fare holders highly represented in these comments!) .

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        1. The problem is that the National Rail fares system is a complicated mess, and the TVMs aren’t fit for purpose in that they do not offer the full range of tickets, and in some cases they do not offer the correct fare, denying it exists in my case this morning (an off-peak day return), and instead force you to purchase ticket nearly three times the price (a period return). At least this morning I was able to go over to the ticket office and get the correct ticket at the right price. Of course National Rail want to do away with ticket offices because they have a captive market that they can fleece for higher fares. The machines simply can’t be trusted.

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  34. Thanks for a n excellent analysis.

    According to the Office of Road and Rail, there were 1.4 billion passenger journeys in 2002-23. If my arithmetic is correct, “only”12% of passengers using ticket offices (where they are available) is still 168 million people, which seems a large number to me.

    Hopefully those making good comments on here will be contributing to the actual consultation via London Travelwatch/Transport Focus as well, particularly with specific local issues rather than generalisations.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The very busy stations where most of the 12% of tickets are sold will remain open

      Some major stations could become multi transport/tourist information points.

      Other stations that have enough footfall could sell tickets from station retail offerings.

      The biggest problem at present is the over complex fares system GBR was intended to simplify that if it ever happens

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      1. “The very busy stations where most of the 12% of tickets are sold will remain open”

        Where’s your evidence for this claim, Bob?
        Are you seriously suggesting that London Euston, Birmingham New Street and Manchester Piccadilly (where ticket offices are going to be closed) aren’t very busy stations?

        How sad that you’ve fallen hook, line and sinker for the lies.

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    2. I think you are incorrect with the 168M passengers. It is a 168M journey’s many of those journeys will be by the same passengers

      The UK railways are a very long way behind the working practices of the more efficient European railways/ Many of the current working practices of the railways in the UK go back to the days of steam

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      1. My comment said “passenger journeys”. I agree the statistics are a minefield, which is why DfT, RDG and the train operators need to be more transparent in telling what evidence they have to support their proposals (if they actually have any!) . The number of tickets sold is difficult to relate to the number of journeys made because some tickets can be used for multiple journeys – season tickets, rovers, for example.

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  35. I had the time (while waiting for my friends) to just stand and watch the Ticket office at Clapham Junction today for almost 20 mins. This is one of those locations where the geniuses running this ridiculous process don’t think an office is needed anymore “because everyone has a smart phone and buys tickets online………” Well that will likely come as a shock to the queue that was never less than five deep during my observation. Clearly this “12%” at a location like this adds up to quite a substantial number of people that either didn’t want, or couldn’t meet their ticketing needs from one of the also busy machines.

    I’m not going to bother with the anecdotal part of my observation – that it was mainly the elderly, tourists or family groups (and a couple of pretty substantial parties of more than 12 at that) – it simply gets dismissed as “irrelevant” by the likes of the DfT if you try and tell people that have NEVER done the kind of simple and easy exercise I did what the evidence of eyes actually shows. Concentrating on the numbers it would have been a good 200+ people in whatever combination during the time I was there.

    Now it’s a Wimbledon weekend and various other social events tend to make Clapham busy anyway – that’s a given. But what exactly are a handful of Mobile extra bods going to do to help those people successfully on their way if there are NO new machines and a likely inadequate staffing presence? Not a lot except deal with bigger, and more irate Queues.

    One location, one set of observations. But hardly unique when set against a National Network.

    If the DfT/Government really DID have a fiendish secret plan to mismanage the Railway into permanent decline (I won’t indulge the Conspiracy Theorists on this) then you really couldn’t make a better stab at it than this boneheaded and anti-customer “Plan” could you?

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  36. What I find really concerning here is that the current complexity encourages otherwise law-abiding people to break the law, as in this case – and with the best of intentions, I’m sure.

    Ian not having a Senior Railcard, the conductor was defrauding the train operator by not charging the appropriate fare (and rendering himself liable for dismissal, I imagine), while Ian was travelling without a valid ticket.

    I suspect that doing people a good turn in this way is not uncommon, but the more it happens the more it erodes the credibility of the ticketing system (and, of course, passenger revenue).

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  37. Another concern is the piecemeal (if not chaotic) way that the consultation is being carried out – see the diamondgeezer blog for details of the different ways that different TOCs are going about this.

    Where is the guiding mind of Great British Railways when it is sorely needed?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. These days, although I am 77 I use an app like raileasy as they give you split fares, save you money and take a small amount back for the service.
      Days of ticket offices are over and this is pretty common across Europe.
      Personally I detest TVM’s and only few days ago had to use one on a Metro journey from Newcastle airport to Newcastle Central. Fortunately the guy cleaning the surrounding area was able to help and assume he was an employee rather than a contractor.

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      1. Of course we should not assume that any particular person cannot use technology, but there is a significant number who cannot for various reasons.

        It is not clear whether the TOCs are in any way correctly compliant with the requirements of the Equalities act for “on the day” travel, given the most of the network relies on TVM’s to sell tickets today (not all travellers would be able to get to a staffed office anyway today).

        Ordering by phone to a help desk would be the only option for some passengers for travel booked in advance (with tickets sent by post–at an extra cost which I suspect is also in breach of equalities act).

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  38. My local station Hemel Hempstead is planning to go from 06:00-20:00 on mon-fri to a mobile team based out of watford at unspecified times of the day. They are also planning a 60% work place reduction.

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  40. Hmmm…given that all fares revenue now goes straight to the government,one wonders just how much they value this income stream? Tick-tock for the TOCS? Roll-on ‘Operators of the Last Resort…that sounds like a film franchise. Some time ago all passengers became customers. I wonder how many customers are happy with their retail experience? Lots needs to happen on the railways,but who prey is deciding anything beyond fire-fighting tomorrow? GBR…Go By Road ? Simplify the fares,equip all stations with tap-on and tap-off,get the on-train staff to sell a few tickets (shock horror) drop any penalty fares,perhaps even get community rail to staff some of the ticket offices? Give them a fair share of tickets sales too.I think CRP bods may have more motivation and passion than many of those ‘point of sale’ staff staring out from behind the glass.Sadly Community Rail is facing a 25% funding cut next year.Any national outrage and picket lines? Simply penny-pinching in the scheme of things,but look what they achieve already on a pittance.

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  41. Reading through the comments above it is interesting that those (unless I missed something) who tell us to “move on and accept automation” offer no solution as to how those, for whatever reason, and there are many different ones, will be catered for once the majority of existing ticket offices have been closed.

    Whilst I don’t think anyone is suggesting that every station must have a ticket office open for extended hours the 12% of tickets that are not bought using automation in one form or another still adds up to a large number of transactions. With rail tariffs in their current state machines at stations and rail ticket websites, whether TOC operated or third party, cannot sell all of the tickets that passengers require. Before any closure exercise is carried out the rail tariffs must be fixed as the system is not currently fit for purpose. Some above have quoted how many stations in Europe no longer have ticket offices but they overlook the fact that fares are generally much simpler and that much more information is available at stations.

    Another aspect that seems to be ignored is the need for human interaction. This exists in all of us but for a number of the population it is very important. To remove the human interaction will inevitably lead to those who need it being denied travel by rail because they cannot, for whatever reason, cope.
    So many times when looking for information or trying to find the most appropriate ticket for a rail journey I have been thankful that, with my interest in transport, I have some idea of what the answer should be so that I can rephrase the question if the result is not what I expect it to be. People who do not have that knowledge or interest would not be aware that the system was not necessarily giving them the right answer. Automation is not nearly such an effective way of promotion. A person, ideally armed with appropriate literature, is in a much stronger position to promote a railway, or a destination, or an “experience” which will attract passengers back for more. Doing something because you want to rather than because you have to will produce more positive results.

    Roger mentions about booking systems requiring you to book seats even when the fare rules do not require it. On a journey from Paddington to Cheltenham last week of the eleven seats immediately around my seat (which was reserved because I was travelling on an Advance fare) eight were showing that they were reserved for some or all of the journey. None of the six seats reserved from Paddington were occupied after departure and the passengers who had seats reserved from Didcot did not materialise either. I can’t believe that they were all no-shows on fixed tickets. A number of passengers boarding at Reading continued their quest for vacant seats further down the train because they did not want to sit in seats that were already nominally occupied. As it was I was able to move to a more pleasant seat having discovered that although my confirmation showed a window seat I had, in fact, been allocated a non-aisle seat beside a metal wall.

    I wonder how many of us would be happy if we went to the pub one day and discovered that there was no longer a bar and we could only buy a beer from an automatic dispenser using digital payment and that the only human (if any) was one person going around collecting used glasses.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. James B: taking your pub analogy a bit further, thinking of e.g. New St where Avanti is doing the consulting but most passengers will be using other companies’ trains, if it were like this consultation patrons of just one variety of the many beers being so dispensed would have been consulted.

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    2. The absolutist nature of most of the comments – someone, somewhere might ‘need’ to use a ticket office (but on no circumstances could possibly buy a ticket from an ambulant member of staff!) very strongly implies that every station should indeed have a fully staffed ticket office for as long as the station is open. I’m sorry, but that is totally unsustainable and the economics of the madhouse

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  42. Oh dear, oh dear. Where are we going with Great British Railways?
    No more printed timetables, so working out an itinerary for a day out, with alternatives, is hugely cumbersome.
    No more wi-fi on the trains, so I won’t be able to acccess the internet on my tablet.
    No more ticket offices with the helpful, friendly staff who can print and sell me the required ticket in the time it takes me to enter my destination on the TVM outside in the blazing sun.
    No more Castle class HSTs (I’m in GWR land), so the alternative is Harsh Hitachis or basic 150s.
    And what do we get in return?
    TV adverts that end with the BR symbol, but fail to mention trains or provide any useful information.
    And where’s the Guiding Mind that the Williams report, and other commentators, felt was essential to get the best out of the railway system ?

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  43. I see the heritage railways are getting into the advance booking nonsense. When I last visited the Ffestiniog Railway it ran a conventional train service. This changed during the pandemic for obvious reasons. But now they run pre booked “experiences” consisting of giving various services a name, and if you want a return you are restricted to the same train you travelled out on. Apparently these “experiences” sell out well in advance.

    I don’t think I’ll go there again.

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  44. I’ll just limit myself to astonishment that mass closures of ticket offices can even be contemplated when the fare system is so unremittingly and mercilessly complicated. Our railway is being run into the ground. Much like the rest of the country.

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    1. I met someone yesterday at a wedding who actually works in a WMR ticket office. It’s a busy commuter station & asked about the planned closures. He told me sells less than half a dozen tickets a day. The majority use the machines on the platform or a TfWM pass. As ever on this forum the armchair enthusiasts are bemoaning the end of ticket offices when the reality in Brum according to someone who actually works in one that few rail passengers actually use them. As an aside I always use the Self Service machines in McDonald’s they are quicker, you don’t have to chat with surly youth & you can customise your order. Frankly if someone can’t use these simple machines at the station or in retail than frankly they should be let out in public!

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  45. In regular conversation with the ticket window gentleman at my local NR station which has a ticket office facility between 06.00 and 13.00 ( Mon-Sat) we find it amusing how most younger people go straight for the platform self service mahine rather than to the staffed window, I have worked out that it is the younger generation that have got so used to using Thier smartphones and social media that they are “uncomfortable” In Face to face contact with another human being , exempt of course when the platform machine breaks down and they all flood in to the ticket office window, which of course if plans to close them all come to fruition will no longer be possible.

    The obvious situation will no doubt transpire that mobile phones have won and we are all non face to face communicating Zombies!

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  48. Thank you for this analysis.  I have become an activist on  this issue. Quite capable of booking online or using the TV. But often use staffed ticket offices as well. I have responded to the inadequate consultation,  written to my mp, also to mark Harper and how Merriman.  Have put notices at my local bus stop and library,  and emailed friends. Not much more we can do

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  49. My emails to Huw Merriman  and Mark Harper received a bland response quoting the same arguments as before. I have tried to get others interested and to comment on the proposal but I fear it is a done deal.

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  50. After my posting here last night I needed to purchase today an off-peak day return ticket from Wickford to Coventry for travel tomorrow so I thought I’d see what the TVM allowed. After entering the details I received the message (which I photographed) “Day return tickets are not available for this journey. Please make a selection from period return tickets.” Oh yes they are, and the public fare, as shown on the NR journey planner, is £72.30. And I walked over to the ticket office when I bought my ticket. A period return costs £196.00 for an ‘any permitted’ journey, nearly three times as much. You can see why they want to close the ticket offices!

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    1. Personally as someone who is now registered disabled following long term closures I personally welcome the plan to get the staff out of ticket office & onto the concourse & platforms to assist with passengers.

      Those who are decrying the ticket office closures obviously selfishly want an past era retained for sentimental reasons when modern technology has overtaken something that is quite something from the dinosaur age.

      My local railway station; one of the busiest in the West Midlands Combined Authority sells less than a dozen tickets a day according to TfWM which is quite frankly a total waste of scarse resources. The sooner it closes the better for the benefit of us all .

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  52. At a press conference this morning Transport for West Midlands announced it was against rail ticket closures in its operating area citing that no enough information has been disclosed on how staff will be deployed henceforth together with concerns of disability access. Andy Street CBE ; Mayor of West Midlands; has expressed his concern whilst trying to stick back together a ruined pub in Himley that no one could care about or even patronised before it recently torched.

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