Who cares enough to save English rail ticket offices?

By Simon Warburton

Will English ticket offices simply disappear? Image courtesy: Michael715/Shutterstock.com

Have you ever stood at one of those infernal UK rail machines at 08:00 on a wet Monday morning, desperately trying to punch the right buttons to buy a byzantinely complicated train ticket?

A queue inevitably builds behind and you can virtually feel a dozen pairs of eyes boring into your back, before the tutting and shuffling starts as people realise they might not catch the 08:22 to Manchester after all.

Well, that experience looks as if it might become more of an everyday occurrence as plans to close nearly 1,000 ticket offices – that’s almost all – across England edge closer to reality.

But will they?

The British public have flexed their muscles, with a staggering 680,000 people (including me) responding to the closures plan, with watchdogs, Transport Focus and London TravelWatch now scrutinising the replies.

The machines are taking over. Image: courtesy I Wei Huang/Shutterstock.com

The RMT union says the move relates to ticket offices managed by the UK government-controlled train companies which have ticket offices: (Avanti West Coast, Chiltern, C2C, East Midlands Railway, Greater Anglia, GTR (encompassing Great Northern, Thameslink and Southern), Great Western Railway, LNER, Southeastern, South Western Railway, West Midlands Trains (including London Northwestern Railway), Transpennine Express and Northern).

The RMT notes the Welsh and Scottish governments which control the TfW and ScotRail franchises, are not currently proposing ticket office closures.

(Just as a side-note, doesn’t the fact all those companies which are government-controlled mean the UK has, almost by stealth, nationalised huge swathes of the rail network?).

It may be that some of those responses were actually in favour of pulling down the shutters, but I’d bet a whole English pound the overwhelming majority of people are so furious with the proposals, they put electronic pen to paper in their droves.

Ticket offices are a lifeline for elderly and disabled

Transport Focus says: “Concerns were raised around accessibility, safety and security, issues with ticket machines and how stations will be staffed in future.”

That’s only the half of it.

According to disabled-led group, Transport for All, more than 50 organisations representing disabled people and allies have joined forces to object to the proposals.

The group wrote a letter – also signed by charities including the RNIB, RNID, Guide Dogs, Scope, National Autistic Society and Disability Rights UK – in which they object to the proposals in the “strongest possible terms,” arguing the plans would “severely curtail disabled passengers’ ability to turn Up And go,” as they put it.

We’re in a transition period where young people growing up now wouldn’t even dream of going to a ticket office; they would use their phone, download the ticket and swipe it at the barrier.

But for the elderly, blind, disabled or simply those who feel uncomfortable with that queue of broiling tension breathing down their necks to catch the 08:22 to Manchester, the ticket office is a lifeline, a convenient way to buy with no pressure.

When I lived in Worcester in West England, its ticket office was an Aladdin’s Cave of useful information; huge maps of the UK with all the rail routes on the walls, dozens of leaflets with ideas for days out and most importantly, friendly staff on hand to deal with that railcard re-issue or how to secure the cheapest fare.

Try working out the ticket machine when there’s this lot behind you. Image: courtesy SAMPAJANO_ANIZZA/Shutterstock.com

I realise all this can be accessed online and in time almost everyone will buy that way. But for the sake of older people in particular, who feel uncomfortable in the virtual world, these offices must stay.

They’re not a luxury, some extravagant frippery. They are used by an awful lot of people who don’t buy tickets online.

The watchdogs are due to report to train operators by 31 October this year, with Transport Focus and London TravelWatch publishing responses to each train company’s proposals online.

If the watchdogs object, the train company can refer its proposal to the Secretary of State, Mark Harper, for a final decision.

Rail Delivery Group, ( funded by its members who are the rail companies making up the rail industry across Britain) Chief Executive, Jacqueline Starr, said: “Since the introduction of the smartphone, the numbers using ticket offices have dropped to historic lows and that trend is rapidly accelerating. For rail to survive and thrive long-term, like any responsible industry, we need to change and evolve with our customers.

Bringing staff out from behind the glass

The RDG chief continued: “The taxpayer is continuing to subsidise the railway, and we believe now is the right time to move staff to more flexible, engaging roles so our staff can better support customers face to face with a whole range of needs – from finding the right ticket, to navigating the station and getting support with accessibility needs, while reducing costs to taxpayers.   

“We also understand some customers have particular challenges and they should be supported in any transition.  Over the coming weeks, we will work closely with passenger watchdogs to review and adapt individual proposals where necessary.” 

But just how many staff will be patrolling the station? What if time is tight, you’re disabled or blind and can’t easily locate one of these people? Many larger stations have multiple platforms, we need to know just how many extra personnel will be on hand to dispense advice and issue tickets.

“Monumental act of social vandalism” – RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch

For the groups mentioned with challenges, this is simply a step too quick, too far, too rushed.

You could possibly teach a guide dog to find its way to a ticket office – it’s quite another thing to teach them to locate just who is and isn’t a ticket dispenser on crowded platforms.

It’s a rare day when I agree with the RMT union – whose wave of crippling strikes seems to have just resulted in nationwide stasis between the labour body and the government – but its concerted campaign to save the ticket offices from the axe is admirable.

It’s even rarer I agree with RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, but his observation the closures were a “monumental act of social vandalism” and his rallying cry to “defend a universal public service which should be available to all,” is perfectly sensible.

“The drive to close ticket offices in the name of profits is clearly a political decision,” he said.

And staying with labour body barons, train drivers union, ASLEF General Secretary, Mick Whelan, added: “The impact of removing staff for disabled passengers and those with access needs, luggage or buggies, would be huge and would effectively be saying to those people ‘we don’t want you on our railway’. It’s wrong.” 

How will closing ticket offices make disabled travel a better experience? Image: courtesy Shutterbug75 from Pixabay.

In the interests of balance, the Rail Delivery Group points to the rail industry’s Passenger Assistance App launched two years ago, enabling anyone requiring it to request help for their journey at the touch of a button. This has already supported 3.5m forms of help since it was launched.

Assistance could involve help navigating the station as well as arranging ramps to provide access to and from a train.

New mobile assistance teams will be created to offer extra help where needed, including for stations which are currently unstaffed. Stations will remain staffed, either directly or through roving mobile teams.

The RDG adds around 43% of stations already operate without ticket offices, while Customer Help Points are also available at many stations, including during emergencies. Where this is not possible, train operators will outline proposals at individual stations as part of the local consultation process.

White heat of technology

But there’s another more esoteric element to the storm which is currently raging around this topic.

We live in a world where thanks to the pulsating white heat of technology, we can access almost everything important in our lives on a machine which lives in our pockets, from banking to insurance renewal, from airline tickets to weather forecasts.

I’m old enough to remember when banks closed at 15:00 on a weekday and there were no cash points. To access money you had to physically walk into a bank and cash a cheque.

This is not about all our yesteryears, but more to make the point in a society with self-service check-outs (good luck with the ‘unidentified item in the bagging area’), airport luggage drop-off and ‘virtual assistants’ now on websites where there isn’t even a human responding, the list just goes on and on of remote interaction.

Elderly people in particular, especially if they’ve been bereaved, may be finding their daily contact with other humans diminishing. They might have liked going into the post office to set up their MOT, chat to a check-out person or even go into a railway ticket office to make their purchase.

Their human contact opportunities may be shrinking and it’s all very well the whizzkid boffins powering ahead with technology advances which will clearly benefit them, but how about giving older and disabled people more of a look-in?

Are human contact opportunities shrinking? Image: courtesy jprohaszka from Pixabay.

The RDG notes pre-iPhone in the mid-1990s, an estimated 82% of all sales were from ticket offices, compared to ‘just’ 12% today.

Well, the RMT (them again) insists in 2022/23, there were 1.5bn passenger journeys, which equals to around 180m journeys being made possible through ticket offices.

I would suggest 180m journeys is not an insignificant number.

Governments are there to make our lives better aren’t they, not worse and this mass closure is definitely in the latter category.

I imagine Whitehall has been shocked by the scale of the opposition to this move. Middle England has spoken and they haven’t liked one bit of what they’ve seen.

Stop the ticket office closures.

If you need editorial contributions or website content, I am a journalist with more than 30 years experience. Please contact me at: [email protected] and see my portfolio at: voyagerpro.co.uk