Future of Ticket Office Consultations launched

[A0]

How big are the unstaffed 50% though? A branch line station with a few trains a day, much simpler ticketing arrangements, and no menacing signs telling people to buy a ticket (because its not a penalty fare area and can't be since it doesn't have adequate facilities) is quite a different proposition to taking ticket offices away from the main line stations.

But if we're making comparisons, I can think of towns and cities where most bus stops are obviously unstaffed, but the major bus interchange usually has a bus company office nearby who can sell the more complicated/expensive tickets and advise on what buses to take, including that of other companies if they are particularly helpful.

Big in what sense ? Number of platforms ? Number of trains ? Number of users ?

Not all "unstaffed" stations are quiet rural backwaters - take Isleworth for example in South West London - that's unstaffed, yet pre-Covid had over 1.3 m users a year.

 

[43066]

However, at the same time, the volume of sales is not a compelling argument for just maintaining the status quo. What is being done at Paddington, to my mind, is barmy. But equally it seems a bit daft to keep a full traditional ticket office when that's your volume of sales.

Most of us accept the current status quo shouldn’t continue (to be fair few seem to be arguing for that) but, as you say, these proposals seem odd to say the least, inconsistent and disjointed. Almost as if they haven’t really been thought through!

The reality is unless you had a government run by the likes of Jeremy Corbyn in power, this change would be happening regardless -

So again you’re falsely suggesting that this government’s approach to reforms is the only possible one, and dismissing any other as a product of the far left…

Not all "unstaffed" stations are quiet rural backwaters - take Isleworth for example in South West London - that's unstaffed, yet pre-Covid had over 1.3 m users a year.

Why is that something to aspire to, when passenger surveys (like the one I linked to above and you ignored) show that a visible staff presence is valued…

 

[A0]

Yes, then you wouldn't have the absurd situation of Manchester Piccadilly closing, but Salford Crescent staying open.

You're overthinking this - most people don't 'start' their journey at places like Manchester Piccadilly - they arrive into it as a city centre terminus, so have bought a ticket somewhere else.

Salford Crescent on the other hand is close to alot of housing, isn't a 'city centre' terminus people will be arriving at by and large. It's more likely to be the starting point of a journey. Then there's the local "clientele" - it may be a security thing to retain a separate ticket office at Salford Crescent.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not true - in Kent, at least.
https://www.kent.gov.uk/roads-and-t...asses/bus-passes-for-older-or-disabled-people
Document 1 - courtesy of a photo booth.
Document 2 - I went for overkill - I was paying the Council Tax and I had a bank statement. And I insist on paper versions.
Document 3 - I still have my birth certificate and the DWP is in regular correspondence!

A week later, an Old Man's Bus Pass.

I suspect if they were to accept the ENCTS card (and Scottish/Welsh equivalents) plus the Voter ID card, then that would largely solve the problem. It's an issue of the UK not having a national ID card, though many young people mitigate it by applying for a provisional driving licence even if they never have any intention to drive.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Jul 2023 ==

You're overthinking this - most people don't 'start' their journey at places like Manchester Piccadilly - they arrive into it as a city centre terminus, so have bought a ticket somewhere else.

In ticketing terms that isn't really true. By far the majority of public transport passengers into Manchester don't use the city's extremely poor quality local DMU and EMU services. They use Metrolink and buses. As such, they do find themselves needing to get a ticket from Manchester Piccadilly. London Euston is the same - most people arrive there by TfL services having paid with contactless.

Liverpool would be different because Merseyrail, but Liverpool isn't Manchester (and Liverpool Lime St ticket office will remain open, because Northern seem to be applying far weaker criteria than every other TOC for some reason I don't quite understand, possibly the increased desire for cash payment in the north* vs. elsewhere?)

I guess what Avanti would say is that pretty much all their customers book in advance online now, and that would be true. Indeed, that's one reason I think this should be considered on a single national basis - for instance, it might actually make sense to open a Northern booking office at Manchester Piccadilly even if Avanti no longer want anything to do with it, that being their most significant hub, possibly even replacing Oxford Road. And similarly for WMT to take over at Euston and New St.

With Avanti it's worth noting (as I mentioned above) that their TIS is entirely tablet based and the desks are often closed anyway. New St seems to be closed more often than not, if there's a member of staff there they are already in the new role with the tablet and a belt-clipped printer.

* These days Manchester can probably be considered to be in the South in these terms - it acts much more like London than the rest of the North economically. A bit like Bristol vs. the rest of the Westcountry.

 

[SuspectUsual]

You're overthinking this - most people don't 'start' their journey at places like Manchester Piccadilly - they arrive into it as a city centre terminus, so have bought a ticket somewhere else.

That's just not true.

 

[A0]

So again you’re falsely suggesting that this government’s approach to reforms is the only possible one, and dismissing any other as a product of the far left…

Labour or the Lib Dems haven't proffered any alternative proposals or strategies. I don't think this change is particularly partisan - as I pointed out, Ken Livingstone started the move to paperless ticketing in London, nobody offered an alternative or reversed it. Boris Johnson initiated the closure of TFL's ticket offices, nobody offered an alternative and Sadiq Kahn didn't reverse it. The majority of "sensible" Labour MPs will doubtless grumble about it and write a couple of letters to their local rag to get their picture in it (after all there's an election in the next couple of years), but when push comes to shove, they won't reverse it and they will accept it, because they can see if they were in power they'd be doing something very similar. I suspect my description of some of their colleagues as Spartist is probably mild compared to the words they'd use. And when places like Sweden (often cited as the kind of Social Democrat society many moderate Labour MPs would like the UK to emulate) has already done this, it's difficult to see what basis they'd argue to do something different.

Why is that something to aspire to, when passenger surveys (like the one I linked to above and you ignored) show that a visible staff presence is valued…

I didn't pass comment on whether or not it was something to aspire to. I was merely pointing out in response to @sor's post that unmanned stations aren't 'branch lines' with 'a few trains a day' - far from it and Isleworth is one such example - there are, of course, many others.

 

[Philip]

Bit in bold - were that the case, then the ticket offices wouldn't be selling so few tickets. That's the reality, in around 20 years, driven by technology changes, we've gone from a situation where about 90% of tickets were sold by the ticket offices to about 90% which aren't. Take your argument to its logical conclusion and you'd never change anything because it's "too hard" for people to change.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Jul 2023 ==

Well you don't work in a booking office like I do so I can speak from experience that we get a lot of customers coming to us who do need the help; many who have bought online have no idea about the ticket validity, which train they need to catch, where they need to change; many who have bought the wrong ticket and need us to help them change to the correct ticket; many don't know about savings to be had from two-together or family railcards and it's left to us rather than the trainline to save them money.

We get a lot of people who lack an understanding of how tickets work or who struggle with English (at a guess I'd say there are some days when up to 25-35% of the typical 100-150 customers per shift are in these categories) and basically wouldn't have a clue if they were left to do it at a TVM or an app.

This, and during times of disruption, is where a ticket office is important and unless there is a major simplification of the fares structure then it'll be a disaster closing the vast majority of ticket offices - I can gurantee you will see vast numbers of passengers travelling on trains with an invalid ticket as a result of the closures. This isn't progress and your argument is idealogical but not reality.

 

[A0]

In ticketing terms that isn't really true. By far the majority of public transport passengers into Manchester don't use the city's extremely poor quality local DMU and EMU services. They use Metrolink and buses. As such, they do find themselves needing to get a ticket from Manchester Piccadilly. London Euston is the same - most people arrive there by TfL services having paid with contactless.

Not correct - it'll depend entirely on where, in the Greater Manchester area, you're travelling in from. If you're on the Bolton corridor or the Eccles corridor, or from most of the South side of Manchester you won't bother with the ML, you'll use the train to Piccadilly.

The only corridors where that is true are the Bury and Altrincham corridors.

 

[JonathanH]

They also have simple fare structures

The main line railway may well be going that way too given the moves to adopt single leg pricing, contactless and e-tickets, which are all government and RDG policy.

 

[SuspectUsual]

unless there is a major simplification of the fares structure then it'll be a disaster closing the vast majority of ticket offices - I can gurantee you will see vast numbers of passengers travelling on trains with an invalid ticket as a result of the closures

Exactly this.

(There's always a silver lining though - the unpaid fares window people at Leeds are going to be rubbing their hands with glee)

 

[A0]

We get a lot of people who lack an understanding of how tickets work or who struggle with English (at a guess I'd say there are some days when up to 25-35% of the typical 100-150 customers per shift are in these categories) and basically wouldn't have a clue if they were left to do it at a TVM or an app.

This, and during times of disruption, is where a ticket office is important and unless there is a major simplification of the fares structure then it'll be a disaster closing the vast majority of ticket offices - I can gurantee you will see vast numbers of passengers travelling on trains with an invalid ticket as a result of the closures. This isn't progress and your argument is idealogical but not reality.

Those who struggle with English by and large benefit from using technology, because Apps and Websites can be translated into a language they understand - whereas you're average ticket office staff member is going to be, at best, bi lingual (on the basis that the population average is about 1/3rd are bi-lingual).

On the times of disruption, frankly what matters is having a member of staff present, not having them sat in a ticket office. A member of staff on the gateline is just as much use as somebody sat in a ticket office.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not correct - it'll depend entirely on where, in the Greater Manchester area, you're travelling in from. If you're on the Bolton corridor or the Eccles corridor, or from most of the South side of Manchester you won't bother with the ML, you'll use the train to Piccadilly.

Our two statements aren't incompatible. There are a few places where the train will be preferred. However the vast majority of passenger journeys to Manchester for onward long distance rail are by a combination of Metrolink, bus and taxi. NOT by rail. Simply because rail is a tiny-minority mode of local transport in Greater Manchester because most of it is dire, with unreliable hourly services with old DMUs.

Bus, in fact, is by far the most-used mode of public transport for getting to central Manchester from Greater Manchester, I believe. Yes, even from Bolton and the likes.

The only corridors where that is true are the Bury and Altrincham corridors.

The 1990s called and want their Metrolink map back.

 

[A0]

That's just not true.

So can you explain why the morning arrivals into places like Manchester Piccadilly are often full and standing whereas the departures at that time usually aren't and it's the reverse in the early evening ?

 

[yorksrob]

Well it's all just rough guesstimates at the end of the day really as we don't have access to the raw figures that GWR will have (they can probably work out how many tickets are being issued minute by minute!) but as I said in my post it seems crackers that Paddington (and various other major London termini) won't have a dedicated ticket office. My point was simply that 100 tickets an hour, considering the volume of passengers, isn't really that much. Think of it another way, excluding Crossrail and Heathrow Express, there are something like 11 GWR departures per hour from Paddington. So again, speaking very very roughly, they're selling something like 9 tickets per departure from the ticket office. It really isn't that many in the grand scheme!

Now, if it were me, I wouldn't close the Paddington ticket office entirely. I'd move to the more large bank branch approach where you carpet bomb machines into the main open space of the ticket area (and that are directly in eyeline as you enter plus can do 90%+ of the required transactions), position several members of staff in this area (who would have dedicated retail training) who will be able to assist the majority of people who have a query and show them how to use the machines to fulfil their requirements and then have one or two counters tucked away that staff can direct people to when they have more complex issues that cannot be resolved on the machines.

However, at the same time, the volume of sales is not a compelling argument for just maintaining the status quo. What is being done at Paddington, to my mind, is barmy. But equally it seems a bit daft to keep a full traditional ticket office when that's your volume of sales.

In the case of Paddington, I would probably keep a smaller traditional ticket office.

The comparison with banks is an interesting one. My own branch went down this route a couple of years ago and now looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. I always seem to find myself calling out to the floor walker when trying to get past some convoluted and counterintuitive computer screen. I imagine this will be repeated many times for those trying to book complicated train journeys.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Not correct - it'll depend entirely on where, in the Greater Manchester area, you're travelling in from. If you're on the Bolton corridor or the Eccles corridor, or from most of the South side of Manchester you won't bother with the ML, you'll use the train to Piccadilly.

The only corridors where that is true are the Bury and Altrincham corridors.

ORR data for Piccadilly for April 2021 to March 2022:



Obviously the methodology can't be 100% reliable, especially for interchanges, but the scale of the difference between the two numbers is pretty massive

 

[A0]

Our two statements aren't incompatible. There are a few places where the train will be preferred. However the vast majority of passenger journeys to Manchester for onward long distance rail are by a combination of Metrolink, bus and taxi. NOT by rail. Simply because rail is a tiny-minority mode of local transport in Greater Manchester because most of it is dire, with unreliable hourly services with old DMUs.

Bus, in fact, is by far the most-used mode of public transport for getting to central Manchester from Greater Manchester, I believe. Yes, even from Bolton and the likes.



The 1990s called and want their Metrolink map back.

Bit in bold - yes, however that will usually be for a journey *to* Central Manchester, not to Central Manchester to then head onward by a long distance train.

 

[yorksrob]

Yes, then you wouldn't have the absurd situation of Manchester Piccadilly closing, but Salford Crescent staying open.

Indeed. I presume this is down to the Government's deference to the half-baked musings of private companies.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Bit in bold - yes, however that will usually be for a journey *to* Central Manchester, not to Central Manchester to then head onward by a long distance train.

It'll be either. If you don't get that, you probably don't know GM very well. Local rail there is utterly terrible - people will use other modes to get to Piccadilly (or drive to Stockport) to make long distance journeys even if they have local rail options in a lot of cases.

There are also a lot of people who live in or near the city who don't have local rail options at all. Manchester Oxford Road and Piccadilly are the local stations for tens of thousands of students, for instance.

 

[A0]

ORR data for Piccadilly for April 2021 to March 2022:

View attachment 138639

Obviously the methodology can't be 100% reliable, especially for interchanges, but the scale of the difference between the two numbers is pretty massive

Though it doesn't show where people have bought tickets where the ticket is split i.e. they have a ticket from 'x' to Manchester Piccadilly and a 'Piccadilly to London' ticket. Those wouldn't show as interchange, yet a number of sites would sell the tickets in this way.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Jul 2023 ==

It'll be either. If you don't get that, you probably don't know GM very well. Local rail there is utterly terrible - people will use other modes to get to Piccadilly (or drive to Stockport) to make long distance journeys even if they have local rail options in a lot of cases.

And you'd be wrong. The point with somewhere like Bolton is you would use the train to get to Piccadilly, because driving it would take too long (that's before you consider parking) and the bus is slow. It takes about 50 minutes and most buses terminate around Exchange, so you're not at Piccadilly.

If you're going to drive, you're more likely to drive to Wigan, Warrington or Preston. But that's no different to other cities such as Birmingham or London where people would drive away from the city centre to a suitable railhead, rather than try to drive into the city centre and seek parking in the vicinity.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Though it doesn't show where people have bought tickets where the ticket is split i.e. they have a ticket from 'x' to Manchester Piccadilly and a 'Piccadilly to London' ticket. Those wouldn't show as interchange, yet a number of sites would sell the tickets in this way.

The ratio of entries/exits to interchanges is just under 16:1

You're overthinking this - most people don't 'start' their journey at places like Manchester Piccadilly - they arrive into it as a city centre terminus, so have bought a ticket somewhere else.

Are you really saying that the use of split tickets is distorting the data to the extent that in reality more people interchange at Piccadilly than start/end their journeys there?

 

[Bletchleyite]

And you'd be wrong. The point with somewhere like Bolton is you would use the train to get to Piccadilly, because driving it would take too long (that's before you consider parking) and the bus is slow. It takes about 50 minutes and most buses terminate around Exchange, so you're not at Piccadilly.

If you're going to drive, you're more likely to drive to Wigan, Warrington or Preston. But that's no different to other cities such as Birmingham or London where people would drive away from the city centre to a suitable railhead, rather than try to drive into the city centre and seek parking in the vicinity.

Perhaps I'd agree if you said "the point with Bolton", but there are very few GM heavy rail stations that have more than an hourly DMU, and people will use a bus every 10 minutes in preference to that, and if near Metrolink they'll use that even if it's slower than heavy rail (lots of people use it from Rochdale for instance), because it's simple, frequent and reliable.

Perhaps Hadfield passengers would be more likely to connect too, but that's the only vaguely decent "S-Bahn" in GM.

 

[yorksrob]

You're overthinking this - most people don't 'start' their journey at places like Manchester Piccadilly - they arrive into it as a city centre terminus, so have bought a ticket somewhere else.

Salford Crescent on the other hand is close to alot of housing, isn't a 'city centre' terminus people will be arriving at by and large. It's more likely to be the starting point of a journey. Then there's the local "clientele" - it may be a security thing to retain a separate ticket office at Salford Crescent.

People will go to the big staffed station to do their complicated purchases. The only reason for the respective proposals for the two are the differing opinions of the two operating companies.

 

[Lewisham2221]

If some of the postsers on this thread were to be believed:

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people per day, driving to an unknown railway station - without first having done any sort of check as to parking facilities available, staffing, opening hours etc. Upon arrival, they head for the ticket office (presumably on the off chance that said station a] has one, b] it is open). They have absolutely no idea what services operate from the station or what time the next train is. They do, however, know that they want to make an extremely complex journey, with multiple changes, requiring seat reservations and approximately 17367 different ticket options - which the nice chap/chapess behind the window will be more than happy to spend the next 20 minutes sorting out, as it means they get a break from watching the CCTV (Apparently one person sat in an office, occasionally viewing a CCTV feed between the hords of customers queuing to buy a ticket, 0600-1300 keeps the hundreds of local miscreants away). The customer doesn't own a mobile phone of any kind, and has had their bank card stolen on the way to the station, but still has several hundred pounds in cash on them, in order to pay for there train tickets.

 

[A0]

Are you really saying that the use of split tickets is distorting the data to the extent that in reality more people interchange at Piccadilly than start/end their journeys there?

I'm saying we don't know - but if you buy a ticket from 'suburban' Manchester to London via the Avanti website and it's an advance on the Avanti service, you'll usually get two tickets - one a 'standard' single from whichever station to Piccadilly and then the advance from Piccadilly to London. So the effect of that isn't know.

 

[A0]

People will go to the big staffed station to do their complicated purchases. The only reason for the respective proposals for the two are the differing opinions of the two operating companies.

Most people don't live in big cities and won't make a 10 mile journey into a "big city" station to do that.

Notwithstanding, most people don't do that, because if they did, then ticket offices would be selling rather more than 10% of the total ticket sales..........

 

[Bletchleyite]

Most people don't live in big cities and won't make a 10 mile journey into a "big city" station to do that.

Notwithstanding, most people don't do that, because if they did, then ticket offices would be selling rather more than 10% of the total ticket sales..........

Most people book online. But of those who don't book online, rather a lot use the big-city stations. As I mentioned, Piccadilly basically is the local station for probably well over 100K people, noting also that a lot of GM stations are unstaffed or have very limited booking office hours. Sure, those people will have Oxford Road and Victoria as options, but arguably it would make more sense to have it at Piccadilly than Oxford Road - and if this was being considered holistically it would be, i.e. Northern would take over Piccadilly and close Oxford Road. (It's a bit of an odd historical accident that Piccadilly is run by the minority TOC anyway but Leeds isn't!)

We aren't talking people making special journeys - rather a lot of people who live in GM work in Manchester city centre and can pop in on the way to/from work or on lunch.

 

[A0]

I agree.

I read a story last week, just after the proposals were first mooted, of a blind man who asked a TOC how he should buy a ticket when they closed his booking office. He was told that a member of staff would show him how to use a TVM. This is the mentality of some of the people making these decisions. Of course, he may be travelling when one of these ridiculously named Journey Makers, or Customer Ambassadors are present. Then again they might be on a break or helping another passenger somewhere else. Or he might be unlucky and have just a 'roving' Journey Maker.

Even a The Telegraph are publishing articles saying the railway has no compassion:

Closing ticket offices is a cruel blow against the old and disabled

The rail companies want to strip away the last vestige of easily accessible help

www.telegraph.co.uk

I am going to ask you to kick up a bit of a stink. Perhaps on your own behalf, or perhaps for someone you know who is elderly or disabled. Or failing that, for your future self – who, if you live long enough, will one day crave a human arm to guide you safely from A to B.

The UK’s train operators are planning to close almost every station ticket office over the next three years. Just under 1,000 ticket offices will be converted into food or retail outlets, or in some cases flats, while staff will – we are assured – wander the platforms providing roving assistance to passengers.

You don’t have to be disabled to know that this is a terrible idea. A ticket office is more than just a place to buy tickets. It is the first and most recognisable point of human contact in any transport hub. Because it is a manned post, it provides a sense of security and oversight. Everyone knows where to locate it (including all guide dogs, incidentally), and what we will find behind its plexiglass window: a paid professional, however surly, whose job it is to offer the kind of individual service that no algorithm can supply.

Now imagine that you are elderly or disabled. Perhaps, like my mother, you are both: old enough to be going blind. You can’t drive anymore, so you must get the train. But you can’t buy a ticket on an app or a website, because you can’t see well enough. You can’t even use the ticket machines in the station, because they have gone touchscreen, too.

In desperation, you might ask a passer-by for help. Disability charities warn that, since ticket offices began to close, there has been a huge increase in blind and elderly rail passengers giving their credit cards to strangers – not all of whom turn out to be good Samaritans.

Suppose you manage to get a ticket without being mugged – what next? You need assistance to make your way safely to the right platform, and then onto your train. But if the ticket office is closed, who should you ask? How are you supposed to find a staff helper if they are roaming around the station – especially if you are blind, or slow-moving or in a wheelchair?

Rail operators protest that only one in eight tickets is currently bought from a ticket office. But that’s a lot of tickets: 118,000,000 a year. It seems incredible to me that, in this era of ceaseless corporate virtue-signalling, the needs of disabled passengers should be so blithely brushed aside.

Getting about is hard enough already if you are not young or nimble. You have to plan ahead, and take circuitous routes in order to use stations with lifts and ramps. In London, the average commute of a wheelchair user is five times longer than that of an able-bodied passenger.

And now the rail companies want to strip away the last vestige of easily accessible help. Because they are private companies (albeit providing a public service), they have the legal wriggle-room to get away with it.

But we, the public, can at least voice our dismay. A three-week consultation process is underway. The charity Transport for All has created a template letter of objection (head to www.transportforall.org.uk), to make it easier to create the necessary stink. We must preserve some humanity in the system; any of us may one day need it.

Passengers will be lost, revenue will be lost, law-abiding passengers will suffer Penalty Fares, and the railway will suffer one PR disaster after the other.

According to the RNIB, 340,000 people are registered blind or partially sighted in the UK https://www.rnib.org.uk/professiona...stered blind,part of the registration process).

Frankly with that number it would be easier just to give each of them a free rail pass for a year. Job done.

 

[Bletchleyite]

According to the RNIB, 340,000 people are registered blind or partially sighted in the UK https://www.rnib.org.uk/professionals/health-social-care-education-professionals/knowledge-and-research-hub/key-information-and-statistics-on-sight-loss-in-the-uk/#:~:text=340,000 people are registered blind,part of the registration process).

Frankly with that number it would be easier just to give each of them a free rail pass for a year. Job done.

That's the successful TfL approach. Without the Freedom Pass I suspect there would have been far more shouting about the Tube ticket office closures and buses abandoning cash payment. But in essence, in London, the vast majority of people who would have issues understanding Oyster/contactless or a TVM have free travel anyway, so it simply doesn't matter.

There is the assistance issue, but assistance at many smaller stations in places like Greater Manchester is just done by the guard putting the ramp down.

 

[yorksrob]

Most people book online. But of those who don't book online, rather a lot use the big-city stations. As I mentioned, Piccadilly basically is the local station for probably well over 100K people, noting also that a lot of GM stations are unstaffed or have very limited booking office hours. Sure, those people will have Oxford Road and Victoria as options, but arguably it would make more sense to have it at Piccadilly than Oxford Road - and if this was being considered holistically it would be, i.e. Northern would take over Piccadilly and close Oxford Road. (It's a bit of an odd historical accident that Piccadilly is run by the minority TOC anyway but Leeds isn't!)

We aren't talking people making special journeys - rather a lot of people who live in GM work in Manchester city centre and can pop in on the way to/from work or on lunch.

This is exactly it, and why the big terminals/hubs still have busy ticket offices.

 

[Trainbike46]

GWR very helpfully provide some enlightening statistics about what is actually being sold at each of their stations. Although a shame for some, it does seem to indicate that products like Rangers and Rovers just add an unnecessary complication to an already crowded ticketing system and in the wider scheme of things, their loss would be extremely insignificant. If there is a genuine business case or need for these sorts of products, the industry will make them 'smart' or like Northern, find a way to retail them without the need for staff assistance.

I find it somewhat amusing that Merseyrail could potentially end up keeping their 60 odd booking offices, staffed first to last train - parts of Merseyside could end up with more than the rest of England combined! Given a station like Bank Hall, it appears to be inaccessible for most with mobility challenges anyway - steep steps down to an island platform - can they really be selling anything more than a £4 return to Liverpool, from first to last train? It's crazy. The only reason Merseytravel has continually resisted forcing full smart ticketing on their Merseyrail concession is because they know it will make mandatory ticket offices and the huge resultant overstaffing unsustainable - and there will be significant political blowback locally removing those jobs.

Remember merseyrail ticket offices are full national rail ticket offices, so they do sell tickets to any national rail station (and some other places, like belfast, dublin, etc.); I use a merseyrail ticket office semi-regularly to buy off-peak returns from merseyside to london. I'm sure others are buying tickets to places like Manchester; It won't just be tickets within the merseyrail network