Do We Really Need Ticket Offices?

[Llanigraham]

What do you mean, 'they don't work'? They may not be valid for free bus travel outwith their own country, but as ITSO-compatible smartcards they work just fine. All you have to do is to load the railcard discount onto the card, just as Nexus Metro load the 'Gold Card' concession onto ENCTS cards, or TfL load railcard discounts onto Oyster cards. You could even reduce fare evasion by requiring people to touch their Railcard Smartcard on the TVM smartcard reader before being able to purchase discounted tickets.* Those tickets could even be loaded onto the smartcard.

* This is what Nexus Metro do if you want a concessionary chlld fare; you have to touch the Under-16 Pop card in the card reader before you can purchase a concessionary ticket.

I mean what I said.
My Welsh card does not get read in a reader on a bus in Hereford, not just it isn't valid. I know, I have tried.

And will you please stop using acronyms that mean absolutely nothing to many of us here?
ITSO?
ENCTS?
TVM?

 

[transmanche]

I mean what I said.
My Welsh card does not get read in a reader on a bus in Hereford, not just it isn't valid. I know, I have tried.

And will you please stop using acronyms that mean absolutely nothing to many of us here?
ITSO?
ENCTS?
TVM?

ITSO - Integrated Travel Smartcard Organisation (the standard used in the UK for travel smartcards)
ENCTS - English National Concessionary Travel Scheme
TVM - Ticket Vending Machine

All of these acronyms are frequently used on this site.

 

[PermitToTravel]

I mean what I said.
My Welsh card does not get read in a reader on a bus in Hereford, not just it isn't valid. I know, I have tried.

It will work if you load a valid ticket onto it.

 

[JaJaWa]

Things UK ticket machines can't (currently) do:

• Mix multiple Railcards in a single transaction

Press Add to Basket on the far left once you've chosen the ticket and you can.

 

[Andy-mc]

A bit of a latecomer to the discussion, I worked in the Ticket office for a bit and it took me the best part of a year to understand the basic workings of all the different ticket types and restrictions and I was still learning when I left. Obviously for people who make the same journeys day in day out ticketing is fairly simple for them but try booking a trip to the isle of man with seat and bike reservations where one person will be in a wheelchair needing assistance and the journey will have 3 changes, and I think most people will need a little bit of face to face help.

So do we need Ticket Offices? in their current form maybe not but I always think medium to large stations should have members of staff who are fully clued up on how all tickets work

Ultimatley id like to see Ticket offices possibly gain more powers TOC's are always banging on about improving customer service yet whenever you get a major issue or complaint the only thing you can do is give out the customer service number or comments form, sometimes for things that in reality could be dealt with a lot more efficiently at a local level, its just ensuring that all ticket office clerks had the same level of discretion somehow

 

[The Ham]

But can technology keep up with our fares structure ?

Why not? If TOC's and other ticket resellers were forced to offer the cheapest tickets, including split tickets. Then there could be a slight delay whilst the software checked all the split ticket options (although it would only need to do so once a year for off peak tickets) and checked for slower but cheaper routes. However, it could (nearly) guarantee that you couldn't get it cheaper and much more reliably than a person. In doing so there would be no need to simplify the fare structure AND passengers will win (they may not be happy that have been paying over the odds, but they will be better off going forward).
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The problem with automated systems is to a large extent you still to this day have to ask them the right questions. On a TVM it isn't very easy to tell it "I want to go to X but am willing to travel at a variety of times". That is just an example. A lot of people on here will have a very good idea what they want ticket wise when they turn up. A lot of customers in general won't, especially given the complexities of the ticket system. I think people should remember that the railways are here to provide a service and that the customers are not there to provide a profit or income.

However, if you turn up to a ticket office and say I would like to travel on Friday what is the cheapest train to catch I doubt that you will always get a full answer, rather you would have to give a narrower time range. You certainly couldn't do what a lot of airlines do which give you the option for the cheapest tickets for a number of days.

Yes for most business travel that wouldn't be useful but for students or those visiting family it could save them a lot.

Just because technology doesn't work well enough now doesn't mean that it couldn't be made to work better. I suggest that those who specify the requirements only ask for what they need without too many bells and whistles. It would only take one ticket reseller to create a smarter system and then the others would either need to catch up or buy the smarter system so as to not lose market share.

If someone developed a system with a smart algorithm that checked ask split ticket options and gave you the fastest, cheapest and closest to your defined arrival/departure time (which worked) then that website would be the go to site. It may take a year or two but a few high profile endorsements from money saving expert, watchdog, rip off Britain and a few news channels would probably do it. Do you think that the TOC's or The train line would sit back and do nothing if they saw 5% of all their sales disappear to another party.

 

[glbotu]

So, other than the 5 pages of discussions over the security of 3D Secure (yes, it's broken and insecure, no, it's not more broken than Chip and Pin - go look this up if you want, the first 4 bytes request the next n bytes, it's trivially easy to get all of your card details off a chip and pin card, or to spoof an amount in a chip and pin reader, or to spoof the transaction security, due to the concept of "Pin Not Entered" at byte 7, all banking security systems are terrible, except those designed to protect the banks' money, if you're really worried, I recommend a high spec safe and cash), it is functionally immaterial to the discussion. We're still not discussing insta-closing all ticket offices right now. As time goes on, the security will improve, (some) banks have taken steps to rectify chip & pin security as well as their implementations of 3D Secure and as time goes on and the lawsuits get bigger, those will further improve. Already, contactless is actually pretty secure (provided no-one has the physical card - compared with Chip & Pin and 3D Secure, neither of which require the physical card).

The point made by fowler9 is the more important point. People are flexible, it's why we don't automate literally every process ever. The fares structure is easily programmable, because it's just a set of rules, people's foibles are not. Now, I buy quite a lot of my tickets online, I know all the things I'm willing to do to make a journey. When I buy a ticket online, through websites with highly functional user interfaces using tried and tested mouse & keyboard, a mature technology, this process can take 10 - 30 minutes. An example why:

I want to travel from Newcastle to Brockenhurst,
On a specific Friday (insert date),
I want to leave after 1600,
I want to find the cheapest ticket,
I want to have an hour in London to buy dinner
I don't want to get in too late.

I want to return from Southampton Aiport Parkway to Durham
On the Sunday
I want flexibility on my travel from Southampton Airport Parkway to London
But I don't care how long I stay in London.
I want to find the cheapest ticket,
I don't want to get in too late.

All with a 16-25 railcard.
And I have an oyster card, so I don't want to add cross-London travel.
Seat reservations all the way

Now, just to type that out has taken a non-trivial amount of time (say 2 minutes, inc. thinking time). Now, imagine trying to enter that into a touch-screen interface which understands it. OK, that's a particularly horrible example and I'm sure even the hardiest of ticket office staff would have difficulty, but they'd do a damn site better than a person standing at a TVM either looking up multiple options (as I say, that's a 30 minute job on a proper computer), or specifically entering the options and having a machine come up with:

Advance: 1625 Newcastle - King's Cross
Advance: 2105 Waterloo - Brockenhurst
Day Return Weekend Deal: Off-Peak Times Only Southampton Aiport Pkwy - Waterloo
Advance: 2100 King's Cross - Durham

(it was all barely £60 if memory serves me right)

Anyway, the point being that it's how the user interfaces with the machine that's why ticket offices are needed, not any technological barrier.

 

[Bletchleyite]

And yet some of us find it much easier to spend that half hour (or whatever) slowly, in my own time, building up the perfect solution from those requirements rather than trying to explain them to another person quickly with a queue building up, inevitably forgetting something, and walking away from the window with not quite what I wanted.

That said, I don't see the station as the place to deal with selling anything other than through tickets. It uses a huge amount of time. Better to fix the system so through tickets are not more expensive than split tickets, e.g. by changing how Advance quotas work.

 

[glbotu]

And yet some of us find it much easier to spend that half hour (or whatever) slowly, in my own time, building up the perfect solution from those requirements rather than trying to explain them to another person quickly with a queue building up, inevitably forgetting something, and walking away from the window with not quite what I wanted.

That said, I don't see the station as the place to deal with selling anything other than through tickets. It uses a huge amount of time. Better to fix the system so through tickets are not more expensive than split tickets, e.g. by changing how Advance quotas work.

Ah, but that's where technology could be used better. Things like ticket-splitting could be put on the customer service software etc, where a person well trained in using it, having a good idea of what was done before etc. I was suggesting what a person less well versed in technology than ourselves would do, rather than what I would do. I obviously just did it all on my own, but I can't imagine my mum doing the same, for example. Certainly if in a rush (ie: no time to research), I'm always happy to ask for "the cheapest" or "the fastest", with an iterative process to figure out what I really want:

Example:

- I'd like the cheapest journey from Cambridge to London today please

> Do you mind when you travel?

- No

> Do you need a return?

- Yes

> Coming back today?

- Yes

> CDR AGA only etc...........

Currently, a person will get through this interaction much quicker than a person with a TVM. Even just for something as simple as buying a ticket from somewhere, to somewhere else from not either of those stations, a TVM would slow that down a lot, when you've got a season ticket for part of a journey, say. For someone unfamiliar with the system, a person will be better at understanding your requirements than a machine - and I say this as someone who's very good with machines.

 

[gordonthemoron]

Until UK TVMs can do as much as DB ones, then we'll still need ticket offices

 

[AlterEgo]

Ah, but that's where technology could be used better. Things like ticket-splitting could be put on the customer service software etc, where a person well trained in using it, having a good idea of what was done before etc. I was suggesting what a person less well versed in technology than ourselves would do, rather than what I would do. I obviously just did it all on my own, but I can't imagine my mum doing the same, for example. Certainly if in a rush (ie: no time to research), I'm always happy to ask for "the cheapest" or "the fastest", with an iterative process to figure out what I really want:

Example:

- I'd like the cheapest journey from Cambridge to London today please

> Do you mind when you travel?

- No

> Do you need a return?

- Yes

> Coming back today?

- Yes

> CDR AGA only etc...........

Currently, a person will get through this interaction much quicker than a person with a TVM. Even just for something as simple as buying a ticket from somewhere, to somewhere else from not either of those stations, a TVM would slow that down a lot, when you've got a season ticket for part of a journey, say. For someone unfamiliar with the system, a person will be better at understanding your requirements than a machine - and I say this as someone who's very good with machines.

A person will probably be more savvy than a machine in most cases where there are complex requests, yes.

I note you mention "unfamiliar with the system". There ought to be no need to be "familiar with the system" to get the best deal. It should be intuitive and choice should be restricted. There are dozens of rail products out there, which have sprung up thanks to the political train of thought (sorry) through the 90s and 00s that the railway should try to serve everyone, no matter how niche. It's all very well-intentioned but it's been something of a boiling frog.

There are intuitive ticketing systems on many railway networks across Europe but unfortunately ours isn't one of them.

It will take a very brave person to score though the ticketing manual and remove a vast swathe of products and restrictions. It would be like doing a Beeching - extraordinarily painful, with many losers at the time (and there might be things that go that we will lament) - but it might just make the overall system a lot better.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It will take a very brave person to score though the ticketing manual and remove a vast swathe of products and restrictions. It would be like doing a Beeching - extraordinarily painful, with many losers at the time (and there might be things that go that we will lament) - but it might just make the overall system a lot better.

Indeed.

That bravery may well pay off, though. If it genuinely removes the need for ticket offices meaning a staffing and therefore cost reduction, it could well be a revenue *negative* change which would please many passengers.

In some ways what is needed is to actually start completely from scratch - forget any of the present system ever existed. Now that would be an interesting topic for a new thread - if you started from scratch, and couldn't change actual train services, how would you design the ticketing and reservation system?

 

[The Ham]

Indeed.

That bravery may well pay off, though. If it genuinely removes the need for ticket offices meaning a staffing and therefore cost reduction, it could well be a revenue *negative* change which would please many passengers.

In some ways what is needed is to actually start completely from scratch - forget any of the present system ever existed. Now that would be an interesting topic for a new thread - if you started from scratch, and couldn't change actual train services, how would you design the ticketing and reservation system?

It could just take a lot of programing to do, but if the algorithm was smart enough a website could remove the need to manually do split ticketing. If the people behind the system were brave enough they could offer incentives such as we'll refund you double the difference (or really brave a full refund and you keep your tickets) if you find a way to travel for less (so as to build those ticket options into their algorithm).

That would mean that people would feel assured that they were getting the best price for their tickets and as such would likely flock to such a site in their droves.

It would cost a lot to set up, but it would render all other ticket site websites mostly obsolete (still fine for most turn up and go tickets) and so the owners would be able to either rake it in by selling tickets themselves or by licensing the use of their site to others.

To find the cheapest would take a bit of time and require some fairly powerful brains to crunch the numbers. However if the website loaded the fastest journey time (i.e. assuming through ticketing for journey planning purposes) first and run the numbers in the background before loading up the fares starting with through tickets and then giving the very cheapest (so as to show how much people were able to save) with an option to click to check for slower and cheaper routes. All that would mean that to the user the website would appear to be loading fairly fast while the site has time to crunch the numbers whilst the user selects to see the fares and then selects to see slower and cheaper routes.

If it was truly smart it would soon learn which options are most likely to result in a cheaper ticket prices and show those first and then double check the other options.

If it also gave you one code that allowed you to then collect any/all of the tickets that you have purchased but not collected from a TVM it could speed up ticket collection (if only one ticket has been brought it spits them out, if more than one you can select which ones to collect or there's a button to collect all), assuming that loading it to a smart ticket or touching in and out with a credit card aren't options.

 

[AlterEgo]

It could just take a lot of programing to do, but if the algorithm was smart enough a website could remove the need to manually do split ticketing. If the people behind the system were brave enough they could offer incentives such as we'll refund you double the difference (or really brave a full refund and you keep your tickets) if you find a way to travel for less (so as to build those ticket options into their algorithm).

That would mean that people would feel assured that they were getting the best price for their tickets and as such would likely flock to such a site in their droves.

It would cost a lot to set up, but it would render all other ticket site websites mostly obsolete (still fine for most turn up and go tickets) and so the owners would be able to either rake it in by selling tickets themselves or by licensing the use of their site to others.

To find the cheapest would take a bit of time and require some fairly powerful brains to crunch the numbers. However if the website loaded the fastest journey time (i.e. assuming through ticketing for journey planning purposes) first and run the numbers in the background before loading up the fares starting with through tickets and then giving the very cheapest (so as to show how much people were able to save) with an option to click to check for slower and cheaper routes. All that would mean that to the user the website would appear to be loading fairly fast while the site has time to crunch the numbers whilst the user selects to see the fares and then selects to see slower and cheaper routes.

If it was truly smart it would soon learn which options are most likely to result in a cheaper ticket prices and show those first and then double check the other options.

If it also gave you one code that allowed you to then collect any/all of the tickets that you have purchased but not collected from a TVM it could speed up ticket collection (if only one ticket has been brought it spits them out, if more than one you can select which ones to collect or there's a button to collect all), assuming that loading it to a smart ticket or touching in and out with a credit card aren't options.

But then you get Mrs Evans, 62, of Acacia Avenue ending up with a combination of an Advance, an overdistance OffPeak ticket and a Cherwell Valley Day Ranger, saving £5, in order to make a simple journey. Baffling to the uninitiated.

This is not how it should be.

 

[pne]

In some ways what is needed is to actually start completely from scratch - forget any of the present system ever existed. Now that would be an interesting topic for a new thread - if you started from scratch, and couldn't change actual train services, how would you design the ticketing and reservation system?

Make everything "free", as in paid completely from subsidies.

Gets you rid of all RPIs, TVMs, ticket offices (and their staff), and gatelines.

No more debates about whether a certain route was permitted or reasonable or whether break of journey is possible on a ticket with restrictions "ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha" or not.

No more rammed trains on the first "off-peak" service. (Instead, the rammed train will probably be a bit earlier....)

 

[The Ham]

But then you get Mrs Evans, 62, of Acacia Avenue ending up with a combination of an Advance, an overdistance OffPeak ticket and a Cherwell Valley Day Ranger, saving £5, in order to make a simple journey. Baffling to the uninitiated.

This is not how it should be.

However Mrs Evens has the choice of saving £5 (probably limited to a specific train on the Advance part of her journey) or buying the simple ticket (probably with no restrictions) as the website will still display the simple fare as an option to buy the ticket as well as the cheapest. There would be many who would pay the £5 to be sure that they have flexibility rather than being fixed to a set train.

The thing is, with such a website the complex nature of the fare structure would be easier to see and so, possibly paradoxically, something would be more likely to happen to fix the system. The TOC's would probably want to fix it so that they could go back to people buying tickets from their websites and staff. As this would be hitting their income and so they would be more willing for fares to be fixed in a way that was beneficial to passengers (at least some of the time). All the time that the TOC's are likely to be making money from people not splitting tickets and only by travelling the fastest route then there is unlikely to be much that will make them want to change their ticketing structure.

 

[Bletchleyite]

TOCs could also seek to "solve" it by determining that, like airlines, liability ends at the end of the ticket you are presently on. So if you "run out of trains", you're paying for the taxi.

 

[The Ham]

Make everything "free", as in paid completely from subsidies.

Gets you rid of all RPIs, TVMs, ticket offices (and their staff), and gatelines.

No more debates about whether a certain route was permitted or reasonable or whether break of journey is possible on a ticket with restrictions "ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha" or not.

No more rammed trains on the first "off-peak" service. (Instead, the rammed train will probably be a bit earlier....)

In theory it would be possible to pay for the railways just by charging people a tax, the problem comes when rail travel is free there would be no limit to the number of people wishing to use it. As such every train would be rammed.

A simpler system would be that akin to the London travel system where there are zones and travel between zones is set by how many zones you go through to get from your start zone to your end zone (i.e. 1 to 6, 1 to 3 or starting and ending in zone 4), however even that wouldn't be without its faults.

Another simple system would be to charge a set amount for travel (pence per mile) depending on average loadings in the last year, and then apply a discount based on how many stations that service called at. In doing so it would mean that slower services would be cheaper than faster services which could mean that passengers were more evenly spread over all train services.

 

[infobleep]

Given they can't get the new ticket designs right for all ticket machines and devices, what hopw have we that ticket vending machines could be designed right. I'm not talking about bugs that crop up during use but blatant flaws due to a lack of thought or testing in advance.

Therefore ticket offices are required.

Tickets across much of the UK are complicated. It's probably less complicated in London so easier to deal with on a ticket vending machine.

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

 

[talltim]

Likewise Windows 98 had a lot of diagnostic support and was relatively easy to find out what was going wrong. Now the help tends to just say "contact you administrator" as Windows tried to stop you from messing with the systems very much.

I hate that message. I am the Administrator

 

[Bletchleyite]

A simpler system would be that akin to the London travel system where there are zones and travel between zones is set by how many zones you go through to get from your start zone to your end zone (i.e. 1 to 6, 1 to 3 or starting and ending in zone 4), however even that wouldn't be without its faults.

I do actually advocate a zonal system for regional ticketing. The Dutch model of "square" rather than concentric zones would work well. To avoid anomalies at zone boundaries, two zones would be the minimum fare. Either a standard price per zone could be used, or TOCs could set the fares (one off-peak single, one peak single, one day rover) for travel in or across any given zone under their control.

For peak times, specific zones would be dedicated as city zones, clearly marked in timetables and on PIS. A peak-time ticket would be required for any train which is timetabled to arrive at any station in one of those zones from 0430 to 1000 inclusive, and for any train timetabled to depart any station in one of those zones between 1600 and 1900.

For InterCity journeys it's much more complicated. If yield management is to be used, it's hard to imagine anything other than having an Anytime Single fare (perhaps also zonal) then various, again zonal, Advances available right up to travel. It's walk-up off peak tickets that cause almost all of the anomalies. Even though they are what I use most, I think removing them allowing a more easyJet/Ryanair type structure would probably be a genuine simplification that the vast majority of passengers would actually like. It will be interesting to see how First East Coast gets on with doing essentially this.

The real sticking point is where IC acts as regional, which is very much a UK thing. I'm not sure how to solve that, as that too causes a great many of the anomalies.

 

[AlterEgo]

However Mrs Evens has the choice of saving £5 (probably limited to a specific train on the Advance part of her journey) or buying the simple ticket (probably with no restrictions) as the website will still display the simple fare as an option to buy the ticket as well as the cheapest. There would be many who would pay the £5 to be sure that they have flexibility rather than being fixed to a set train.

The thing is, with such a website the complex nature of the fare structure would be easier to see and so, possibly paradoxically, something would be more likely to happen to fix the system. The TOC's would probably want to fix it so that they could go back to people buying tickets from their websites and staff. As this would be hitting their income and so they would be more willing for fares to be fixed in a way that was beneficial to passengers (at least some of the time). All the time that the TOC's are likely to be making money from people not splitting tickets and only by travelling the fastest route then there is unlikely to be much that will make them want to change their ticketing structure.

But the vast majority of people do not actually want reams of choice and make complex decisions, they want a simple system. They want to feel reassured that they have the best value ticket for their needs, and that they have not missed out on a better deal.

Mrs Evans does not want to know that there is a combination of three tickets (each with vastly different conditions) that is cheaper than the one she really wants. She feels ripped off as a result.

Where split ticketing occurs, especially on interavailable tickets, you have a winning TOC and a losing TOC too. The losing TOC is usually an InterCity one.

As Neil alluded to earlier, this is certainly not how you would set up the fares system if you were starting the network from scratch. Surely you can see that the whole system is arcane from the point of view of the vast majority of rail users?

 

[The Ham]

But the vast majority of people do not actually want reams of choice and make complex decisions, they want a simple system. They want to feel reassured that they have the best value ticket for their needs, and that they have not missed out on a better deal.

Mrs Evans does not want to know that there is a combination of three tickets (each with vastly different conditions) that is cheaper than the one she really wants. She feels ripped off as a result.

Where split ticketing occurs, especially on interavailable tickets, you have a winning TOC and a losing TOC too. The losing TOC is usually an InterCity one.

As Neil alluded to earlier, this is certainly not how you would set up the fares system if you were starting the network from scratch. Surely you can see that the whole system is arcane from the point of view of the vast majority of rail users?

I agree that the system is bad and that we wouldn't set it up as we are from scratch, however the TOC's are happy with the status quo as they make money from it and few people know that they are being ripped off (sometimes without even having complicated tickets).

Hense why I was saying that such a website may actually force the industry to do something about it. However, such a website would require a lot of effort to set up and so backers would be nervous that by setting it up the system could change before they recoup their investment if such a website attracted a lot of people from TOC's web sites.

There is a major flaw in that if you are traveling to stations between Woking and Guildford from Fleet or any station west of it during the peak, it is cheaper to buy a ticket to Godalming than to the station you want to go to (as it is an anytime ticket and allows breaks in journeys). In the case of Basingstoke a return to Godalming is £19.00 whilst a return to Woking is £22.40 and Guildford £24.20. It is enough of a saving that if you are willing to limit yourself to services that call at Woking, then from some stations it can be cheaper to split your ticket so that you have a return to Godalming and a return between Woking and Waterloo (although not in the case of Basingstoke).

For instance Winchester; where an anytime return is £67.10 whilst by splitting at Woking (with a ticket to Godalming) it is £47.30. A saving of nearly £20. Likewise Southampton; where an anytime return is £80.20 whilst by splitting at Woking (with a ticket to Godalming) it is £48.90. A saving of over £30.

 

[HH]

... the TOC's are happy with the status quo as they make money from it.

Absolute balderdash! The TOCs do not make any more money from the status quo than they would however ticket pricing was done - they bid on the status quo and are protected against Change. Who benefits from the status quo is the treasury, which eventually equates to the taxpayer.

Another thing is that if ticket prices were sorted out then there would be losers as well as winners unless the government was happy to take a hit on its premium revenue (and pass that to the taxpayer). This is the reason it's never been sorted - the losers make a lot more noise than the winners.

 

[al78]

In theory it would be possible to pay for the railways just by charging people a tax, the problem comes when rail travel is free there would be no limit to the number of people wishing to use it. As such every train would be rammed.

I doubt that very much. The car is the most convenient, quickest and most practical way to make journeys for a lot of (probably most) people. Free rail travel does not solve the hassle of getting too and from stations, having to travel when the timetable dictates, having to travel from and too somewhere where there is a station, requiring more physical effort (which is significant if you have poor health), discomfort if the train is crowded, exposure to annoying people who think the outside world is an extension of their house, and taking an unfeasibly long time to get there (i.e. a similar journey time to cycling in my case for some journeys), even without the niggle delays and occasional long waiting times between connections.

 

[The Ham]

I doubt that very much. The car is the most convenient, quickest and most practical way to make journeys for a lot of (probably most) people. Free rail travel does not solve the hassle of getting too and from stations, having to travel when the timetable dictates, having to travel from and too somewhere where there is a station, requiring more physical effort (which is significant if you have poor health), discomfort if the train is crowded, exposure to annoying people who think the outside world is an extension of their house, and taking an unfeasibly long time to get there (i.e. a similar journey time to cycling in my case for some journeys), even without the niggle delays and occasional long waiting times between connections.

While I agree that there are a lot of people for whom rail travel would not be practical, however even with the fairly high rail fares that we have there are a lot of very busy trains. Just look at the number of people who use their free bus pass who before having it never used the bus.

In reality not ever train would be rammed, that was a slight exaggeration however probably not by much.
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Absolute balderdash! The TOCs do not make any more money from the status quo than they would however ticket pricing was done - they bid on the status quo and are protected against Change. Who benefits from the status quo is the treasury, which eventually equates to the taxpayer.

Another thing is that if ticket prices were sorted out then there would be losers as well as winners unless the government was happy to take a hit on its premium revenue (and pass that to the taxpayer). This is the reason it's never been sorted - the losers make a lot more noise than the winners.

I didn't say that the TOC's made MORE money, I said that they made money.

However, it is possible that the TOC's would lose out in that if they are taking a profit of (say) 3% of the turnover, then if turnover falls then if their percentage stays the same then their profit will fall. In that 3% of £100 (£3) is more than 3% of £90 (£2.70), to retain the £3 profit their share would have to rise to 3.33%. Therefore either the TOC takes a hit (£2.70 rather than £3) or the tax payer takes even more of a hit (£10.30 rather than £10).

 

[Bletchleyite]

Free rail travel would be extremely unfair as not everyone has journeys possible by rail. If any public transport was being offered completely free, local bus travel would be the best target for that money and would do far more for social inclusion.

 

[transmanche]

Free rail travel would be extremely unfair as not everyone has journeys possible by rail.

It's 'extremely unfair' that supermarkets often offer 10p a litre off petrol, as I'm paying for that through the cost of my shopping even though I don't drive a car to the supermarket. It's 'extremely unfair' that Waitrose offer people free cups of tea or coffee, as I'm paying for that through my shopping even though I don't drink tea or coffee. It's 'extremely unfair' that long-distance coach companies don't have to pay 'road access charges' which puts them at a competitive advantage to TOCs.

In short, life is 'extremely unfair' - there will always be 'winners' and 'losers'.

 

[Bletchleyite]

What a fully commercial organisation does with its money is its choice, and your remedy is not to give them your money.

Because there isn't a similar choice of national Government, they have to be much more balanced in what they do.

And coach companies *do* pay road access charges in the form of VED and fuel tax[1]. This is no small sum. The reason coaches are cheaper than trains is that coaches are cheaper to run than trains.

[1] Some coach routes are partially registered as local bus routes to get BSOG, a rebate of some of the fuel duty. Most however are not.

 

[Mutant Lemming]

But there are hundred and hundreds of station s that do not have ticket offices open for most of the day and thousands where they are not open from first to last train so your point isn't valid.

And going forward we have a generation who are growing up with phones and how to use them and apps from a young age and even at schools they now teach them with tablets and so on. These tech savvy youngsters will see to the demise of the ticket office quicker than most actually this nk.

Smartcards are already out of date tech in essence and its all about using your phone and bank card or even watch.

Once the older generation who are arpound55+ now start popping their clogs this will only accelerate their demise.

You may not like to hear this but it is reality

Typical economist view of life - you REALLY REALLY think a young female feels safer at an unstaffed South London station as opposed to a staffed underground station? This is the typical cut everything to the bone cheapskate view - cheapest is not best and you get what you pay for.

How the hell is my point NOT VALID ? Certainly not because you think it isn't. You think most people feel safer and there is less vandalism at Walkden of Fazakerley?
You may not like to hear this but reality is people DON'T feel safer at unstaffed stations - why don't you try asking them instead of believing obviously weighted bull**** customer "satisfaction" surveys.