Who said anything about behind glass? So you want all ticket office clerks redundant and on the dole?
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Do We Really Need Ticket Offices?
- Thread starter E_Reeves
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Who said anything about behind glass? So you want all ticket office clerks redundant and on the dole?
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R
RailUK Forums
No, ticket offices should be reduced to travel centres only. The railway should actively seek ways of taking sales online. Why aren't seasons done online yet? That is mad.
At stations with TVMs former booking office staff might be better used floor waking and answering General Enquiries rather than being behind a ticket office screen.
The railway should push its ticket sales through other channels too. Off licences, Post Offices, online, bus stations, mobile apps, and I'm sure a whole broad range of payment methods that seem likely to spring up in the coming years.
I don't propose doing it overnight but the changes made should be considered strongly.
Customers will adapt to new ways of doing business. Cheques only stopped being accepted by many retailers a few years ago.
It is pointless to resist change and insist people be employed "because they need a job". If that approach were correct we'd still have porters and you'd have a fireman in your cab doing the crossword.
Llanigraham
On Moderation
You would be happy to see routes closed with this structure?
Thankfully you will never be in charge!!
I've no idea if routes would be closed or not. It's conjecture. There are already quite a few routes which are not sustainable on their own. Keeping them open or closing them? That's a matter of government policy.
Considering the issues raised in the "Fares, Ticketing & Routing" section of this forum, increasing the number of outlets for ticket sales may be counter productive unless the range of products offered is greatly reduced (which seems to be similar to issues with ticket machines).
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
No, you avoid that problem by introducing evening peak restrictions.
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I really don't see why what he proposes would result in any route closures.
FWIW, I'm in favour of single fare pricing, though I would make single tickets for over a specified distance (100 miles?) valid for two days. Very few people do overnight BoJ on short distance journeys, almost nobody does a double overnight BoJ. BoJ would be allowed on all walk-up tickets within the validity period.
I'm also reasonably in favour of prescriptive routeing provided a means of changing route was available, and provided any route requested by the passenger can be ticketed at the correct fare (as it can in Switzerland - even TVMs can do it!). I'd suggest the rule would be, to remove the complexity of excessing, that any walk-up ticket is refundable without a £10 admin fee provided, in the same transaction, another ticket is purchased valid for the same dates with either origin or destination the same, and provided the newer ticket is not cheaper (if it is, the £10 admin fee would apply to any monies returned), and provided the replacement ticket is valid for any travel already undertaken as well as that to be undertaken.
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This is exactly what I have been saying...
transmanche
Established Member
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Why even have a £10 admin fee for a purely automated transaction?
All Line Rover
Established Member
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I'm not going to take the time to rebut every "problem" that is identified with what I have mentioned, but it stands to reason that if, in the simplest fare structure imaginable, off-peak single fares were priced at exactly 50% of existing off-peak return fares rather than 10p or £1 less, more passengers would be inclined to combine a peak single fare with an off-peak single fare, regardless of the evening peak restrictions that apply, and this lost revenue would need to be compensated for somehow.
e.g. Preston to London:
Peak single remains at £172
Off-peak single cut to £44 (from £87)
More passengers will be inclined to travel on the 19:30 departure for £44 than the 18:30 departure for £172, now that a single off-peak fare on the 19:30 costs £44 instead of £87. Ergo Virgin will lose revenue (albeit Virgin - uniquely - offer the "saver half").
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In terms of the practicable fares simplification I alluded to earlier, FGW seem to manage with (super)-off-peak single fares being priced at 60% of (super)-off-peak return fares on most flows. This should be rolled out across all flows, on all TOCs. Virgin Trains have the "saver half" fares (which they have brought across to the East Coast also), but these are too complicated for passengers to understand and are not always easy to purchase.
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So people who wish to use a through train must purchase more than one ticket? Nice.
Some parts (enough to make it an issue at least) of the general public are still utterly useless when it comes to technology. Hopefully as the people growing up now (ie those who have had ipads and internet access from a young age) start to form the bulk of the railway users, moving to an online system should be far simpler (at which point there will be someone on a forum asking why people aren't embracing a new type of ticketing technology!)
As passenger numbers grow more machines don't mean less staff, yes less staff per million passengers but not always less staff. Chances are going forward there could be slightly less staff ticket offices, especially at more minor stations, but overall probably a similar number of station staff across any given TOC.
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I was not talking about the DfT changing fares, I was talking about a website making it easy to get the cheapest possible fares by splitting tickets using an algorithm, which would force a change as people would be able to always get the cheapest fares and the TOCs would be losing out anyway.
Within a franchise what you say is probably true, but when franchises come up for renewal then the TOCs will have to build it into their bid. Given that wouldn't want to do the same with for less money then they will wish to take a larger percentage of the turnover than they do now.
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For those that are advocating tickets based on direct fastest journeys, I have a senecio to which I would like you to answer.
I am in Farnborough wishing to travel to Guildford, should the fare be based on travel from Farnborough North, meaning that I wouldn't be able to travel from Farnborough Main unless I brought a ticket from Fleet. Alternatively, is it based on from Farnborough Main and make everyone traveling from Farnborough North have to buy a ticket from Blackwater. What should it be?
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Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Because speculative issuing and refunding has a cost?
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
There no such things as TOCs on this. Given the same degree of freedom as BR had, what VT dreams of is likely to be different from Northern, which will be different from C2C. But most are realistic and happy to work within regulations, which deliver a degree of certainty. DfT is never going to allow fares freedom that wasn't in the bid without taking the majority of extra profit.
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They may want a larger %, but it doesn't mean a bigger profit and it will be more driven by the risk than the lower revenue. Individual TOCs can do nothing about the problem; that's why DfT need to take the bit between their teeth, just like Transport Scotland did.
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transmanche
Established Member
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- 6,021
Why 60%? Why not 50%? Then you can do away with returns altogether.
East Coast actually had Super Off-Peak Singles at 50% of the return price long before Virgin took over. Although they were online-only and only available on specific flows (e.g. Newcastle-London), there was no requirement to purchase a ticket for the journey in the opposite direction. And that's much simpler than the 'saver half'.
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But £10 for an automated transaction? Surely £1 is more
reasonable.
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Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
That effect can be mitigated with targeted Advances. And the SVH was introduced commercially by VT, so it must be worth their while.
I'd tolerate *S at 60% of *R, but I think it would be better to go for 50% and completely abolish the returns. If you want a return ticket, buy two singles at the same time. Most people with flexible tickets aren't using the month-long flexibility, they're using the "any ((super)-off-peak) train on the same day" aspect. If long-distance singles were valid two days, that would I expect cover at least 95% of the "need date flexibility" requirement, and the other 5% would be covered by "if you don't know when you're coming back, buy it on the day".
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You'd be surprised how much admin actually costs. But it also needs to be a discouragement, which £1 isn't so much. Maybe I'd concede £5.
Oh so now you select one user group - young females - to try and make your point valid?
You should cut down on yoru hyperbole and reread what I wrote before getting all excited.
PHILIPE
Veteran Member
From what I've picked up from passengers reporting on twitter, there are many instances of TVMs out of order completely or failing to complete the process, i.e. pay and get no ticket.
People only use Twitter to complain - they don't use it to report successful transactions.
TVMs going out of order is not rare. Failing to complete a transaction (such as paying and getting no ticket) is extremely rare.
I would guess that most "failures" would be down to lack of ticket stock, especially at the more minor stations where they are scheduled to be unstaffed for much of the day.
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With regards station staff holding cash when out and about selling tickets, technology could overcome that as well. If they carry out the transaction and issue the passenger with booking code which when entered into a TVM allows them to pay with cash. Staff may need to queue jump such passengers to a TVM so as to avoid them from queuing twice, but given that such transactions would be rare (as they would still be able to take card payments and the vast majority of people needing help with an unusual ticket are unlikely to paying cash as it is unlikely to be just a few stops away and so the ticket value would likely be a relatively significant amount) it shouldn't cause too much of a problem but would solve the handling cash issue.
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That's an interesting idea. I've developed that one step further.
"Short codes" for certain tickets. Not booking references as such. Every single fare on every fare flow having a unique code, like a grid reference on a map, or a hex code.
If you bought the same ticket (say Woking to London Off Peak Return) every time, you know the code is, say, "BH73DW", just pop it right in on the home page of the TVM and pay, that's a two-step transaction right there.
If we're talking about simplification of the ticketing system, we're having a different discussion. I'd have a go, but in trying to do so, you'd have to get into the deeper problems of the system.
Fares across Europe are generally very simple, which is largely because:
1. There is a complete division between different types of train.
2. The organisational framework supports this difference.
The actual definition of something like an S-Bahn is that it's run and funded by a local Verkersverbund, whereas a Regiobahn is run by the federal state. InterCity is run by the over-arching railway system, funded at a National level. Most importantly, tickets for one are not valid on the other.
Now when you look at the British system, you have to ask yourself the question, would this suit the British railway network? Currently, we have a system which is not actually separated by service type, but where people still want to do things like demand management and competitive pricing. These work fine when you can say "take the Regiobahn" for a cheap ticket and "take the IC" for an expensive one, knowing the Regiobahn would be slower, but also normally more frequent (not always true, but generally true). The problem comes that we don't have the physical space to do this in a lot of situations. The thing is, once you start enforcing service distinctions you reduce the effective frequency, especially on commutable distances. It's pretty much understood that the UK as a whole needs more rail capacity, but without really major infrastructure projects that's not really going to allow for service distinctions, because lots of places (especially in the North) rely on the IC service to provide the commuting service (the Newcastle-Durham, Wakefield-Leeds, Sheffield-Doncaster, York-Leeds, Hull-Doncaster, Birmingham-Wolverhampton, Stoke-Manchester services). The only way to move away from that is if all these city pairs had 4 tracks between them which would be collosally expensive. The point I'm making is that we can't simplify by service distinction.
As such, you're left with much fewer ways of simplifying the fare structure. Let's look at those I could think of in turn. For simplicity purposes, let's assume that Peak/Off-Peak distinction always exists.
Zonal:
This doesn't really allow for demand management, because unpopular services couldn't be made cheaper as you'd be stuck to the zone-based system, so these would either be cut or be running empty, largely filling up the more popular ones. You could base your zone system on the IC fares, but then that would increase the subsidy for everything else (which is actually the Dutch system, but they pay 50% Income Tax, but that's a hugely political question, which has no place on this forum).
Removing "TOC-Specific" fares:
This just makes everything more expensive, especially on lines where it makes sense for that to exist (like Milton Keynes - London and Peterborough - London). Additionally, this is to a certain extent a simplification, because it makes a slow, unattractive service popular by making it cheaper, which makes sense to people (it sits in the fun "common-sense" space in people's heads). I'd suggest that where one can make a service distinction feasible, one should, but this can only be done when the capacity allows it. Taking people's behaviour into account is important. People will generally always take the fastest service, unless they have a reason not to (like it's cheaper or, in the specific UK situation, it's direct). You wouldn't, however, want TOC-specific fares on, say, York - Leeds, because you just reduce effective frequency (say, Northern only would put you on 1tph - or 2tph if you allow via Harrogate), on a service that's run largely by 2 car DMUs. That suddenly makes the journey unattractive.
The point is, we have a unique situation, which has indeed been bodged, but without significant investment, or significant inconvenience, it's difficult to unpick.
Fares across Europe are generally very simple, which is largely because:
1. There is a complete division between different types of train.
2. The organisational framework supports this difference.
The actual definition of something like an S-Bahn is that it's run and funded by a local Verkersverbund, whereas a Regiobahn is run by the federal state. InterCity is run by the over-arching railway system, funded at a National level. Most importantly, tickets for one are not valid on the other.
Now when you look at the British system, you have to ask yourself the question, would this suit the British railway network? Currently, we have a system which is not actually separated by service type, but where people still want to do things like demand management and competitive pricing. These work fine when you can say "take the Regiobahn" for a cheap ticket and "take the IC" for an expensive one, knowing the Regiobahn would be slower, but also normally more frequent (not always true, but generally true). The problem comes that we don't have the physical space to do this in a lot of situations. The thing is, once you start enforcing service distinctions you reduce the effective frequency, especially on commutable distances. It's pretty much understood that the UK as a whole needs more rail capacity, but without really major infrastructure projects that's not really going to allow for service distinctions, because lots of places (especially in the North) rely on the IC service to provide the commuting service (the Newcastle-Durham, Wakefield-Leeds, Sheffield-Doncaster, York-Leeds, Hull-Doncaster, Birmingham-Wolverhampton, Stoke-Manchester services). The only way to move away from that is if all these city pairs had 4 tracks between them which would be collosally expensive. The point I'm making is that we can't simplify by service distinction.
As such, you're left with much fewer ways of simplifying the fare structure. Let's look at those I could think of in turn. For simplicity purposes, let's assume that Peak/Off-Peak distinction always exists.
Zonal:
This doesn't really allow for demand management, because unpopular services couldn't be made cheaper as you'd be stuck to the zone-based system, so these would either be cut or be running empty, largely filling up the more popular ones. You could base your zone system on the IC fares, but then that would increase the subsidy for everything else (which is actually the Dutch system, but they pay 50% Income Tax, but that's a hugely political question, which has no place on this forum).
Removing "TOC-Specific" fares:
This just makes everything more expensive, especially on lines where it makes sense for that to exist (like Milton Keynes - London and Peterborough - London). Additionally, this is to a certain extent a simplification, because it makes a slow, unattractive service popular by making it cheaper, which makes sense to people (it sits in the fun "common-sense" space in people's heads). I'd suggest that where one can make a service distinction feasible, one should, but this can only be done when the capacity allows it. Taking people's behaviour into account is important. People will generally always take the fastest service, unless they have a reason not to (like it's cheaper or, in the specific UK situation, it's direct). You wouldn't, however, want TOC-specific fares on, say, York - Leeds, because you just reduce effective frequency (say, Northern only would put you on 1tph - or 2tph if you allow via Harrogate), on a service that's run largely by 2 car DMUs. That suddenly makes the journey unattractive.
The point is, we have a unique situation, which has indeed been bodged, but without significant investment, or significant inconvenience, it's difficult to unpick.
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Neither. There should be a fare from Farnborough North on the direct train and a (higher) fare from Main for travel via Woking.
Grouping, for fare purposes, stations which are on different lines is one of the prime causes of anomalies/loopholes. Passengers should be able to buy a simple ticket to take them from where they are to wherever they want to be. They should not be told you can't start your journey from here or go to there which is a favourite response of some posters when Bradford, Manchester and Glasgow (amongst others) journeys/tickets are being discussed.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
On DB that isn't actually the case, for what it's worth. Well, it sort of is. There is a hierarchy of tickets - ICE, IC/EC, Regional. The ICE ticket is valid on IC/EC and Regional, the IC/EC ticket on Regional, and Regional on Regional only.
An S-Bahn is part of the DB ticketing system whoever tenders it, though DB tickets tend only to be offered for journeys with one end outside the Verbund. This is a bit like London Overground - TfL ticketing applies for internal journeys, but National Rail ticketing is valid for other journeys. S-Bahnen are exactly the same for ticketing purposes as RE/RB/IRE. The only heavy rail trains on DB infrastructure which don't have to be in the DB fare system are charters and open access operators.
An U-Bahn is generally completely separate, with no DB ticketing validity except by special arrangement - this is like Metrolink, LUL etc.
I don't, FWIW, know the official definitions, but to me in Germany:
S-Bahn: high frequency (half hourly or better), short distance, serves all stations
RegionalBahn: lower frequency (typically half hourly or worse - there is a little overlap), often not "im Takt" i.e. not in the integrated clockface timetable system, typically serves all stations
RegionalExpress: lower frequency (typically half hourly or worse - there is a little overlap), always "im Takt" i.e. in the integrated clockface timetable system, typically does not serve all stations
The Swiss like using S-Bahn for services that in Germany would be RegionalBahnen and -Expresse. The Ortenau-S-Bahn is nothing of the sort.
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Agreed. Any route the passenger wishes to take, regardless of how ridiculous, should be ticketable by some formula. The railway does far too much "you can't do that" for my liking.
If I want a First Anytime Single from London to Penzance via Wick, I should be able to purchase one, assuming I have the ability to take out a mortgage to pay for it. It would clearly not cost the same as a direct one.
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Agreed. It is a massively knotted mess.
And I believe that massively simpler fares would require some looking at how the railway functions on a structural level. Commuter/regional/IC are three neat boxes that suit the organisational structure of some European networks but those boxes are funny shapes and sizes in Britain. What sort of TOC is GWR, for example? Or TPE?
These are questions I don't have an answer to.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
TPE is a massive oddity, which has largely become one because of poor planning and a ludicrous obsession with short DMUs at high frequencies rather than long trains at lower frequencies which would allow something much closer to German style segregation.
GWR operates multiple types of service. By the German model the Penzance services would probably be ICE to Plymouth thence RE, a bit like the daily direct service on the Berchtesgadener Bahn from Hamburg - there are a few of these sorts of split service where the IC/EC carries on as a regional service using the same stock. The Cardiffs and Bristols IC throughout. The Thames Valley branches and mainline stoppers RB. The Thames Valley mainline stoppers RB, and the expresses RE.
SWT might provide a reasonable example - red trains = S, blue trains = RB/RE, white trains IC (or perhaps D/Schnellzug[1] under the old system due to the absence of catering).
[1] Would it be a bit odd to classify a pair of DMUs you can't walk between as a Durchgangs-Schnellzug - a corridored express train?
(Yes, I know SWT's regional/IC fleet is all gangwayed)
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Such a journey would involve a double back (between Inverness and Wick at least) so I would be happy for 2 tickets to be required there. However, if you wanted to go from London to Penzance via, say, Birmingham you should be able to get one through ticket by specifying a via point. This is exactly what you can do in Germany, including with the 'advance' Sparpreis tickets where you can specify how long you wish to break at the via point(s).
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I'm not. While it is a rather silly example which might be best ticketed as two singles (which would be sensibly priced if we moved to proper single fare pricing, thus removing some of the objections), why should a passenger not take a route with a double back if they so choose? An example I might genuinely want to do is Euston to Bletchley via Milton Keynes Central - it is highly annoying that there is no one[1] ticket that permits me to do that.
The railway does too much "you can't do this" and in doing so refuses business. It needs instead to say "it'll cost you a reasonable amount extra", which most of the time the passenger will cough up and everyone will be happy.
[1] Other than a season - if commuting I often take a MKC-EUS season instead of a BLY-EUS one in order to allow me to do precisely that.
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Having said that, and I admit it'd stick the Bletchley fare up a bit, zonal ticketing would solve the MKC problem - I'd anticipate that Wolverton, MKC, Bletchley, Fenny Stratford, Bow Brickhill and Woburn Sands would be in one zone. Zonal tickets would remove any routeing related complication[1], so that kind of short distance double back would be absolutely fine.
[1] You'd simply pay for each zone you cross, on whatever route you like. Within a zone, do whatever you feel like.
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Whilst I am tended to agree with you, it would lead to pressure to make it easier to transfer between the two stations, especially as access to Farnborough North is harder by public transport. In the case of Farnborough measures such as a second gate line to allow direct access to the Farnborough Road and more buses between the two stations. It could also lead to more people using the level crossing at Farnborough North (potentially costing the industry a lot of money to put a bridge in).
It would also mean that during times of minor disruption (i.e. a single train being cancelled or running late) on either route couldn't use the other route to get to/from Guildford. It would irk most those people who had paid the higher fare to go via Woking yet wouldn't be able to travel on the other route as they wouldn't have a valid ticket to go that way.
If you do away with all station groupings then you also have to have different ticket prices for each station, such as Southampton Central, St Denys, Swaythling and Southampton Airport Parkway when travelling from further afield. In doing so would make the ticket pricing more complicated.
For instance with Southampton the off peak cost is £43.30 whilst Eastleigh is £39.40 and Totten is £46.70 (with two station - Redbridge and Millford, between it and Southampton Central), so you would probably end up with each extra stop from Eastleigh costing about £1 more than the stop before (so as to ensure that the price was different enough that people could identify easily which ticket they were getting). In this case the industry would lose out as some people's tickets prices would go down and station staff would have to be more cautious about where they were issuing tickets to (including asking which station are you getting off at, which slows down ticket sales) and/or more customers having to get the staff to fix mistaken tickets and/or upset customers saying that they thought they had brought the correct ticket making Revenue Protection's job harder.
In reality what is lost through loopholes is partly offset through the simplification of the system by station grouping.
Although, even fixing that would still see loopholes like at Guildford where going beyond Guildford (on anytime tickets) is cheaper than tickets to Guildford. Often it is best to select a station which involves a change.
TPE is a massive oddity, which has largely become one because of poor planning and a ludicrous obsession with short DMUs at high frequencies rather than long trains at lower frequencies which would allow something much closer to German style segregation.
GWR operates multiple types of service. By the German model the Penzance services would probably be ICE to Plymouth thence RE, a bit like the daily direct service on the Berchtesgadener Bahn from Hamburg - there are a few of these sorts of split service where the IC/EC carries on as a regional service using the same stock. The Cardiffs and Bristols IC throughout. The Thames Valley branches and mainline stoppers RB. The Thames Valley mainline stoppers RB, and the expresses RE.
SWT might provide a reasonable example - red trains = S, blue trains = RB/RE, white trains IC (or perhaps D/Schnellzug[1] under the old system due to the absence of catering).
[1] Would it be a bit odd to classify a pair of DMUs you can't walk between as a Durchgangs-Schnellzug - a corridored express train?
Even SWT is a problem, though. Once you get past Southampton/Bournemouth, the trains tend to become stoppers, so it would be IC -> R on the same train. You'd have these splits everywhere on the network in the UK. I agree with your GWR system, although in reality you'd probably have very few (if any) Paddington - Penzance trains at all. You'd be ICE to Plymouth and have to change to an appropriate connecting Regiobahn for the rest of your journey. But these are smaller issues than, say Wakefield - Leeds.
I think a model of TOCs doing "one thing only" would be a huge benefit for the overall organisational structure which leads to a more on-topic conversation which would be where would it be appropriate to remove ticket offices.
Continuing to use our German model, something like GWR would be split into 3/4 operations (like it was at original franchising). Although, I'd suggest in the UK, we have addition of "London Bahn", which are largely the Outer-Suburban services, that are of too high a frequency and carry too many passengers to be a Regio-bahn but are too fast and travel too far to be an S-Bahn (GN Outers, GWR Outers etc). This is just part and parcel of the nature of having a capital city be > twice the size of any other city.
S-Bahn: Crossrail
L-Bahn: Outers (Reading-Semi fast, Oxford stoppers etc).
Regio: The old "Wessex Trains" outfit (could probably have some RE for non-London).
IC: The inter-city bit.
I'll leave ICE out of it for now, because we probably want dedicated HS lines for that and we're only due one of those around 2026.
Crossrail could, and probably will have its stations TfL-ifyed and have no ticket offices, but have staffed stations from first to last train to help with TVM use etc.
The L-Bahn stations could probably follow suit, their primary aim being to ship passengers to London, although not at the main nodes.
Regio: Probably still needs to have ticket offices, unless the station is very poorly trafficked, in which case ticket-on-train is probably the best solution.
IC: These need fully staffed ticket offices, allowing for a large range of destinations to be reached, without having to understand the ins and outs of the system.
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