Future of Ticket Office Consultations launched

[bramling]

If you were going to staff those stations for the first time, would you put the staff member in a ticket booth or on a gate line/platform?

I'd put them in an office allowing them to view CCTV, with a window to deal with passengers. You could even use that window to sell tickets!

 

[Techniquest]

I feel very fortunate my local ticket office is under TfW, so it's safe for now! I'd still like to see the TVM able to do things like sell a rover/ranger, and sell me a First Class ticket to places where such a facility is offered. Mind you, even the GWR app refuses to sell me a First Class Hereford to Worcester ticket, despite there having been First Class on that route for however long it's been around! I can't buy a First Class ticket to Shrewsbury or Cardiff either, but the TVM at Worcester Foregate Street would do when I was there earlier in the year!

Exmouth's ticket office bailed me out the other week when I'd pressed the button for 2 adults on the TVM but somehow ended up with 3 day returns. The man there soon had it all sorted, to be honest I should have just gone to him anyway.

All this stuff about ticket office closures certainly cross-references with retail. My place of work is reportedly looking to go from the 7 manned checkouts it currently has (1 of which only gets used on two shifts a week, yes I'm not making that up) to either half that number or, more drastically, down to zero manned checkouts. It'll happen in time, no question of it, but the amount of people who haven't made the switch to self-scan checkouts in my city is still significant. They'll soon have no choice, much like with ticket offices it'll all change soon enough. Personally, I love self-scan checkouts, it's almost always more efficient to use them over a manned checkout. Especially if, like me, you're not buying anything age-restricted. It's the way things are, and for people like me who don't do big shops once a week or whatever it's absolutely better. I don't miss the days when I'd be buying just a couple of things and in a long queue at the checkouts. Even my local Aldi eventually caught up with this, although not all Aldi stores have them. That's just weird!

Point is that the ticket office closures are inevitable. As a general rule, I only use my local ticket office if I want to buy a West Midlands Day Ranger now. Even that is an infrequent purchase. I've been sold the wrong tickets in my local ticket office before and I therefore tend to use the GWR app or the TVM. If my ticket office was to close, I would miss it to begin with but I'm personally quite ready for the space to be used more effectively. Indeed, it occurs to me the only time I can recall using the ticket office was in Shrewsbury to buy a North Wales Rover.

I note someone said they'd happily take redundancy if they could. Trust me, that feeling is very much known in my workplace, we're more than ready for AI to take over!

 

[Pete_uk]

Yikes!

It's going to be a blood bath.

 

[Narrowgauge725]

So my local LNER station Berwick had a ticket office make over relatively recently which is going to be scrapped. LNER will not offer river tickets either online or at machines, can buy them at a Northern machine so why not LNER? They do say that you would be directed to either Edinburgh or Newcastle both a rather long way from Berwick!

 

[childwallblues]

I've had that sort of experience far, far too often. A very significant minority of booking office staff were basically asking for this.

Not to mention the perennial "Yer'l'after go ter Lime Streets fer dat" on Merseyside, which has been being used as an excuse to avoid doing anything even vaguely difficult for 30+ years.

Well Merseyrail stations changed in 2006 when they got the new ticket machines replacing APTIS.

 

[jamesontheroad]

Bit late to these replies to my post on (?) page 7 of this long thread, but here goes.

How would you travel in Sweden without a mobile phone? Is it possible? I'm just asking out of curiosity if anything.

1. For long-distance journeys, you have to buy in advance. You cannot buy on the train. So without a phone, you'd need book a ticket on a computer. You could print out a paper ticket with a QR code, but on SJ Intercity and high-speed trains, you don't need to show a ticket - as long as you sit in the assigned seat, train crew don't need to see your ticket.
2. For regional journeys, many operators take debit or credit cards on the train, but at a premium to online purchases.
3. Go to a Pressbyrån or 7Eleven convenience store, and pay something like 100kr (£7.20) booking fee on top.

But if I can follow your argument to its logical conclusion, then Sweden's change will have impacted tourists and visitors to the country. Last time I checked Sweden was in the EU - so I'm not sure the dig about Brexit is relevant.

Sweden is in the EU, but it is (IMHO, with four years experience as an immigrant here) a fantastically unfriendly country to arrive in as a tourist. Arlanda Airport has some TVMs for the very expensive Arlanda Express, and a SL ticket machine for the commuter trains that use the Arlanda Central station. After that, you're on your own. Arrive with an Interrail card on one of the international trains in Malmö or Stockholm, for example, and there is nowhere you can go to make a seat reservation in person for the next part of your journey. You have to do it digitally or before you arrive.

...and once again a thread has descended into "name random country and describe how everything there is better than here, and also anywhere other than here automatically is the land of milk and honey".

I wouldn't say it's better. It's just ten years further down the line of complete digitalisation in almost every aspect of society. Britain isn't there yet, and it doesn't have any kind of governmental strategy to support these broad societal and economic changes. For all the advances in cashless transactions spurred on by the pandemic, Britain's rail system is still honouring all manner of paper-based vouchers and coupons and offering a bewildering amount of Rovers and passes which are all going to have to be adapted for digital ticketing.

I don't think that's a fair comment - it's perfectly reasonable to give an example of a country which has already made such a move. Particularly where the country in question is often held up by those who demand "high quality public services" as the template they'd like the UK to follow.

To re-iterate, I wouldn't argue Sweden is better, but it is a worthwhile comparison, especially because Sweden began privatising its railway before Great Britain when vertical separation was introduced in 1988.

 

[jagardner1984]

I have to say when this was mooted I didn’t imagine the main WCML operator would be closing their main Northern Terminus ticket office completely. Numerous times their advice has been invaluable, and in times of disruption queues can frequently be out the door.

whilst no doubt in a society where people can’t afford their mortgages or their weekly shop, these will be waved through with a few howls of outrage and some strikes here and there. It will merge in to much of the rest of the public service that is in some form of dispute with the Government.

Nonetheless I think back to a conversation I had in a shop I worked in during COVID. Under huge pressure - we would frequently fly around the shop picking orders, and unofficially ignoring customers (by avoiding eye contact etc), all the while wearing a “Love to help” t shirt. Frankly it was the only way we could keep up with what was asked of us. One day an elderly woman finally forced my attention with a loud “excuse me”. I showed her to what she needed, felt somewhat rubbish for ignoring her, and as she said thank you, she said “The trouble with this place, there’s never any people here, and everyone is always in such a rush.” I mumbled an apology. But she was right. Sometimes in life, in a way that is difficult to quantify on a spreadsheet, one human in a difficult or confusing environment just needs the reassurance of some advice from another. Not a machine barking at them, or a poster directing pensioners to the “lIve chat” via a QR code. Just a human face and ideally some form of a smile and a “Hello - how can I help ?”

Progress, eh ….

 

[A0]

Another thought. Let’s assume two things:

1 - Labour announce they’re opposed to this (I know, they don’t like being clear on stuff a lot of the time)

2 - Labour win a majority in a general election in autumn 2024

Would all the proposed changes have been made by then? If so, how easily could they be undone?

A Labour mayor didn't undo the same changes to TFL's underground stations which were in flight when he took over from a Conservative mayor.

So there will be some synthetic outrage from the Labour front bench aimed at getting some cheap headlines against the government, but apart from a few hard-left spartists who oppose any changes to the railways, NHS or Schools, the majority will quietly accept things have to change and accept it as the way forward.

 

[Snow1964]

Bit late to these replies to my post on (?) page 7 of this long thread, but here goes.

1. For long-distance journeys, you have to buy in advance. You cannot buy on the train. So without a phone, you'd need book a ticket on a computer. You could print out a paper ticket with a QR code, but on SJ Intercity and high-speed trains, you don't need to show a ticket - as long as you sit in the assigned seat, train crew don't need to see your ticket.
2. For regional journeys, many operators take debit or credit cards on the train, but at a premium to online purchases.
3. Go to a Pressbyrån or 7Eleven convenience store, and pay something like 100kr (£7.20) booking fee on top.

I think the Swedish system works because you can buy all the tickets online, not just a selection as in UK where certain types are not possible.

I also like the Swiss system of TVMs where all the displays are same and clear, not with multiple pages where doing something that ought to be simple like enter destination, enter quantity can be done.

I have seen UK machines (and websites) where buying 3 tickets, one senior, one adult, and one 16-25 requires destination to be entered 3 times because can't select the passenger quantity in one go. Why do some try and baffle people rather than encourage use.

 

[peteb]

In Luxembourg most stations are totally unstaffed.......however train travel is FREE....so no need for ticket offices. But nearly all stations have state of the art electronic departure boards, CCTV and help points. A sudden cull of staffed stations in UK will leave a huge hole in the safety case for passengers as so many stations have no info. boards nor CCTV.
I cannot imagine a huge recruitment drive for on station or on train security staff yet that's what will be required to maintain law and order once those that like to cause trouble become aware there's noone around to deter them.

 

[ainsworth74]

Sometimes in life, in a way that is difficult to quantify on a spreadsheet, one human in a difficult or confusing environment just needs the reassurance of some advice from another.

I've thought for a few years now that when the final analysis is made the invention of the electronic spreadsheet and a slavish obsession with quantifying everything in order for it to be tracked on said spreadsheets will have been found to have been one of the main causes of the decline and fall of Western civilisation.

Probably a bit off-topic though. Sorry!

A sudden cull of staffed stations in UK will leave a huge hole in the safety case for passengers as so many stations have no info. boards nor CCTV.

Is that true? I'm sure there are a few outliers but "many"? It seems very unlikely for the stations that currently have ticket offices as those generally already have better facilties than their already unstaffed brethren!

 

[A0]

Look what's happened with the health service. It's no good in thinking the government have got our best interests at heart and want the best for us, look at their current track record.

Well, OK, let's deal in some facts:

Sources: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget#:~:text=Planned spending for the Department,for spending on health services.

Key facts and figures about the NHS

What's the NHS annual budget? How many doctors and nurses are there? What's the cost of an operation? We answer some of the most frequently asked questions we receive about the NHS.

www.kingsfund.org.uk

The NHS in England is costing in excess of £150bn a year to run - that's over £3000 per person (England's population is ~56 million) a year.

As a country we spend pretty much the average of GDP on healthcare as other western countries do. Yet 45% of that budget goes in salaries - almost half.

So in many ways the NHS hasn't been "run down", nothing like it, not when we're spending more than Italy or Spain and a similar amount to Denmark, Netherlands or Australia on health care - so why do they have better outcomes?

 

[sor]

No - because that group of people are not prevented from having suitable photo ID, they've just chosen not to. Somebody not choosing to have something doesn't equal discrimination. If it was only driving licence, for example, then those with health conditions which preclude holding a driving licence would be able to claim discrimination, but it isn't.

Interestingly you need to provide the same ID when applying for an ENCTS bus pass.

We aren't a country that requires you to hold photo ID, therefore it can never be a requirement. With most railcards there has always been a fallback that you could buy at a station, but unless they change their online process this becomes impossible.

As an example, you don't need photo ID for the bus pass, eg if applying due to age then birth cert or a letter from the DWP will do.

When buying a senior railcard online (presumably the one OP is suggesting they would buy), you do need a passport, driving licence or EEA ID card.

 

[SuspectUsual]

There is no money paid to private companies to 'hand on' to shareholders; the companies are paid a 'management fee' to run the TOC. They (and they alone) have to work out what 'margin' (profit) can be extracted from that fee and added to group revenues but the margin is a tiny amount of the fee (2% or so)

Yes there is. The contracts are essentially “cost plus”, ie the DfT covers all their costs (including the provision of management) and then pays them a management fee as well, plus the opportunity to earn performance bonuses

“Separately, TOCs can also earn management and performance fees. These are payable retrospectively on receipt of audited statutory accounts covering the period to which the fees relate. In due course, and subject to conditions, they represent earnings that can be passed on to shareholders” (my italics)

DfT payments to passenger rail operators under emergency agreements and National Rail contracts

Summary of payments, including management fees, payable by DfT to train operating companies from 1 March 2020 to 31 March 2024 under emergency agreements and National Rail contracts.

www.gov.uk

 

[Philip]

The DfT have cut far too hard here in my opinion and it screams as an angry government wanting to give some back to the unions and rail workers for the strikes and bad press they have brought on the government.

Closing the quiet outstation ticket offices is understandable, but there are many fairly busy ticket offices in this list which do perform an important role for their passengers and whose staff certainly do work hard (certainly not the stereotypical sitting reading a newspaper most of the day). Closing these offices and moving the staff into a stupid outside role where for much of the day they'll just be stood around doing nothing isn't progress in my opinion.

Avanti's decision to close all of their booking offices is just ridiculous. A lot of people who use the ticket office would struggle for whatever reason if left to do it by themselves on an app or at a ticket machine - I have a lot of experience in this role at busy locations so I know what I'm talking about. Moving all the staff onto the busy concourses at Piccadilly or New Street to perform the job they previously did at the desk will just be chaotic and make it much more difficult both for the staff and passengers.

Thankfully Northern have gone with a slightly more constructive approach on this and kept offices at the really busy locations, although there are still some locations in their list which shouldn't be closing.

 

[SLC001]

It is worth noting the objections raised by the Guide Dogs for the Blind. My concern with these proposals is that they are always drawn up by able bodied or healthy young people who haven't a clue about the difficulties encountered by the elderly or disabled. We have an ageist and disabled discriminatory society and while we are tackling some forms of discrimination, other forms are still prevalent.

 

[A0]

The DfT have cut far too hard here in my opinion and it screams as an angry government wanting to give some back to the unions and rail workers for the strikes and bad press they have brought on the government.

Closing the quiet outstation ticket offices is understandable, but there are many fairly busy ticket offices in this list which do perform an important role for their passengers and whose staff certainly do work hard (certainly not the stereotypical sitting reading a newspaper most of the day). Closing these offices and moving the staff into a stupid outside role where for much of the day they'll just be stood around doing nothing isn't progress in my opinion.

Avanti's decision to close all of their booking offices is just ridiculous. A lot of people who use the ticket office would struggle for whatever reason if left to do it by themselves on an app or at a ticket machine - I have a lot of experience in this role at busy locations so I know what I'm talking about. Moving all the staff onto the busy concourses at Piccadilly or New Street to perform the job they previously did at the desk will just be chaotic and make it much more difficult both for the staff and passengers.

Thankfully Northern have gone with a slightly more constructive approach on this and kept offices at the really busy locations, although there are still some locations in their list which shouldn't be closing.

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 ==

We need a nationwide revolution to kick the Tories out.

And if you believe that a Labour or Lib Dem government wouldn't be doing the same thing, then you'd better DM me your bank details, because I've a remote relative who's just died in a some 3rd world country who has left me a couple of million dollars in a bank account and asked me to distribute it.........

As evidence, I'd point out the closure of the TFL ticket offices on the underground was initiated when there was a Conservative mayor of London and was being implemented when a Labour mayor took over - he didn't change or stop it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

In Luxembourg most stations are totally unstaffed.......however train travel is FREE....so no need for ticket offices. But nearly all stations have state of the art electronic departure boards, CCTV and help points. A sudden cull of staffed stations in UK will leave a huge hole in the safety case for passengers as so many stations have no info. boards nor CCTV.

This just isn't true. Almost all UK stations have information boards, including some incredibly rural ones, it almost seems amusing to see a 3 line LED display happily scrolling away at Beaulieu Road or Dolgarrog, and even Altnabreac I believe now has something. Some don't have CCTV, but most of the ones that don't are already unstaffed.

As for help points, almost all passengers have one in their pocket, it is called a mobile phone. Just stick a poster up with the number for whatever the information button calls (help points are just a phone in a box), and you already know that for an emergency it's 999. I know there are those who oppose smartphones for everything, but how many people now don't even have a £10 dumbphone capable of simple calls and texts? The number must be absolutely tiny.

 

[A0]

It is worth noting the objections raised by the Guide Dogs for the Blind. My concern with these proposals is that they are always drawn up by able bodied or healthy young people who haven't a clue about the difficulties encountered by the elderly or disabled. We have an ageist and disabled discriminatory society and while we are tackling some forms of discrimination, other forms are still prevalent.

Bit in bold - utter nonsense. If you've ever looked at the documentation around such changes, one section is always impact on those with disabilities.

It's also worth remembering that NOW, before this consultation even started, almost 50% of National Rail stations were unstaffed - not, didn't have a ticket office, completely unstaffed. And London Underground stations don't have ticket offices, nor does the Docklands Light Railway or Tyne & Wear Metro - yet I'm pretty sure people with disabilities use all of those.

 

[yorksrob]

600,000 tickets means roughly 1,600 tickets sold per day (ignoring Christmas and Boxing Day). The Paddington ticket office is open for around 16 hours per day so they're, very roughly, issuing around 100 tickets an hour. It's certainly not nothing but considering the volume of passengers at Paddington (23.8m National Rail for 2021/22 excluding interchanges and LU) it doesn't really feel like all that much. Of course these are all hideously rough estimates but I'm really not convinced that it's quite as a compelling argument as you suggest. Not sure it's sensible for Paddington to not have any ticket office at all either to be fair but 600,000 at a station the size of Paddington really isn't that many.

I'm not sure comparison in proportion to entries and exits is much use. In terms of ticket offices, overall numbers of transactions are what matters, and 100 an hour is more than enough to justify a specialised presence.

It's also likely to have an element of people going to the big station to seek advice and guidance through more complicated purchases.

Whatever happens to the wayside ticket office, I think that the network of travel centres at main stations needs to be maintained.

 

[SuspectUsual]

And London Underground stations don't have ticket offices, nor does the Docklands Light Railway or Tyne & Wear Metro - yet I'm pretty sure people with disabilities use all of those

They also have simple fare structures

 

[A0]

Ok another two from the Midlands I have been told about, how about Stratford Upon Avon and Reddich?

One of them is a major town and a major tourist hub.

Will you not admit this is slightly too drastic?

No - because in the case of Stratford most of the tourists are *arriving* there from somewhere else, so have already bought their tickets. They don't just arrive in Stratford by teleport you know.

On Redditch, what's the difference between Redditch (pop'n 85k) and somewhere like Uxbridge or Edgware (pop'n 75-80k) at the top of the tube network ? Most journeys from Redditch will be into Birmingham in the same way most journeys from Uxbridge or Edgware will be towards Central London - Uxbridge and Edgware don't have ticket offices at their Underground stations.

 

[43066]

Because you don't pick examples to support the argument you are advocating?.........

I try to remain intellectually flexible and to form an objective view: for example, despite working in the industry, I can state I am in favour of ticket office reform.

On the other hand you uncritically side with the government’s approach each and every time, and refuse to acknowledge that there might be a downside for people who aren’t exactly the same as yourself - who really cares about the disabled etc., just so long as you’re alright, Jack (but I suppose is fairly consistent with someone who has several times bragged about being a “net contributor”).

You also tend to choose examples that support your view and ignore anything that challenges it. Unfortunately that’s not a particularly enlightening or interesting way of debating.

from a few hard-left spartists who oppose any changes to the railways, NHS or Schools, the majority will quietly accept things have to change and accept it as the way forward.

So your predictable black and white narrative is that the government is right by default, and those who don’t accept their version of change are “hard-left spartists”. Has it occurred to you, even for one second, that some people acknowledge a need for positive change, but are concerned that the these proposals are aimed at simply slashing costs and making the service worse?

Yet 45% of that budget goes in salaries - almost half.

Why the endless preoccupation with the salaries of others?

 

[yorksrob]

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 ==



And if you believe that a Labour or Lib Dem government wouldn't be doing the same thing, then you'd better DM me your bank details, because I've a remote relative who's just died in a some 3rd world country who has left me a couple of million dollars in a bank account and asked me to distribute it.........

As evidence, I'd point out the closure of the TFL ticket offices on the underground was initiated when there was a Conservative mayor of London and was being implemented when a Labour mayor took over - he didn't change or stop it.

London Underground isn't comparable because it has a vastly simpler ticketing system.

If Labour or the Lib Dems got into power, I would expect a reorganisation of ticketing facilities, however I would expect it to be better formulated around actual ticket office usage numbers.

 

[ainsworth74]

I'm not sure comparison in proportion to entries and exits is much use. In terms of ticket offices, overall numbers of transactions are what matters, and 100 an hour is more than enough to justify a specialised presence.

It's also likely to have an element of people going to the big station to seek advice and guidance through more complicated purchases.

Whatever happens to the wayside ticket office, I think that the network of travel centres at main stations needs to be maintained.

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.

 

[Goldfish62]

London Underground isn't comparable because it has a vastly simpler ticketing system.

If Labour or the Lib Dems got into power, I would expect a reorganisation of ticketing facilities, however I would expect it to be better formulated around actual ticket office usage numbers.

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

 

[sor]

Bit in bold - utter nonsense. If you've ever looked at the documentation around such changes, one section is always impact on those with disabilities.

It's also worth remembering that NOW, before this consultation even started, almost 50% of National Rail stations were unstaffed - not, didn't have a ticket office, completely unstaffed. And London Underground stations don't have ticket offices, nor does the Docklands Light Railway or Tyne & Wear Metro - yet I'm pretty sure people with disabilities use all of those.

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.

 

[A0]

So your predictable narrative is that the government is right by default, and those who don’t accept their version of change are “hard-left spartists”. Has it occurred to you, even for one second, that some people acknowledge a need for positive change, but are concerned that the these proposals are aimed at simply slashing costs and making the service worse?

Don't misquote me - what I actually said in full was: "but apart from a few hard-left spartists who oppose any changes to the railways, NHS or Schools, the majority will quietly accept things have to change and accept it as the way forward." - and that was talking about Labour politicians, not Conservative ones. The reality is unless you had a government run by the likes of Jeremy Corbyn in power, this change would be happening regardless - because the way in which tickets are sold has fundamentally changed. It was Ken Livingstone who started the move to paperless ticketing in London when he oversaw the introduction of the Oyster card, it was Boris Johnson who as his successor initated the closure of TFL's ticket offices as a result of so few tickets being sold and that was being implemented by when Sadiq Kahn took over - and he didn't stop or reverse it. So that's the reality - most politicians of all stripes will accept this is an inevitable change as a result of technological advances - the only ones who don't are those who oppose any changes - so referring to those as Spartist isn't unreasonable.

Why the endless preoccupation with the salaries of others?

It isn't a "preoccupation" - but if you feel, as some posters clearly do, that the NHS is "understaffed" and "underfunded" then it's worth pointing out the size of the budget it gets relative to other countries (some of whom have better outcomes from their healthcare systems) but also the reality of where that budget is being spent. I didn't pass comment about anyone's salary, whether it was too much / too little / just right, simply re-stated the fact that almost half of the NHS's budget goes on staffing costs.

 

[Typhoon]

My 16 year old son bought his 16-25 railcard online, which included uploading a photo of him from his phone.

Your issue is you don't had ID which can be validated against - which puts you in a very small group of people. That limits you in several ways, but it's your choice that's doing that, not a shortcoming of the system.

I would say that (underlined) is part right. It is not my choice not to have a driving licence. I know that I would be a bad driver and there are enough of them on the road already; any Examiner who passed me would either be incompetent or open to bribery. I have had lessons (a long, long time ago) and I knew I was no good at it, just as I was no good at learning to play the recorder; my reaction speed is not good enough.

Going abroad - too much faff. I stay in this country, I spend money in this country. There is too much I have never seen here. That is my choice. My choice means that I am more likely to use the rail network. I am not alone, many of my neighbours are old people like me, quite a few don't drive (a few more shouldn't really), aren't we the people who it would be good to get back on the trains? Get us out and about - out of our homes, into the countryside/ seaside, mixing with others. If you like, improving our mental health, and physical health - even seaside stations are usually a walk to the beach.

'The system' has decided to accept just two forms of ID for on-line applications. Apparently only 'a very small group of people' don't have a passport or driving licence. According to a digital data company 8 million people in England and Wales don't have a passport quoted in https://www.yorkshiretimes.co.uk/ar...e-Dont-Have-A-Passport-In-This-Area-Of-The-UK, with Wales, the North East and the Midlands being areas where higher percentages (between 15% and 20%) don't. Some will undoubtedly have driving licences but not all by any means. The New Statesman (https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/05/more-three-million-uk-voters-have-no-form-photo-id) states that in 2021 over 3 million neither had a passport or driving licence, so not that small. I have photo-ID that allows me to vote, it has a number on it which, I guess, is unique. I have had a railcard, for several years, every year I show the same evidence that I am me. No loyalty pay-off here. Instead I will have to find a Travel Centre (ie a Ticket Office with a new sign above it - ironically, I will travel to whichever by bus) in my locality; fortunately two - and usually helpful ones. For others it will be much harder and 'persuade' them not to use the railway. By and large we travel 'off-peak', quite often 'against the tide', occupying seats that would otherwise be empty (I can't remember the last time I had to stand). It is also an encouragement to use the railway at other times, seeing the railway as a 'natural' form of transport; because I am used to it, I sometimes catch very early and earlyish trains (before 06:30 and I am avoiding London). I would have thought TOCs would want to encourage rail travel?

No - because that group of people are not prevented from having suitable photo ID, they've just chosen not to. Somebody not choosing to have something doesn't equal discrimination. If it was only driving licence, for example, then those with health conditions which preclude holding a driving licence would be able to claim discrimination, but it isn't.

Interestingly you need to provide the same ID when applying for an ENCTS bus pass.

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.

 

[ainsworth74]

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

Well that's the fractured nature of the industry for you with each TOC having been given, presumably, the same marching orders but then each implementing those instructions in their own way accounting for the tastes and thinking of local management (and possibly whatever flavour of consultant they employed). As with so much this is yet another are where we desperately needed a single "guiding mind" to review the situation and come to a decision to avoid the mad edge cases like the one you point out.

See also things like how tickets printed by different TVMs, allegedly following the same format and standard, can look radically different. Or how we went from one uniform on-train ticket machine (Avantix) to maybe half a dozen different types of portable ticket machine. Etc etc. None of this makes any objective sense but that's the nature of the fractured industry with no-one making decisions on things which logically could and should be done centrally.