Future of Ticket Office Consultations launched

[Trisha]

I was at Windemere yesterday and the queue for assistance/tickets was quite large mainly foreign tourists trying to get to grips with purchasing travel tickets, even getting a bus was a struggle for them so it ain't going to be made any easier when the ticket office is only open from certain times. Granted it's getting busy with Summer, but it won't help any.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Planner based TVMs are the fix for this and any other thing that might be a little confusing, though very few of them are intuitive there's no reason they can't be.

Of course, there's no reason TVM's can't do it, but my point is the industry is so far away from any of this. The fact the official response is to lie about what time you are travelling to get the right ticket is just bonkers. That should absolutely never be the case in the first place anyway, even less so given the same industry (granted forced by the government) is talking about removing near enough all ticket offices that let people buy tickets without those insane workarounds. I guess that is my issue with so much of this. If the industry was in a place where it had its own house in order first, then maybe I'd understand the direction. But until it does, anything that involves removing ticket offices is just way too premature.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I was at Windemere yesterday and the queue for assistance/tickets was quite large mainly foreign tourists trying to get to grips with purchasing travel tickets, even getting a bus was a struggle for them so it ain't going to be made any easier when the ticket office is only open from certain times. Granted it's getting busy with Summer, but it won't help any.

Windermere could (as could main London termini, airport stations etc) do with being a tourist centre selling rail and bus tickets and booking taxis, accommodation, activities etc. That way it might even be profitable in its own right.

That's an example of what a positive approach to this modernisation would be, not the uncoordinated bin fire (as I've termed it elsewhere) it has become.

By comparison at South East commuter stations a coffee kiosk has far more value than a booking office, and in most countries in Europe such stations are unstaffed.

 

[northwichcat]

3G has been switched off near me. I'm not currently aware of switch off dates for 2G, but I guess there's some inevitability there isn't there.

Indeed, 2G is likely to continue in operation for quite some time. It's used for a lot of purposes, including data transmission from a lot of smart meters and indeed from credit card terminals.

I remember the last time I couldn't get 3G or better was a number of years ago in the Peak District. The 2G on offer didn't even have the capability to open online journey planners and bus operator websites. Sending a signal from a smart meter to another device requires hardly any data.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Would she be able to get straight through to this call centre? That sounds good in theory but our experience of them is patchy at best. Like others she’d feel embarrassed if she was in any way holding up a queue

This is a challenge regardless of the retail interface, other than at larger stations with multiple booking windows and TVMs.

I'm sure that many of us have experienced being 'stuck behind' somebody endeavouring to complete a complex transaction with multiple options at either a booking office or a machine when 'our' train is due in a couple of minutes. You can't even get a 'Promise To Pay' in those circumstances.

 

[NeilCr]

This is a challenge regardless of the retail interface, other than at larger stations with multiple booking windows and TVMs.

I'm sure that many of us have experienced being 'stuck behind' somebody endeavouring to complete a complex transaction with multiple options at either a booking office or a machine when 'our' train is due in a couple of minutes. You can't even get a 'Promise To Pay' in those circumstances.

I agree to an extent

But, I, somehow think it's worse at TVMs where there is only you involved. At least in a ticket office there is a conversation going on where the queue can get some sense that the issue is complicated

At a TVM the queue just think you are being incompetent/useless

It doesn't make it any quicker for the queue mind

There's something else about ticket office queries too. And very much tends to be with irregular travellers.Turning up with a question about a refund/journey in the future at a busy time for trains departing..

Points up a bit though the difference between the experts on this forum and your occasional/inexperienced traveller

 

[leytongabriel]

Think Tottenham Hale raises particular issues. A busy station where perhaps the most important single passenger flow is to a station where the barriers will let you through with an oyster card which isn't valid to that destination - Stansted Airport. Lots of passengers who are not regular rail users, unfamiliar perhaps with the machines, and the fact that ticketing arrangements are different to the different London airports. Yes there is a large sign about the £100 penalty if you don't have the right ticket, but you have to look up for it, which people looking where they are going with luggage may not do.

Perhaps we need extra signs on the ticket barrier, some kind of easing of the application of penalty fares for a period after the ticket office closure, and additional consideration when there is Spurs home match on like a fast queue and additional mobile ticket sellers at the station or on the train?

 

[Silenos]

I'd be careful assuming that a fall in passenger numbers can result in subsidy being reduced by cutting services. What we see in bus services is as services are cut, the subsidy required to continue to run a less frequent service actually increases as passenger numbers and thus revenue falls so much but the fixed costs of running a less frequent service doesn't fall as much as you would expect. This is probably even truer for rail which has more fixed costs than buses.

You may be right, I’m no expert in this area, but I was assuming that a reduction in passenger numbers could be used to justify more (all) short-formed services as well as reducing the timetable. I would assume this would cut the overall number of train units that are needed, thus cutting costs (on top of any opportunities to further cut staffing). Please note that I am not saying any of this is desirable, merely that the evidence suggests this is the way the Treasury and the DfT think.

 

[northwichcat]

I'd be careful assuming that a fall in passenger numbers can result in subsidy being reduced by cutting services. What we see in bus services is as services are cut, the subsidy required to continue to run a less frequent service actually increases as passenger numbers and thus revenue falls so much but the fixed costs of running a less frequent service doesn't fall as much as you would expect. This is probably even truer for rail which has more fixed costs than buses.

It'll partly depend on the initial frequency. What's the advantage of 12 buses an hour over 10 buses an hour? Waiting an extra minute for a bus isn't going to harm anyone but 10 buses is less capacity. What's the advantage of an hourly service over a 2 hourly service, or an hourly service with a gap so the same bus can be used for a school service? Massive. If you have a medical appointment that's late you might face a wait of almost 2 hours for a bus home.

 

[Joey Beauchamp]

I often buy split tickets using the machines and I know all the workarounds including pretending it's a different time of day to get a railcard discount. Even I was stumped when Kenilworth didn't come up as an option to start the final leg of my journey! It did come up as a destination, so I had to buy a Banbury to Kenilworth day return and use it backwards.

 

[1D54]

Caught the tail end of BBC East Midlands Today report from Derby Station where EMR have made what sounded like an announcement about reduced hours for ticket office which i suppose will apply to Leicester and Nottingham. The dreaded word redundancy was also used. Can't find anything online so hopefully others will be better informed.

 

[father_jack]

On a quite "convenient" note GWR "Schite and Bachmann" ticket machines have now miraculously been "upgraded" to sell Groupsave tickets.

I'm told there has been turmoil of sorts when the unintended consequences of this have been pointed out particularly those involving journeys when the majority of trains in between popular locations involve Cross Country.....

 

[Richardr]

Caught the tail end of BBC East Midlands Today report from Derby Station where EMR have made what sounded like an announcement about reduced hours for ticket office which i suppose will apply to Leicester and Nottingham. The dreaded word redundancy was also used. Can't find anything online so hopefully others will be better informed.

The programme is here for the next 24 hours:

BBC iPlayer

The relevant part near the end of the report is a quote from the RMT.

 

[1D54]

Seems i caught the only bit that was news to me. Thanks for putting that up Richardr. i Player, now why didn't i think of that.

 

[Railwaycat]

I was responsible for the story.

Emailed East Midlands Today about the removal of all staff and subsequent loss of facilities at 16 stations yesterday, got a phone call from them this morning and the story was covered this evening (can be watched on I player). Unfortunately they didn't emphasise the loss of facilities, but they did get get an admission that 100-150 jobs would go.

 

[Krokodil]

As I thought, so really is there value to the ticket office advice? An automated system could direct questions and inform of split ticket options. We are not far from such technologically.

It's often a lot more nuanced than that. Good customer service is answering the questions that the customer never thought of to ask.

For the more regular purchases, like a day return to the nearest city, there is nothing stopping shops selling those as quickly as someone asks for a carton of cigarettes.

In theory, yes. In practice there could be more than a dozen types of ticket, between TOCs and various peak restrictions.

 

[Typhoon]

By the time I retired from a ticket office last year, we weren't selling many high-value tickets.
Tickets for long-distance journeys had become rare, with most people people buying online. (You got some people coming in who had tried to buy online but who had failed, because reservations weren't available for a particular train.)
High-value season tickets had become rare, because few people were travelling sufficiently frequently.
Ticket office sales were mostly either:
1 - local journeys (if there was no queue at the window, buying there was a quicker option than using a ticket vending machine - though young people mostly preferred either using the TVM or buying an e-ticket).
Or:
2 - tickets to London (faced with multiple routes to London priced by different companies with different time restrictions, and uncertain whether it was best to include tube travel or not, some people found it easier to ask a human).
The eventual extension of contactless payment will surely see many current ticket office customers switching to contactless.

That is a good point. From my nearest staffed station, there are direct trains to three London termini (same TOC), and I can get to at least one more by changing. I travel fairly frequently to stations short of the capital; on the last three occasions the on-board staff member has told me that they didn't think my off-peak my ticket was valid. The people who know that it is are those that sold it to me in the ticket office. On the last occasion (when the staff member at the station had printed out an itinerary indicating its validity) people in seats in front of me were all travelling with invalid off-peak tickets (I was changing - they were not). If ticket offices are to close would be more than helpful if stations in the Network South East area had posters indicating on which trains off peak tickets are valid - and these are kept up to date.
Part of the reason why I buy tickets in advance is that I want to make sure that the ticket I am buying is valid for the off-peak, rail card accepted journeys that I undertake and I can afford it. Unlike the passengers quoted above, I don't want to find that I am forking out lots of extra money for a journey I would be quite happy to undertake half an hour later. I certainly don't want a situation where I don't know the cost of my journey until I complete it.

It's often a lot more nuanced than that. Good customer service is answering the questions that the customer never thought of to ask.

That is exactly how I found out that I could catch the earlier train above. The woman responsible was brilliant (not just me - several Facebook posts to that effect). Unfortunately gone.

 

[Killingworth]

This would be solved by allowing TVM users to press a (Braille marked) button to speak to a person in a call centre who would remotely control the TVM to issue the ticket. The person is behind glass, which provides a level of separation that means a video call is basically no different.

But how does a blind person find a braille marked button? There is one on Northern TVMs but as a sighted person I had to crouch down to see it was there. This machine is linked to their call centre for live video help.I understand most stations aren't connected yet.

 

[yorkie]

But how does a blind person find a braille marked button? There is one on Northern TVMs but as a sighted person I had to crouch down to see it was there. This machine is linked to their call centre for live video help.I understand most stations aren't connected yet.

If staff are not available to assist at the origin station, a blind person should always be permitted to buy on board the train (or at any subsequent opportunity).

 

[NeilCr]

If staff are not available to assist at the origin station, a blind person should always be permitted to buy on board the train (or at any subsequent opportunity).

That person has first to locate the right platform and train

Likely after having tried to search vainly for assistance

 

[Mikw]

I went to pick up tickets from a machine last year but it spat out blanks. A quick visit to the ticket office sorted it all out.
If the ticket office was closed i assume i'd risk a fine by getting on a train with a blank ticket?

 

[Topological]

I went to pick up tickets from a machine last year but it spat out blanks. A quick visit to the ticket office sorted it all out.
If the ticket office was closed i assume i'd risk a fine by getting on a train with a blank ticket?

This just reminded me of a time I put in the booking reference and the machine said "Unable to issue please go to the ticket office" half way through the printing process.

No idea what would have happened if there was no ticket office. I resolved not to use that particular station/TVM combination again.

 

[weeklycommuter]

Train firms face legal action over plan to close almost every ticket office

The Labour mayors for Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Liverpool City Region, South Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough are preparing to go court unless train operators halt closures of 1,000 ticket offices across England

www.mirror.co.uk

 

[londontransit]

That person has first to locate the right platform and train

Likely after having tried to search vainly for assistance

That is a problem - assistance - or how to get that even.

Sadly some of us in need of wanting assistance, do not get the service expected or at worse, get rejected.

The new customer focused oriented stations being promoted as a replacement for ticket offices are no better. The assertions being made that these cater for every single particular group (as the Rail Delivery Group/RDG advocates) do not stand up to scrutiny - as a visit to one of the RDG's vaunted new customer focussed stations - Newbury - unfortunately proved. This was unsettling as there's often a large number of users with specific needs who use that particular station.

Newbury station evaluated in terms of catering for particular groups with specific needs.

 

[Kite159]

The end goal is that is that every single ticket is electronic, so unfortunately the RMT campaign to show how many TVMs are not working is doomed to fail. The government do not care if the TVMS are OOS. The calls that TVMs are not user friendly is going to fall on deaf ears too. If anything loading them up with everything will make them even worse.

I saw something like that at the weekend at Edinburgh where one of the multiple TVMs (of both ScotRail & LNER types) was showing out of service. Person ignored the ones either side to take a photo to try and say "TVMs are broken again, save the ticket office!!!"

Shows you can't always trust those pictures which the RMT post.

 

[Horizon22]

Perhaps the cost of ticket offices should be added to the cost of buying them, and likewise for online

So take a current £10 ticket, and reduce it to say £9.50. Add a 20p overhead for buying online, or a £2 overhead for buying in person to fund the cost of the ticket office

Then everyone's happy, those that want to use ticket offices can, and they are self-funding.

Although the overhead is probably a lot more than that, in reality.

 

[Whistler40145]

How far will the Mayor of Liverpool and Manchester get with the proposed legal action against the closure of ticket offices?

 

[NARobertson]

I have sent a response to the Transport Forum on this subject. When it came to submitting this message I found the anti-robot censor to be unduly obstructive. So it asked for every square where there was a bicycle or a bus. But the images were fuzzy and small. I persisted and sent the message. However, I wonder if Transport Focus, by making messages difficult to send, is attempting to limit the number of responses it receives?

Looking at the documentation GWR has on its website there appear to be contradictions between the explanatory document and the list of station closures. For instance, the first document says that, depending on the result of the consultation, some station ticket offices may close over a period of years. The list of closures said, for every station I looked at, that the ticket office will close by the end of next year (2024). The document says that all TVMs accept cash but the one at my local station (Worle) never has. The document says people will be able to buy tickets on trains or at their destination, but what then becomes of revenue inspectors?

It is also the case that several national papers reported that GWR will not be closing any ticket offices, as opposed to all other TOCs for which they published long closure lists. Whereas national reports have said that ticket office staff will be redeployed at stations, the closure notices at GWR stations state that only some of them will be redeployed. Could it be that information GWR has provided on this subject has been misleading?

Neil Robertson

 

[jon0844]

I saw a FOI statistic earlier today on the Northern twitter page which shows last year there were around 3.5 million TVM sales at Northern stations, however there were over 8 million ticket office sales in the same 12 month period. E-tickets may be the future and the predominant method, but taking this result I think there is a strong argument that ticket offices are ahead of TVMs in terms of convenience and efficiency.

I expect people prefer to use a ticket office if there is one, but will go to a TVM if they see a queue. In the past, perhaps they'd use a TVM to pick up tickets to save time - but now they're increasingly getting an Aztec e-ticket and not using a TVM at all.

If more people use contactless or e-tickets, TVM usage may actually fall more significantly than the ticket office. And it really doesn't help the fact that TVMs are so slow and still have a pretty unintuitive user interface that we've discussed on this forum for YEARS and they've never really sought to fix.

By now they could have made something far more nimble (I suspect bad code as even older PCs inside early TVMs should still be able to run relatively simple software okay) and considered different methods of purchase - from a wizard style system for newbies that ensures the right ticket is sold (actively telling people what restrictions there are, not just that there ARE restrictions but you need to find them out for yourself) to a more 'pro' mode for regulars.

Not having tickets hidden behind a '.' and other nonsense is also something that should have been fixed ages ago, as well as a load of other reasons that aren't for this thread.

TVMs are in effect now providing further reasons to keep ticket offices open, and as they only continue to get more out of date and clunky, and will eventually begin to have more and more hardware faults, unless the DfT is planning to fund a next-generation TVM roll out that is fit for the 21st century, I can't see any valid argument to steer people towards them. We're effectively trying to get people to just use their phones or smartcards/CPCs exclusively. And I don't think the railway is anywhere near prepared for that yet.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Jul 2023 ==

With mobile networks we're now going through the equivalent of analogue TV turn off. Mobile networks are in the process of closing down anything inferior to 4G, as they rollout 5G. A number of people with older/basic models will need to upgrade their phones over the next 18 months, unless they choose to only access the Internet on their device through WiFi connections.

2G isn't being switched off anytime soon, but the amount of bandwidth is minimal and the data speeds insufficient for most modern tasks. 3G will be gone by the end of next year, and on some networks the end of 2023 (Vodafone). EE can't be far behind, but hasn't announced specific dates yet (I think when they do, it will be quite a large chunk of the UK in one go).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Jul 2023 ==

It is my understanding the official policy is for ticket offices not to offer splits unless specifcally asked as ticket office staff don't have access to booking engines like train split so the accuracy and impartiality of the process can't be guaranteed.

Giving split tickets to people who haven't asked for them is also confusing and some people are convinced they've been sold the wrong tickets. Trainline now does this a lot, and it can even get people accused of short ticketing until they notice there's more than one ticket in the app. It also causes problems at the gates when someone shows the wrong ticket as they didn't even know they had more than one.

I guess a ticket office could explain the split when handing the ticket(s) over and also make sure they're valid on the train the passenger intends to get (and going forward, if split ticketing becomes the norm without using special sites, the conditions need to be changed to allow people to use them on trains that don't call at the split point and be done with).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Jul 2023 ==

3G has been switched off near me. I'm not currently aware of switch off dates for 2G, but I guess there's some inevitability there isn't there.

I think maybe 5-10 years left on 2G, as they're still used in vending machines, some vehicles, smart meters etc. At some point it will be considered life expired, but 2G is a good fallback and far more efficient than 3G ever was. 3G spectrum will be re-used for 4G and 5G very quickly to benefit almost everyone (I doubt there are many people with a 3G only phone today). Some cars and mobile broadband solutions on the other hand....

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Jul 2023 ==

I don't mean a traditional style vending machine, more like one where you pay for your tobacco at a self checkout (and are age checked at that point) and then the product is dispensed from a secure unit when you scan the barcode on your receipt. This style of operation is also being looked at for other high theft items like razor blades.

I've seen similar abroad - and indeed that's been the method for many many years. You get a card/voucher for a pack of cigarettes or whatever and pay at the checkout, then go and collect the item from a vending machine using your code - which from memory is a bit like one of those Amazon lockers. That presumably means the collector has been age checked (but could I suppose just hand the code or item to someone else, but they could do that anyway) and means there's nobody at a counter.

In terms of customer service, many supermarkets don't do this outside of certain hours. Go shopping in the middle of the night for convenience, and not only will it be self-checkouts only, but you'll also find that you can't do anything like return an item or get help - they'll tell you to come back in the day*.

* Maybe you can insist and maybe they should help, but in practice they don't and you aren't always in the mood to go all Karen-y to demand a manager...

 

[Horizon22]

I have sent a response to the Transport Forum on this subject. When it came to submitting this message I found the anti-robot censor to be unduly obstructive. So it asked for every square where there was a bicycle or a bus. But the images were fuzzy and small. I persisted and sent the message. However, I wonder if Transport Focus, by making messages difficult to send, is attempting to limit the number of responses it receives?

That’s just standard anti-spam software these days. It’s cynical in the extreme to suggest Transport Focus is trying to limit responses accordingly.