July’s meeting of Blackburn and District Trades Union Council discussed the proposed national programme of railway station ticket office closures and decided to write to local MPs outlining our objections to the plan, as well as responding to the Train station ticket office consultation – Transport Focus.
Although the proposals will see little change to office provision at stations within our area of responsibility (Blackburn, Darwen and the Ribble Valley), we felt that they had wider implications for our members as citizens and passengers.
The consultation process itself seemed to us to be as badly designed as the proposal. . We are being presented with what is clearly a national policy and strategic orientation, but the public is being channelled towards responding in an atomised and fragmented fashion – as if we had no right to be concerned about the general issues raised. The consultation form on the “Transport Focus” website asks respondents to select a specific station and then comment only on “How will you be impacted by the proposed changes to the ticket office?”. Individuals may, in reality, be inconvenienced by the arrangements at various stations provided by different companies and in circumstances they are not currently able to predict. It is possible to put in responses in respect of a variety of stations “run” by different companies – but what is really needed is the chance to criticise (or approve) of the policy overall. There is no particular provision made for the involvement of civil society and representative organisations – other than that it is possible to email each or any of the train companies. The process is essentially one set out in Schedule 17 of the Ticketing and Settlement Agreement with the intention of dealing with specific instances where a Ticket Office closure might be considered. It is not one sufficient to deal with a national policy, which is, essentailly a Government policy for which the Government should accept responsibility – rather than skulk behind a “corporate shield”, pulling the strings in the background.
The main objections to the policy we have identified are as follows.
1) The mass closure of Ticket Offices appears to be but one aspect of a broader agenda to de-staff our railways. We have not been able to find any statistics as to whether or not the number of unstaffed stations has increased recently, but in January 2020 RMT claimed that their research showed that “only 10% of rail stations are fully staffed, 45% are only staffed some of the time and a massive 45% of stations are totally unstaffed”. When you add in the train operators’ obsession with driver-only services the direction of travel looks clear. The Association of British Commuters reckons that:
“The consultation documents show that at West Midlands Trains (WMT), 78 stations would become unstaffed under the plans. Added to WMT’s current total of 59 unstaffed stations, the number would increase to 137 (94% of its network). Of a total 146 WMT stations, only 9 would retain ticket offices.
“At East Midlands Railway (EMR), 16 stations would become unstaffed – increasing from 74 at present to a total of 90 unstaffed stations (87% of its network). Of a total 103 EMR stations, only 7 would keep ticket offices open.“
In its “consultation” document, Northern Rail has not set out any criteria in respect of the volumes it sees as justifying keeping a Ticket Office open. Prior to 2022, the Government did have a general rule of thumb that Ticket Offices would not be allowed to close where they averaged over 12 transactions an hour. But it removed this threshold, meaning the loss of any agreed national standard.
2) The Rail Delivery Group – or maybe we should better say, the Government – claims to have a customer service strategy, but it does not give us any indication of what options and alternatives have been considered. There are, arguably, measures that could be undertaken to improve Ticket Offices, looking at their location and range of functions. At some stations, for instance, they can be on the “wrong” side of barriers to serve passengers changing trains. These options, however, have apparently remained unexplored.
While the Government says that ‘only’ 12% of tickets are sold at Ticket Offices, in 2022/23 this still equated to around 180 million journeys. The circumstances in which the Offices are used are often those which are more crucial or difficult for passengers than the more straightforward transactions, a last-minute need to travel, for instance, or where the passenger has difficulty using websites or ticket machines.
If the railway wants to attract the new users and be as inclusive as possible, then the “purchase from a person” choice should remain. A far more important priority is to reform the hideously complex charging system on the railway with its enormous variations in price, and to get back a sense that it is a public service which needs to take account of public views in the matter of its delivery. The scale of the response to the ticket office consultation is an indication of the extent to which the rail industry lacks the confidence of the public it is supposed to serve.
3) Ticket Office staff are able to interact with passengers and determine their needs in ways that ticket machines and apps cannot. They can tailor their service to meet passenger needs in a way that ticket machines or online ticketing is unable to. Try, for instance, to book a ticket via a machine or online that will take you from Blackburn to Brighton without either using the London Underground or travelling from Manchester Victoria to Manchester Piccadilly.
4) At many stations access to facilities such as toilets, disabled toilets, waiting rooms and lifts is dependent on Ticket Office staff. Consistent feedback from disabled travellers is that they want to have a person who can offer advice in a prominent or fixed location, such as a Ticket Office, not roaming, particularly at inaccessible stations.
5) Ticket Offices provide a place of safety for both staff and passengers. The presence of staff deters abusive and anti-social behaviour. There is a consistent theme emerging from passenger research, which is that passengers like and value the presence of staff. Having staffed ticket offices supports passenger perceptions and feelings around safety, and closing ticket offices could lead to passengers no longer feeling safe when travelling.
6) Ticket machines provide a limited and undependable service. Companies tend to see the efficiency and utility of technological customer services through rose-tinted spectacles. The proliferation of ticket purchases through machines and apps does not mean that passengers are always getting a better service, particularly when there are problems. One of our delegates, for instance, ended up facing a “fine” at Manchester Victoria when travelling from Darwen to on a business meeting. “On that particular day”, she says, “I had got to the station in good time to get a ticket but there were several people in front of me having problems working the machine and the elderly woman in front of me was particularly struggling. I helped her get her ticket, then the train arrived, so I got on”. When she got to Manchester she was not allowed to pay at the Ticket Office there because she had not a “Promise to Pay” notice – which had, of course, been as unavailable to her at Darwen as a ticket. When she told her story to friends on Facebook there were others who had had similar experiences: “I more or less immediately had a message from a friend, who is actually a Minister (Vicar), saying that she was also on her way into Manchester on a train, and also didn’t have a ticket as she’d got on at a station with no ticket office, no time to get one from machine, and no guard. She messaged me later to say that she had also been prevented from buying one on arrival at Manchester too, and was being fined“. (Our delegate did get the fine rescinded on Appeal – but still had a lot of grief from the situation).
“Transport For All”, an umbrella group for passengers with disabilities, is particularly scathing about ticket machines. They say they: “don’t have all ticket options and discounts available. For example, the 50% wheelchair user discount can only be purchased at ticket offices. Using TVMs may therefore result in increased costs of travel for many disabled people, who already face significant financial barriers to transport.
“This is among a host of other barriers to using TVMs: the lack of tactile information and functionality, being poorly signposted, being out of reach for wheelchair users, and the complexity of information and user experience. Disabled people must be able to purchase tickets, otherwise, the rail system simply cannot work for them”.
7) The government underestimates the extent of digital exclusion. Using mobile ‘phone apps for ticketing can be an added expense for those most unable to afford it. According to Uswitch UK Mobile Phone statistics for 2023: “Up until the end of 2021, there were just over 85 million mobile phone subscriptions in the UK. Of these, 75% had a monthly phone contract, equating to more than 63.5 million subscriptions with over 21 million pay-as-you-go customers nationally”. In other words, possible up to a quarter of mobile ‘phone users will either have no data usage, or usage that is dreadfully expensive (where it is by network rather than by WiFi). On 28th April 2021 the BBC News website reported that: “about 1.5 million homes in the UK still do not have internet access, a report by Ofcom has found”. There are also about 4% of adults who remain “unbanked”. There are, in other words, large numbers of people who could find themselves put off from using rail services by a system that fails to offer sufficient person-to-person support.
The “Rail” website, in March 2023, reported that: “London TravelWatch claims that one in six people in the capital (1.5 million people) say they are unable to buy a train ticket as they can’t use or don’t have access to a smartphone or internet connection. A further one in five Londoners have paid more for travel because they are not able to buy tickets online or via mobile apps, says the transport watchdog. It says these “left behind Londoners” feel cut off from using public transport because they are “digitally excluded or disadvantaged”. The watchdog says that these people are typically older (55+), more likely to be disabled, and have a lower income…”.
If the railway wants to attract the new users and be as inclusive as possible, then the “purchase from a person” choice should remain. A far more important priority is to reform the hideously complex charging system on the railway with its enormous variations in price, and to get back a sense that it is a public service which needs to take account of public views in the matter of its delivery. The scale of the response to the ticket office consultation is an indication of the extent to which the rail industry lacks the confidence of the public it is supposed to serve.