Are train ticket machines a waste of time?

I completely agree with this article. I far prefer to use the machines to queuing at the desk, but am always frustrated at the information available when buying a ticket for a journey I am not familiar with. There should be information on terms & conditions in plain English available at every stage. There should be a simple mode where you put in what you want to do (here to there now and back today at 15:00; or here to there now, then to there at 14:00, then back at 22:00; or to there and back next Tuesday afternoon) and it tells you the cheapest fares (and alternatives like first class). I thought computers were supposed to be good at things like that?

With complex arrangements and needing to travel as a group with my disabled daughter and my wife, I doubt that I would ever use a ticket machine. Frequently out of order and not able to give anything useful when they work, they have a negative incentive plan programmed into them. Most times it is not only faster but cheaper to use the car, e.g. we needed to go to an ice show in London. Station car park full up so no way to park, train travel needed 3 hours just on the train. We went on from the station to the car park near the venue and arrived in 50 minutes… What use is the terrible train system with its awful ticket ‘lottery machines’?

Ticket machines are infuriating, over-complicated and can result in passengers having to pay more than they should for their tickets.

When I travel with my husband we both have railcards. We enter details into the machine for one ticket but can’t just increase the number of tickets to two. Although there is an option for this it doesn’t work with railcard tickets – we have to enter all the details a second time. When I suggested to staff that the machine’s programme should be adapted to allow this, it was suggested that I look around the station for flying pigs!

Also off-peak tickets are not available from the machines until after 9 a.m. – so if your train goes at 9.00, you are entitled to use an off-peak ticket but you either have to go to the booking office for it, or pay full price at the machine, or you miss your train.

Also the ticket descriptions are misleading – look for "Cheap day return" and you won’t find it – it shows up as "Standard return".

Plus all too often at least one machine at my local station is out of order.

I use ticket machines quiet happily but … I investigate train fares on the internet first. Some operators have a "find the cheapest fare" facility. My own local operator (Southern Railways) offers a discount of various tickets if they are booked on-line and collected via ticket machine. All the conditions of travel and limitations are available on-line and collecting at the ticket machine is pretty simple (if less than 20 pounds or so you don’t even need to enter a booking reference). Southern Railways is presently offering 15% discount on off-peak returns and other discounts on "advanced" fares. If you really need to talk to a human being I find the larger stations have a "Travel Centre" where there tends to be less of a queue. So I suggest researching the prices on-line, booking on-line then only use the ticket machine for the actual printing of the ticket – and most frustrations would be side-stepped.

My local station [Diss, Norfolk] has a ticket machine on both platforms but the only ticket office is on the London platform requiring a double hike over the footbridge [30 steps each side = 120 steps] if taking a down train. Plus the ticket office is not staffed between odd [and variable] times during the day. Because the train conductors are some of the most officious rule-observing jobs-worths I have ever encountered I have mastered the ticket machine on the down platform for same-day returns although I made a few errors as I learned the technique. Up journeys are generally more complicated involving uncertain return dates/times, railcard discounts, oyster card add-ons, etc, so I usually use the ticket office despite the need to wait for up to twenty minutes while other similarly beleaguered passengers negotiate their transactions. It is fair to say that the recent "simplification" of the ticketing system is an improvement even though it does not go far enough – at least even I can work out that an "any-time off-peak return" is exactly what it says [once I’ve discovered when "off-peak" applies of course]. [I recently witnessed a young woman being turned off the train by the conductor at Chelmsford where – because not all Norwich trains stop – she would have to wait for an hour just because her ticket was for a train running thirty minutes later than the one she was on, and even though the train she was on had plenty of room and was emptying as it progressed. She said that she had booked the tickets on-line and was not aware of the restrictions. She had compliantly accepted the conductor’s orders which he might not have attempted to enforce with a less meek or male **********. The railways are still not working in the public interest and all ATOC [the passenger train operating companies’ representative body] says is that it must be all right because most people manage to put up with it.

I USUALLY BUY TICKETS ONLINE AND TRY TO COLLECT FROM MACHINES. AT SOME STATIONS, E.G. LONDON EUSTON, THIS WORKS FINE. AT OTHERS, E.G. EAST CROYDON, THE MACHINES NEVER RECOGNISE MY CARD AND I USE THE TICKET OFFICE TO PRINT THE TICKETS. THE TICKET OFFICE STAFF RECOGNISE THE MACHINES’ LIMITATIONS BUT SAY THEY ARE POWERLESS TO HAVE THEM UPGRADED/REPAIRED/IMPROVED. A SHAME AS THE MACHINES ARE USEFUL AND WOULD BE EVEN MORE SO IF THEIR LIMITATIONS WERE WORKED ON.

I lived in Japan for 17 years and have been bewildered at how confusing and expensive trains are in the U.K. Making sure you have a Railcard and checking prices online before travel are the things I do to try to somehow reduce the cost. The whole thinking behind fares needs to be simplified a lot before we can get to easier to use ticket machines.

It seems unfair to blame the ticket machine for the complexity of railway pricing. If you already know what you want it provides the goods pretty quickly.
If you want to change railway ticket pricing, then you have to face the fact that the UK Government wants to CUT the subsidy and the only way that private interests can turn a profit is to use yield management to ensure trains are full with people paying the highest possible price tickets – which leads to inherently complex fares – as you can see if you consider that few Airline tickets are sold in machines?