Could you manage without staff at your train station?

I have a reasonable amount of money in the form of National Rail vouchers received as compensation for late or cancelled trains.
The only way I can redeem these is by buying tickets at a Station Ticket Office , besides the cost and inconvenience of a 50 mile trip to do this at our local mainline station I can never be sure if the Ticket Office will be open or not.
So I would like to see Ticket Offices with guaranteed opening hours and a way of redeeming Ticket Vouchers online ( where the tickets are sometimes cheaper).

My local station in West Yorkshire has been unstaffed for years. Pasengers are expected to buy their tickets on the train the conductors often do not come round. Sometimes the trains are too crowded, other times they just don’t bother. I am only able to pay on about half my journeys. Even if there is an open ticket office at my arrival station I may be told that they cannot sell me a ticket because I use a West Yorkshire Metro Card.
On complaing about not being able to pay, excuses have included that the conductor’s ticket machine battery must have been flat (after 6 ‘free’ journeys) and that the conductor must have been on his break!

I work on the railways.

It will not make any difference to the cost of your train ticket if the workers at the coal face are removed, just some backslapping from management on their costs being reduced.

Even from a safety point of view, there should always be staff at stations,either in a ticket office or on platforms,or,where practical, both.

Another example of staff and management being recruited straight from university or with loads of degrees and paper qualifications,but no experience and, in some cases, no common sense or decency towards those who are paying their salaries.

Although this is not unique to the railway!!

I can’t imagine how train operators will get around some of the problems mentioned if they get rid of staff. The issue of wheelchair access and assistance onto trains is a real worry, as well as the fact that some stations (my local station, for instance!) only have one or two ticket machines, which break very frequently. They’d need to spend a huge amount of money to make sure that there was appropriate service for people who don’t need station staff before they think about getting rid of staff altogether. And, as Ian Conway says, even then there remain issues of safety.

I’d like to get a better picture of how they think this will improve life for commuters – do they have any cost calculations on how much cheaper tickets would be? Perhaps I’m being cynical but, like Ian, I can’t see it making a difference to ticket costs. The DLR isn’t cheaper than other trains on the Underground, despite being driverless.

I would find it very inconvenient if there the ticket office at our local station was closed permanently. We sometimes return to a different station on the same line from where we started and it is economical to be able to buy a return ticket that shows the starting point and return destination as the furthermost station and – so far as I am aware – this can only be done at a ticket office. If booking on-line or using machines you can only get tickets for this sort of journey as two singles at a higher aggregate cost. Booking on-line is not always convennient either because we do not always know the date of departure much in advance let alone the time of the train we will take – we can get untimed tickets at the station whereas on line I think you need to select a specific train for the outward journey, and for advance tickets you have to specify the actual train for both legs of the journey. Moreover, we don’t want to be told which seats we must sit in – sometimes we might want to use the “quiet” coach, other times be near the buffet, or be at the front of the train for a sprint to the only taxi waiting at our arrival station! The ticket clerks usually give accurate information and are very helpful in working out the best tickets for our requirements. Plus, they can tell us any peak-period time restrictions for the return journey which seem to differ so much between train operators and routes: no machine will do that. The clerks can also explain the mysterious “any permitted route” condition on the tickets and when a break of journey is allowed. It seems to me that if at least two ticket machines were provided on each platform at every station [in order to ensure at least one was in working order] it will require as many staff in cleaning, servicing, topping up the ticket stock and printer ink, taking out the money, and managing/administering the system, as would be needed to keep the ticket offices open, but – crucially – none of those employees would be able to assist passengers or deal with an emergency. After Transport for London took over some ex-National Rail routes around the periphery of London and upgraded the stations, ensuring that there was a member of staff on duty during all times when train services were operating, passenger numbers grew enormously, so much so that the trains are now overcrowded at peak times. De-staffing the stations would be madness.

Cutting people is in the franchise agreements, always carefully worded as introduction of newer technologies. Only the McNulty Report had the nerve to use plain language, which the present government still finds too hard.

Cutting people is cheap and that’s all the franchises own – everything else is leased. Cutting people will continue until policy changes, and that can only come from passengers and taxpayers who subsidise the railway, make this clear to their MPs.

Yes, I’m biased, as a retired transport worker. I’ve seen the quality of service reduce as the technology got better. We can now measure everything to three decimal places, such as a ‘happiness index’.

We need people, not just on the railways but in all walks of life; I’m lucky enough to be able-bodied (now) and not have (yet) any learning issues. One day I will need people a lot more than now, so it’s ‘my’ role to ensure that people are there for everyone. It’s your role too.

With the current over-complex fare structures, there is a need for staffed ticket offices as not all tickets are available from machines or on-line. Remember that the train companies have an obligation to offer the cheapest possible fare. What we do not need is the unions inflaming the situation with strike threats instead of working together with the train companies to arrive at a constructive solution.

this issue relates to London Underground stations only. at present if you have a delay of 16+ minutes you can claim a refund (which is only the oyster cost of that journey) which is paid in the form of a voucher. although you can top up your oyster card for pay as you go or season tickets at newsagents and ticket machines, the only place you can redeem a voucher is at a ticket office. So it would seem that either refunds will have to be paid electronically (as they should be anyway in this day & age) or vouchers become redeemable at any outlet that sells tickets. I don’t see any mention of this so i can only assume that in fact the removal of ticket offices will mean that we will no longer be able to either claim refunds or just not be able to redeem them – one way to get round the cost of having to pay for delays!!
just don’t get me started on national rail refunds – as an oyster card user for my season ticket (that covers national rail by the way) I am not able to claim for delays on mainline train journeys with southwest trains as they only refund if you bought your (old fashioned, paper) ticket from one of their stations (& they don’t do oyster). catch 22!

I use the London Underground from time to time and manage fine without having assistance. National Railways is a different matter. I don’t have a clue about the ticket required or the route I am allowed to use with a ticket. Just as well I have used National Rail just once in the past 10 years and that was a journey with one train operator so I did not risk a fine for using the wrong route.

I thought all stations had to have a certain manning level for health and safety reasons. After all fires and accidents can happen anywhere and who will assist passengers in such an event.

Closing ticket offices on LU stations doesn’t worry me particularly. Having un-staffed stations is a completely different matter. CCTV cameras do little to prevent crime, they just provide a false sense of security. Aside from the security angle, people often need some sort of practical assistance, for example using the wide gates for suitcases or pushchairs.

We need staff covering BOTH ticket offices AND platforms!

What really annoys me, is not stations where you have to use a machine to buy your ticket, but stations where there are neither staffed ticket offices nor ticket machines, so you have to go and seek out the conductor on the train after boarding in order to purchase a ticket. This is the case for several stations on the Exmouth to Exeter train line, and it really is a pain, especially if you have luggage.