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 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.

What do you think about the rail fare announcements – up 4.1%: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23677173 Justified?

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.

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.