Monday there was no-one in the ticket office and the machine which is crap at the best of time stopped taking payment...but it was okay as a big queue of us just had to pay at the ticket office when we got to Maryleb.....oh!
The more we accept the phasing out of the people working across our public transport network, the more lawless it becomes. The difference I saw (and still see) on Nottingham's tram network after they withdrew conductors was massive, and not in a positive way.
Your last line of defence are the staff at the station who sell and check tickets plus the onboard train managers. And that applies to the fit and able. Any of us who travel by train will have seen these people at all hours, helping confused and vulnerable travellers and of course, those with mobility issues who'd otherwise be completely barred from travelling around.
I chatted with a woman last year who was heading back from her daughter's graduation ceremony in Durham, coming back into Newark. With her was her husband, who was really struggling with his mobility due to advancing Parkinson's. They travelled by train because he can no longer drive and she had never done more than local journeys to the shops in her car. The staff doing ticket checks and refreshments checked to see they were ok throughout the journey and, along with platform staff, helped her and her husband and assorted bags off the train. It was a first class service but not quick, and the train just had to wait until the all clear was given.
Imagine that on a driver only train with no platform staff. That family would quite likely have been unable to enjoy the day they had. I think we should value that, and fund the service to make sure it continues. After all, we can find the money for an allegedly popular Prime Minister to take private jets and helicopters instead of a train. And before anyone starts, I've seen wealthy types like Prince Harry and Kenneth Clarke using the Midland Mainline over the years - Clarke wasn't even in 1st!
Finally, as happens to so many women travelling alone on public transport, my wife picked up an 'admirer' a couple of weeks ago who continued to follow her after the train finished at Nottingham. Her sanctuary was found at the ticket office - as soon as she started to talk to the member of staff, the pesty bloke did an about-turn and she stayed there while I drove in to pick her up. I don't think she'd have found an app and a CCTV camera much comfort.
I can't abide the attitude that if it works for me then fuck everyone else. But then again, I'm not a Tory.
You have to remember not everyone is sitting there for 30mins each post in their dinner suit at an old style PC scrutinising every single word, punctuation and apostrophe.
This issue is not as bad as some people are trying to make out.
According to articles in The Guardian and the Independent:
Only 12% of rail tickets are sold through ticket offices. The other 88% are bought online, or using Oyster and contactless payment at the station barriers.
43% of all stations have no ticket office at all. Of those that do, 40% operate on a part time basis.
There is no suggestion that ticket office staff will be dispensed with. The plan is for them to be redeployed to the platforms and concourse, to assist elderly, vulnerable, and disabled passengers.
People soon get used to not being able to get a bus, get cash out or talk to anyone at a bank, or a post office. And closing down police stations has made us all safer. And I am sure we will start to enjoy paying for Health services, and boiling all of our brown water before we use it. Not to mention all of those people released from the shackles of meaningless paid employment and de-skilled and surplus to requirements allowed to finally experience some long-term free time.
If you genuinely believe that ticket office staff won't be redeployed anywhere other than the Job Centre in the medium to long term, I've got a bridge you might be interested in buying off me...
Went to London today from Crewe on a 'supersaver return' (purchased via phone for 38.50.
Lots of activity outside Crewe station from the RMT. Lots of chaos on the journey. Managed to lord it up in first class on the way back amongst the chaos.
Are Germany and Austria on this continent you speak of? I seem to remember there being far better staffed stations there than there are in this country, and the walk-on fares were far cheaper.
Part of the reason for retaining ticket office staff as I see it is that the fare structure is so complicated, you need somebody who can explain and advise you on your best options. Or perhaps they would rather you paid twice as much as you need to.
On the one hand, I am 100% getting people out from behind a glass screen/offices and in positions that are visible and accessible to any customer/passenger that needs help anywhere in the station. If anything it can improve the working environment for those employees so they aren't sat down for hours a day.
Boring and often repetitive aspects of jobs should be automated as much as possible so that actual humans can provide that bespoke service on top to add value to people’s lives.
On the other hand, as this is a Tory planned idea which has the aim of improving profits rather than customer experience so will be implemented awfully and so service will go down and no one will be happy.
At Kings Cross / StPancras in addition to actual assistance you seem to need:
Someone to let you out of the gate when your ticket doesn't work in the machine, probably 2 out of 3 times
Someone to tell you that due to the pricing system you couldn't possibly get on the empty train at the platform and you have to wait for the full one later on, despite being early due to them factoring in too long to get across London in transfers because they don't trust it.
Someone to tell you which train to take when yours is cancelled , or what else you can do instead of what you had planned
Someone to direct you to changed platforms in random places and where and why platform 0 is ever a thing
Someone to keep the tourists happy and out of everyone's way at the Harry Potter cash in attraction
Someone to explain that trains have been cancelled earlier so your train will be rammed and your reservation isn't now worth the paper / screen it's written on
Someone to explain to you that due to technical issues and staff shortages they haven't been able to write up / display info around empty seats so if you didn't get an allocated seat you have to guess and if you did then someone else will be sitting in it
Someone to explain how the government spent 100s of millions of pounds doing up the station and subsidising train companies and allowed the prices to go silly and the station to be an overgrown shopping centre with a few trains wedged in uncomfortably and yet they still can't make enough money to not need subsidy, and yet are able to turn a profit..
Chiltern Railways could probably make a healthy profit by closing all the ticket booths and stations and just running an express service from Marylebone to Bicester Village.
Could team up with Shanghai to use maglevs. This would cut the journey time to 13 minutes
Absolutely brilliant if you commute from Bicester and buy tickets on a smartphone.
There was a queue for the ticket office at HW station today, while people lost patience with the temperamental machines that only seem to respond when touched in a very specific place.
Living in London I can't see what the fuss is about. There are next to no operating Ticket Offices away from major terminals and it works fine. It also has nothing at all to do with football and not much to do with tory's/torees/Tory's/taurice for the punctuationally challenged. Blame the 21st century.
He didn’t say that, he said it was in the Independent and the Guardian, both left leaning newspapers, so your implication that he was influenced by a right leaning newspaper is wrong.
Lol, I live in London too, nearest tube station you have to guess which of two trains is going next, you can see there are some staff somewhere sometimes but they have inaccurate signs up and hide wherever possible.
Occasionally I leave our fair capital and it's genuinely an expensive pain in the arse. More occasionally I leave our fair isle and it's very rare that anyone else's trains are as bad. Often they are far superior and cheaper and almost always more punctual.
It has something to do with football If you enjoy away games, and wether you like it or not has much to do with the Tories who control when to tell an operator to sort their life out, sling there hook or have some more money and relax the targets that they regularly fail.
I live in Dover, our station only has one ticket machine that is conveniently placed so it is impossible to read the screen if the sun is out.
I have also noticed unlike ticket machines in Belgium/Netherlands & Germany that they do not allow you to change the language, so tourists spend forever randomly prodding the machine in between using google translate to try & operate them. I alwasy offer to help if I am behind them in the queue.
I generally buy local journey tickets on my local train companies app & load them onto my "key card" (their version of oyster) but if I have a complex multi operator journey I prefer to buy in advance at the ticket office as they have a legal duty to sell me the cheapest ticket for my journey & to offer me all the options unlike the online systems. To be fair southeastern's web offering is pretty good.
Comments
Monday there was no-one in the ticket office and the machine which is crap at the best of time stopped taking payment...but it was okay as a big queue of us just had to pay at the ticket office when we got to Maryleb.....oh!
The more we accept the phasing out of the people working across our public transport network, the more lawless it becomes. The difference I saw (and still see) on Nottingham's tram network after they withdrew conductors was massive, and not in a positive way.
Your last line of defence are the staff at the station who sell and check tickets plus the onboard train managers. And that applies to the fit and able. Any of us who travel by train will have seen these people at all hours, helping confused and vulnerable travellers and of course, those with mobility issues who'd otherwise be completely barred from travelling around.
I chatted with a woman last year who was heading back from her daughter's graduation ceremony in Durham, coming back into Newark. With her was her husband, who was really struggling with his mobility due to advancing Parkinson's. They travelled by train because he can no longer drive and she had never done more than local journeys to the shops in her car. The staff doing ticket checks and refreshments checked to see they were ok throughout the journey and, along with platform staff, helped her and her husband and assorted bags off the train. It was a first class service but not quick, and the train just had to wait until the all clear was given.
Imagine that on a driver only train with no platform staff. That family would quite likely have been unable to enjoy the day they had. I think we should value that, and fund the service to make sure it continues. After all, we can find the money for an allegedly popular Prime Minister to take private jets and helicopters instead of a train. And before anyone starts, I've seen wealthy types like Prince Harry and Kenneth Clarke using the Midland Mainline over the years - Clarke wasn't even in 1st!
Finally, as happens to so many women travelling alone on public transport, my wife picked up an 'admirer' a couple of weeks ago who continued to follow her after the train finished at Nottingham. Her sanctuary was found at the ticket office - as soon as she started to talk to the member of staff, the pesty bloke did an about-turn and she stayed there while I drove in to pick her up. I don't think she'd have found an app and a CCTV camera much comfort.
I can't abide the attitude that if it works for me then fuck everyone else. But then again, I'm not a Tory.
POTY
On the subject of tories, have we all seen the email sent to everyone going to George Osborne's wedding tomorrow?
You have to remember not everyone is sitting there for 30mins each post in their dinner suit at an old style PC scrutinising every single word, punctuation and apostrophe.
Some just thumb it into their phone in seconds 😘
Consistently the second best poster on the forum behind yourself.
17th most handsome man, which is some accolade amongst the set of adonises (adoni?) who patrol these waters.
I have now.
This issue is not as bad as some people are trying to make out.
According to articles in The Guardian and the Independent:
Only 12% of rail tickets are sold through ticket offices. The other 88% are bought online, or using Oyster and contactless payment at the station barriers.
43% of all stations have no ticket office at all. Of those that do, 40% operate on a part time basis.
There is no suggestion that ticket office staff will be dispensed with. The plan is for them to be redeployed to the platforms and concourse, to assist elderly, vulnerable, and disabled passengers.
So a bit of a storm in a teacup, really.
And what happens when the machines inevitably don't work?
People soon get used to not being able to get a bus, get cash out or talk to anyone at a bank, or a post office. And closing down police stations has made us all safer. And I am sure we will start to enjoy paying for Health services, and boiling all of our brown water before we use it. Not to mention all of those people released from the shackles of meaningless paid employment and de-skilled and surplus to requirements allowed to finally experience some long-term free time.
If you genuinely believe that ticket office staff won't be redeployed anywhere other than the Job Centre in the medium to long term, I've got a bridge you might be interested in buying off me...
Go to the continent.....no ticket office...cheap travel....efficient.the unions need to wake up.
Because there are famously no unionised staff in continental Europe.
Hence the strikes in France!!!!!!!
Your position is a trifle confused. Still, it has been quite warm today.
Went to London today from Crewe on a 'supersaver return' (purchased via phone for 38.50.
Lots of activity outside Crewe station from the RMT. Lots of chaos on the journey. Managed to lord it up in first class on the way back amongst the chaos.
Are Germany and Austria on this continent you speak of? I seem to remember there being far better staffed stations there than there are in this country, and the walk-on fares were far cheaper.
Aha ! Are you @Alexo in disguise, @DevonBlue ?
I’m wearing a T-shirt and shorts @Malone and rapidly tapping out this post on my state of the art iPhone.
So there!
Part of the reason for retaining ticket office staff as I see it is that the fare structure is so complicated, you need somebody who can explain and advise you on your best options. Or perhaps they would rather you paid twice as much as you need to.
On the one hand, I am 100% getting people out from behind a glass screen/offices and in positions that are visible and accessible to any customer/passenger that needs help anywhere in the station. If anything it can improve the working environment for those employees so they aren't sat down for hours a day.
Boring and often repetitive aspects of jobs should be automated as much as possible so that actual humans can provide that bespoke service on top to add value to people’s lives.
On the other hand, as this is a Tory planned idea which has the aim of improving profits rather than customer experience so will be implemented awfully and so service will go down and no one will be happy.
At Kings Cross / StPancras in addition to actual assistance you seem to need:
Someone to let you out of the gate when your ticket doesn't work in the machine, probably 2 out of 3 times
Someone to tell you that due to the pricing system you couldn't possibly get on the empty train at the platform and you have to wait for the full one later on, despite being early due to them factoring in too long to get across London in transfers because they don't trust it.
Someone to tell you which train to take when yours is cancelled , or what else you can do instead of what you had planned
Someone to direct you to changed platforms in random places and where and why platform 0 is ever a thing
Someone to keep the tourists happy and out of everyone's way at the Harry Potter cash in attraction
Someone to explain that trains have been cancelled earlier so your train will be rammed and your reservation isn't now worth the paper / screen it's written on
Someone to explain to you that due to technical issues and staff shortages they haven't been able to write up / display info around empty seats so if you didn't get an allocated seat you have to guess and if you did then someone else will be sitting in it
Someone to explain how the government spent 100s of millions of pounds doing up the station and subsidising train companies and allowed the prices to go silly and the station to be an overgrown shopping centre with a few trains wedged in uncomfortably and yet they still can't make enough money to not need subsidy, and yet are able to turn a profit..
Looking forward to it again next week.
Chiltern Railways could probably make a healthy profit by closing all the ticket booths and stations and just running an express service from Marylebone to Bicester Village.
Could team up with Shanghai to use maglevs. This would cut the journey time to 13 minutes
Absolutely brilliant if you commute from Bicester and buy tickets on a smartphone.
Don't worry, Bargepole has been assured by a small snippet in a Telegraph opinion piece that this would all just be a storm in a teacup.
There was a queue for the ticket office at HW station today, while people lost patience with the temperamental machines that only seem to respond when touched in a very specific place.
Living in London I can't see what the fuss is about. There are next to no operating Ticket Offices away from major terminals and it works fine. It also has nothing at all to do with football and not much to do with tory's/torees/Tory's/taurice for the punctuationally challenged. Blame the 21st century.
As I previously stated, my sources were The Guardian and The Independent, not the Telegraph.
But why let the facts get in the way of your prejudices?
He didn’t say that, he said it was in the Independent and the Guardian, both left leaning newspapers, so your implication that he was influenced by a right leaning newspaper is wrong.
I quite like the Chiltern Railway app for buying tickets. Until I see the price of course
Lol, I live in London too, nearest tube station you have to guess which of two trains is going next, you can see there are some staff somewhere sometimes but they have inaccurate signs up and hide wherever possible.
Occasionally I leave our fair capital and it's genuinely an expensive pain in the arse. More occasionally I leave our fair isle and it's very rare that anyone else's trains are as bad. Often they are far superior and cheaper and almost always more punctual.
It has something to do with football If you enjoy away games, and wether you like it or not has much to do with the Tories who control when to tell an operator to sort their life out, sling there hook or have some more money and relax the targets that they regularly fail.
I live in Dover, our station only has one ticket machine that is conveniently placed so it is impossible to read the screen if the sun is out.
I have also noticed unlike ticket machines in Belgium/Netherlands & Germany that they do not allow you to change the language, so tourists spend forever randomly prodding the machine in between using google translate to try & operate them. I alwasy offer to help if I am behind them in the queue.
I generally buy local journey tickets on my local train companies app & load them onto my "key card" (their version of oyster) but if I have a complex multi operator journey I prefer to buy in advance at the ticket office as they have a legal duty to sell me the cheapest ticket for my journey & to offer me all the options unlike the online systems. To be fair southeastern's web offering is pretty good.