Closing rail ticket offices flies in the face of all common sense - Andrew Vine

They have already been joined in protesting by more than 30,000 people nationwide, according to the watchdog Transport Focus, but time is running out to send an uncompromising message to ministers that the travelling public will not stand for an already-beleaguered network being damaged still further.

The three-week consultation on closing ticket offices ends next Wednesday. Disturbingly, the exercise feels like a sham, with the Royal National Institute of Blind People pointing out that the printed and online forms to object are not accessible for many blind or partially sighted people.

The suspicion that ministers have already made up their minds, irrespective of passengers’ unhappiness, was reinforced at the weekend when it was reported that 2,000 ticket office jobs are at risk, despite earlier assurances that no staff would go, the claim being that they would be redeployed around stations instead.

The sheer cynicism at work here was exposed last week by Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle when he took the unusual step of interrupting rail minister Huw Merriman as he breezily informed the House that service to passengers would not suffer. Not so, Sir Lindsay pointed out. In his own Chorley constituency, station staff would only be available to help passengers for half the time they are currently when the ticket office goes.

The Speaker’s shot across the Government’s bows ought to make ministers think again. And it is imperative that rail users add to the pressure by making their feelings plain. Here in Yorkshire, that is already happening. Last week, passengers staged a protest at Hebden Bridge station, and there have been powerful, well-argued objections from Keighley and Halifax amongst other places.

Closing ticket offices flies in the face of all common sense, especially at a time when the Government ought to be helping the railways do everything possible to get more passengers back on to trains after numbers fell so drastically during the pandemic.

Like every other regular rail user, I’ve lost count of the times that a helpful and knowledgeable member of staff at the ticket window has found me the best - and cheapest – option for a journey.

And I’ve also lost count of how often I’ve waited in a queue while staff patiently helped passengers bewildered by the labyrinthine ticketing system – sometimes an older person, sometimes a visitor from overseas – who would otherwise have been left floundering.

That’s hardly surprising, given the complexity of rail ticketing. Incredibly, there are more than 2,800 different types of ticket, according to the Independent Rail Retailers Association. It’s no wonder people are grateful for the help of a friendly face at the counter.

Yet this essential customer service – and basic decency towards people in need of assistance – is being chucked out by official decree, leaving passengers at the mercy of those awful ticketing machines on station concourses which always appear to me to be programmed to offer only the most expensive fare for any journey. Use the ticket websites instead, say ministers. But what if an older passenger has no access to the internet, or simply does not feel comfortable doing so?

Charities representing the elderly and the disabled have been vocal in their objections to closing ticket offices, and they are right to be. This amounts to a form of discrimination by putting further obstacles in the way of passengers who already face challenges in using the trains. The effect will be to put people off trains, potentially limiting what they are able to do, or forcing them into cars that add to the congestion on the roads.

We know only too well in Yorkshire what rail passengers have to put up with. Incompetent operators, cancelled services and overcrowded trains have made our region’s railways so notoriously bad that they are a source of incredulity to other parts of the country. And that’s before strikes made matters even worse. Against such a backdrop, the advice of ticketing staff becomes ever more essential. Ministers ought to be improving customer service, not undermining it.