Under pressure to make savings after falling passenger numbers due to the pandemic and the rise of teleworking, British train companies are considering getting rid of hundreds of station ticket offices in small towns.
The Rail Delivery Group (RDG), an industry federation, launched a wide-ranging 21-day public consultation on Wednesday. It explained in a statement that employees who have previously served passengers from ticket offices would be redeployed to platforms and station halls.
The RMT railway workers’ union denounced “train operators getting rich and the government’s attempt to decimate the railways by announcing the closure of 1,000 ticket offices” across the country.
The RDG text, which does not specify how many ticket offices might be closed, argues that 43% of stations that are run by private companies under contract to the state already no longer have a ticket office. Of the stations that still have one, it states that 40% are only open part-time.
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“The proposals will provide more face-to-face assistance for customers across the network to help them choose the cheapest ticket, get advice on the best travel plan, as well as assist people with accessibility issues”, RDG assures.
The statement says that 82% of train tickets were sold at ticket offices in the 1990s, compared with an average of 12% today, with the majority of ticket purchases now made online, a trend that “accelerated during the pandemic”.
