Great Western Coffee Shop

From the Urban Transport Group - Rail and urban transport review - press release at https://www.urbantransportgroup.org/resources/types/press-release/rail-and-urban-transport-review-press-release  and I have mirrored the report at http://www.passenger.chat/mirror/Rail_urban_government.pdf

Is this the same as the forthcoming National Transport Review?

Be nice if ticket gates could be installed at Sheffield.

Hmmm ... it would be nice if there was a solution to fare evasion everywhere.  I am not personally convinced that ticket gates within the current complex ticketing and fares system - requiring expensive and often authoritarian acting (sometimes incorrectly) staff to operate / supervise them are the best approach.   Adding more ticket gates strikes me as an expensive sticking plaster masking and answering a symptom, and not solution to an underlying problem.

What would I promote as a solution? I am tempted by open stations, which I see as standard in many countries in Europe (but not universally).   A simplified system of ticketing and, yes, we need to beware of killing certain markets if we do that and of hiding an increase in what people pay in the process (which I think LNER have done, and remember they are the face of nationalisation).  A continue move towards technology helping - we have so changed already there.  Some of the staff who have been policing ticket gates checking tickets on trains , some acting as customer support agents and not customer enforcement agents in the future.   Of course, I am not Peter Hendy, nor Louise Haigh, so I can only suggest.

Edit to correct formatting

"Simplified" ticketing systems will not put off those who intend to evade payment -  better, and cheaper by far to stop those individuals getting on the train in the first place than trying to address it once they're on board, especially with the vanishingly few ticket checks that take place these days - I'd say we need more gates, not fewer - they work pretty effectively for TfL - otherwise it's yet more(taxpayers) money haemorrhaging away.

Not averse to more "customer support agents" - if memory serves, wasn't that one of the proposals for new, broader roles for ticket clerks now that so few customers use ticket offices? Get (some of) them out from behind the glass to where they are really needed?

That sort of "roaming" role could certainly improve the customer experience.

Agreed - but it will reduce the number of staff needed where there are gates; you'll see that for example in Paris St Lazare where in the event of a ticket not working the automatic gate it can be quite  a search for the (just one or two) people who can let you through with a problem, but even that very few number of staff are NOT spending all their time working an exception line as you so often see in the UK.


It's one option with a much improved system (like the French one) - the British main network one seems to me to haemorrhage money away in two ways - firstly by all the staff employed to paper over the cracks in a complex system that even the gates can't cope with, and then by leaving an open and unchecked system out of peak hours.  Fix the systems and then - it could be either - have just a single gate supervisor and have the rest of the staff on customer support and on train checking, or by moving staff to entrain checking do away with the gates - that's the other option.


Yep.

But - the ticket system needs fixing.

I bought a ticket at the counter at Bath Spa station.  It failed to work the gates at that very station ... (and, yes, it WAS valid for travel from Bath and at that date and time) ... and that sort of thing really should not be.   And the reception - from a minority of gate staff I will add - was one of suspicion

Being just back from a three-corner jaunt, some of the times of travel not so easy to pin down & advance tickets not good given the nature of the travel, I travelled on three(ish) single tickets, with a railcard:

Bath Spa to Kidsgrove anytime single £65.46.
Barlaston to Esher off peak single: £44.65.
London Paddington to Bath Spa super off peak single £27.65.

(Also a couple of dropped stitches tickets)

Stone to Barlaston anytime day single £1.95
Woking to Blackheath anytime day single £10.15
Woolwich Elizabeth Line to Paddington (Oyster with railcard discount) £3.20.

(From that lot, spot the bargain and spot the funnies)

So, for the travel, £153.06.

Fantasizing that the railways are nationalised to LNER's preferred fares structure, Barlaston to Esher would come in at £103.95 and London to Bath, £81.55, raising the total for those journeys to £228.45.

It has to be said that I could have used a short-horizon advance fare (if available) for the Paddington to Bath Spa leg, but an attempt to do the same for Barlaston to Esher, given the chances of missing the train, I mean, rail replacement bus... would probably have had me warming my toes on the flames from an unused rail ticket

Mark

Good summary from The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/25/the-guardian-view-on-the-future-of-public-transport-time-to-invest-and-think-big)


Edit to add - member's mirror at http://www.passenger.chat/mirror/utg_guardian.pdf

Indeed we were very impressed by the absence of ticket barriers in Germany and wonder how much time and hassle it saved.

However, I suspect the key enabler (honesty aside) is compulsory registration of where you live and carrying of ID. So revenue protection can clobber you and pretty much guarantee they'll get paid.

Can't agree with your comment Grahame,the stations with ticket gates are safer for traveller's and Staff.

Have you ever been on a train where a person has boarded at a ungated station

and a dispute has ensued between the ticket snapper and person because the person ain't gone no money

Give me ticket gates 24/7.

Yes, on multiple occasions.


Yes, I can sorta see your point but I can't help feeling that all that's done by that is shifting the dispute from the train onto the station, and at a great cost in extra staffing.