MexThe people have spoken, and they want to speak to real live humans, not a rail ticket self-service app | Gaby Hinsliff
mannycalaveraCan’t say I’ve used an in person ticket booth in years, decades maybe. They’re always shut anyway.
When I went to Japan on holiday there were staff members hovering around the ticket machines helping people if they needed it - and I did. Not a ticket office on sight. Why can they do it but we can’t? Dunno.
In japan every station I went to had a ticket office…
Well shit… maybe the ones I went to didn’t or I didn’t see them 😂.
Still, my experience was that I needed to use a machine I had no idea what I was doing some helpful staff member came over saw I was having issues had a chat to me for a minute and I was sorted. Wasn’t hard at all.
I think there is room for both, infract I feel our train stations are woefully understaffed already. The reason there was someone to help you in Japan is they had enough staff to have a ticket office open, and to have people manning the ticket machines during busy times. Especially in the big stations. The current plans say they are to move staff to be “roaming” but it’s clear the real plan is to remove all the staff they can.
bluGillFor busy stations the cost of staff is miniscule, and they can help enough lost people as to be worth it . However for less busy stations having someone stand around doing nothing all day isn't useful.
In the Tokyo area (with JR East) many major stations will have a みどりの窓口 (Green window booth) for assistance with buying tickets and special ticket packages, often in a room that’s fully separate from the ticket vending machines, and usually only one when the ticket vending machines could be in multiple areas. Most stations have a person on duty (or stationmaster for smaller stations) by the ticket gates, which you can purchase tickets from when it’s not crowded.
They need manned staff at the fare gates for now, because the 青春18 ticket still needs a station master to stamp the date and verify it for entry.
OverzeetopA century ago, in America, the largest retailer - Sears & Roebuck - tried shifting from handwritten letters to typed to their customers. There was a huge backlash because the typed letters came across as cold and impersonal. The company (temporarily) went back to handwritten letters, at greater expense, until the practice was more widespread.
Cool, would they pay $5 extra?
We already have some of the most expensive trains in Europe. I don’t think this really a valid argument.
It's a valid argument regardless of the base price.
Machines are generally cheaper than people. People like saving money more than they like talking to people. If given the choice they will almost always choose the machine, when they have to pay the price.
When i'm doing the standard thing I always do I prefer the machines. There are more of them so no lines and thus faster. When things get weird though a human can figure out what I really need and serve me faster.
This so much, nine times out of ten I know what I want and need and the ticket machine is best. But if I am doing something a bit strange the ticket office is used to make sure I get the right (and cheapest) option.
You also have to figure in what the savings actually are. For the railways in England, the staff costs (all of them - from signallers to drivers, maintenance workers, cleaners, guards, ticket office staff) are 20% of the cost of running the railway. Getting rid of a relatively small number of the worst paid staff on the railway will not do much to reduce the cost of running the railway - certainly not £5 per ticket’s worth, and the very small overall savings will not get passed on to the customers anyway.
Getting rid of a relatively small number of the worst paid staff on the railway will
Still save a significant chunk of money because people are still very expensive and ticket staff work 24/7.
certainly not £5 per ticket’s worth, and the very small overall savings will not get passed on to the customers anyway.
They almost certainly will be in one form or another. Even if the railroad keeps every dime the extra productivity in the economy you get from people not working as ticket staff will lead to improvements across the board.
Ticket staff in the UK don’t work 24/7. I used to work at a very large railway station in the UK and the ticket office was only open for 12 hours a day and only fully staffed at peak times, and employed the lowest paid staff in the station. (I’m guessing because you talk of railroads and dimes you probably don’t live in the UK, we’d be talking about railways and pennies here). The proposal is not to remove ticket staff at major stations, but at the minor ones, and there just aren’t that many staff at all the minor stations put together. Allied with the penalty fare system and the general unreliability of the ticket machines, and neither ticket machines nor guards on trains taking cash any more, having the busier smaller stations unstaffed is going to take mobility away from the most vulnerable.
Many ticket machines are not fit for use either - some of the ones on GWR for instance (of which lamentably I have first hand experience) have some of the buttons so close together on the touch screen they are a challenge to operate even by a young person with perfect eyesight and eye/hand coordination.
The drop in the ocean saved won’t lead to any meaningful improvements.
was only open for 12 hours a day
That's still plenty of time. "It won't save much compared to...." Is almost always a bad argument. Savings are savings and labor is expensive.
The ticket machines not being up to the task is a reasonable argument though. I can't comment on that.
They aren’t sitting there twiddling their thumbs for 12 hours, they are providing a service which evidently people value. “Savings are savings” is the kind of argument an accountant who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing would make.
We're talking about the cost a human being sitting around selling tickets to people. You can value that service all day long, but if the human being is wasting their life doing something a machine could do you're literally wasting human life.
If a job can be killed. Replace it. This isn't about money, money is a proxy for what actually matters. Time and resources.
Human potential far surpasses selling you tickets, and any human potential wasted in this way is a tragedy.
The ticket office staff don’t merely sell tickets - and I know because I’ve done the job - much of the job is assisting people in a way a machine still cannot.
What stations in the UK run 24/7?
In a rush to buy 3 travel cards last week, as the train was literally pulling into the station, my finger slipped and I accidentally bought an extra child’s ticket.
When we changed trains at the next station I went to the counter and they sorted a refund of that extra ticket for me.
I asked how it would be possible to do something like that in the future with only ticket machines and the guy said he didn’t know.
yeah it’s all these little things, but it was easy to know what to do, go to the ticket office and ask.
I use trains on a regular basis but can’t remember the last time I saw any staff in the station.
I now just use the train app on my phone. from, to, time, press pay and use the finger print scanner to pay.
Buying a ticket should be simple.
Even the buses here I just tap my phone against I reader and sit down.
At Leeds, the people behind the counters are the best. They have all these off peak traveller tickets in West Yorkshire and the machines never prompt you for the right one to use, but the people behind the counter just know and give you the cheapest combination by default. The saved me a fiver this week