Closure of rail ticket offices

Bring back British Rail, curly spasm sandwiches and all.

British Rail was staffed by actual people - who among us Grannies has not got a memory of being helped by a kindly BR employee?

I signed the petition but I doubt the train operators will take any notice of the protests. They are only interested in cutting staff and maximizing profits.

Yes, it’s when the unexpected happens that you need to speak to someone who knows the system.

DH lost his train tickets for our return home somewhere in New York. However, I still had the seat reservations. We needed the ticket office at King's Cross to explain our situation and purchase another ticket for the reserved seat, since the train was fully booked.

GSM I fear that you are right.

I think we can predict the outcome though. I would be very pleased to be wrong about that.

The consultation period has now been extended to 1 September.

I have signed several petitions about this - on and offline. Sometimes I think it would be better if they could be coordinated so they would be more likely to trigger a debate. Spreading signatures across several places dilutes the likelihood that they will be effective.

My seaside town has a lot of visitors and foreign language students who look for an employee to answer questions about train journeys-machines are pretty poor at that. I'm happy to help, as are most locals, but my knowledge of the rail system is limited to the journeys which I make. The ticket office is busy.

No grandtanteJE65 I don't think so.
Nor can you make a "gift" of travel vouchers to someone else.

I don’t think there’s any point in signing the petition, sadly. It hasn’t attracted nearly enough votes to trigger a debate in parliament. It’s a great shame that ticket offices are almost certainly going to be closed - when I was commuting there was always a queue at the ticket office despite a machine being available on the platform - and as we all know, machines have a habit of breaking down.

Chardy

There was a blind woman on TV asking that as she'll be expected to hand over cash/debit card to a random station 'worker' at the machine, how will she know if it's a legitimate employee?

Don't you have prepaid travel cards for public transport in the UK?

If you do, the blind woman should use one - she can pay in any amount she likes at a time, or by direct debit and get whoever she usually has help her with tasks she cannot do herself and whom she trusts to order the card for her, and even to top it up, if she doesn't want the company using a direct debit.

There was a blind woman on TV asking that as she'll be expected to hand over cash/debit card to a random station 'worker' at the machine, how will she know if it's a legitimate employee?

Well they have been determined to make cuts somewhere . They don’t care about the service they provide just the profits they make thanks for the link.

Thanks for the link vintage.

There's also another petition:

Change.org “Save Our Railway Ticket Offices!”

Sorry, I can’t do a link from my phone.

Hope you don’t mind my adding that vintage, but I felt that we need to cover all bases!

I think we know what the result of the "consultation" will be though.
It is another way that nothing seems to be regarded as a public service anymore, saving money is the new religion.

There is a petition at:

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/636542

and there are also others. Still time to add your name if you wish to.