Government to scrap return tickets!!

[Wickham Green too]

Some of us are proud to be curmudgeonly luddites ................................. though I hesitate to use the word pride since it's been highjacked by some with other agendas.

[Nick C]

10 hours ago, John M Upton said:

Made in MS Paint pictures of a random QR code presented as a valid ticket

The same image of a QR code ticket on the phones of everyone in a  group (i.e. one had actually bought one and then shared it with the rest of the group)

People rushing to buy a ticket online as soon as the Guard appears in their carriage, getting it checked and then promptly applying for a refund on said ticket as soon as he was gone (and that was often the cheapest shortest single they could get away with)

 

Surely all of those are easily solved in software - an invalid barcode wouldn't scan, one that's already been scanned ought to be flagged up (especially if it was just scanned a few seconds earlier). Don't allow purchase of tickets (except from the guard) once the train has left the station in question, and don't allow refunds once the ticket has been scanned...

 

10 hours ago, andyman7 said:

When you get your ticket checked on a Southern or Gatwick Express train, it is by an On Board Supervisor, not a guard, and the operational duties (door control, despatch etc) are handled by the driver.

The DOO issue is about operational issues such as door control. It doesn't necessarily no second person, but the two issues get conflated. The reason why it is such a hot issue is that where a Guard is safety critical (i.e. they have operational duties) it means the train cannot run without them. Views on this vary - some may be happy with this; then again, if it is late at night and you are on a lonely platform waiting for a train you may have a different view should it be cancelled because of 'no guard'. 

 

The guard is there, fundamentally, in case something goes wrong - closing doors and issuing tickets are secondary really - although it was clearly demonstrated recently why it's important to have someone other than the driver closing the doors, as it turns out that the fancy on-baord CCTV cameras that allow the driver to see what's going on, have a habit of freezing over in very cold weather.

 

But the Salisbury crash was a good example - the driver of the SWR train was trapped in his cab, and only the guard was available to deal with the situation. On an airliner, there's a legal minimum of, IIRC, one member of safety-trained staff for every 50 passengers - and that's not including the pilots. Yet somehow we seem to think it's fine to have a 1200-passenger commuter train with no staff (other than the driver, who needs to concentrate on driving) on board?

[Dunsignalling]

13 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

The world marches on. The millennials and subsequent generations are digitally enabled pretty much from birth. My son could operate an iPhone age 1, not that he was allowed too but if he sneaked a hold of it, he could access it and find the kids apps & ceebeebees cartoons.

 

next generation shoppers don’t need actual shops, happy to bury online fir home delivery and return fir full refund if they don’t like it or it doesn’t fit.

 

my son at 7 cannot fathom terrestrial TV. He wants to watch what he wants at a time he chooses.  So streaming is what he wants. Being beholden to a fixed programme timetable puts him right off and he’ll go and do something else (not always a bad thing).

 

Rail is changing in similar ways, driven not be technology but by DfT / Treasury desire for cost reductions. There aren’t that many staffed ticket offices compared to number of stations as many have already gone or staff stand at gate line with a mobile ticket machine. DfT seem less bothered by fare evasion than cost cutting.

 

Roads are similar, way less traffic police  so an increase in speeding & dangerous driving is clear to those who drive alot. Smart motorway cameras are of little deterrent.

The way technology is going, we soon won't need to leave our homes, and those who do may, in time, be viewed with suspicion. 

 

I any case, the way climate change is going it may not be healthy or even safe to do so.

 

In which case, all transport and logistics may need to be robotised anyway.... 

 

John

 

Not a prophecy, but an illustration of how things could turn out entirely differently to what anybody expects or wants.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Dunsignalling

[RichardT]

1 hour ago, Wickham Green too said:

Some of us are proud to be curmudgeonly luddites ................................. though I hesitate to use the word pride since it's been highjacked by some with other agendas.

Some people use the word pride to express that they are proud of who they are. In what sense is that “hi-jacking” and in what sense is that “an agenda”?

 

RichardT

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, njee20 said:

Ought we keep water towers too, for the odd steam excursion? 
 

Absolutely !

 

2 hours ago, njee20 said:

My London commute is utterly anomalous, i buy a ticket to a station I go nowhere near (and another one to cover the bit from an intermediate station into London) but is half the price of some of the stations along the route, that’d better not change!

 

Sorry but it ought to!  These illogical pricing anomalies mean the railway is not charging for the services that you do use.

 

It makes perfect sense for you to take advantage of anything silly that you can find in the ticket pricing system, but that doesn't mean you should be able to find any. in the first place.  Such complexities and loopholes are what is wrong with our current system.   As a student in the early 70s I used to buy a day return from Coventry to Rugby and rebook there for Euston.  On the way back I used to catch a non-stop.  Usually I just showed the Rugby ticket at the barrier and was waved through, but sometimes I had to show the other ticket too, and it was never queried by Travelling Ticket Inspectors.  OK so my journey Up was slower but it saved me money.  It would make sense if it was intended to prevent overcrowding on long distance services, but it made no sense for these tickets to be cheaper.

 

It also probably generates false statistics for management on what journeys people make, because demand for services is indicated by ticket sales.  You have to do a physical census to work out how many are actually using the train or particular stations, and because that's expensive, you can't do it often or in too many places.

 

Like a lot of Londoners I had an assymetric commuting pattern.  I often used to travel to Moorgate in the morning rush hour, changing at Finsbury Park.  But I returned from Kings Cross in the evening as I would get a seat there but not if I changed at Finsbury Park.

 

 

 

Edited February 7, 2023 by Michael Hodgson

[BernardTPM]

14 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

The ticket offices are also needed for selling Railcards. I have tried buying online, but didn't have the appropriate IDs. No problem at the ticket office: birth certificate and credit card, job done.

 

2 hours ago, njee20 said:

And people for whom that’s the case are erm… ‘dwindling’, shall we say. Ought we keep water towers too, for the odd steam excursion?

How many water tower ever try to buy tickets? Not many, though I think most would qualify for a Senior Railcard on age.

I don't intend to dwindle any time soon, but I may have to give up travelling if things become so unreasonable.

[BernardTPM]

Let's just hope it's not as bad as it could be.

Edited February 7, 2023 by BernardTPM

[Michael Hodgson]

22 minutes ago, BernardTPM said:

 

How many water tower ever try to buy tickets? Not many, though I think most would qualify for a Senior Railcard on age.

I don't intend to dwindle any time soon, but I may have to give up travelling if things become so unreasonable.

Many of us had to give up travelling because of lockdown.

 

My senile railcard expired at the start of Covid and I've still not renewed it; not made enough journeys since then to warrant it.  I've got a bus pass but hardly ever used it even before then.  That might have to change if driving becomes too expensive because of rules about emissions etc and the cost of EVs.

[The Stationmaster]

13 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

It should be an issue. It would be a very strong argument.

 

When I get my ticket checked on a train, who checks it? The guard.

Once I see him/her enter the carriage, they take ages getting to me. Why? Because they are issuing tickets to others who don't already have them. If those passengers without tickets did not get checked, they would walk off the train & straight out of the station (because the barriers, if present, would be open because there was nobody to supervise them).

The official reason for keeping a guard is for safety. While this is a factor, the larger reason is for job protection.

DOO welcomes passengers to dodge fares & a guard checking tickets can easily recoup their daily wages with 30 minutes of ticket checking.

As our branch line has been DOO for getting on for 39 years we don't have Guards on the trains - there is no need for them so there aren't any.  Yet - provided I travel before c.10.00 on a weekday there is somwone checking the tickets.  They are not Guards, they aren't trained as Guards, and there's no need for them to be trained as Guards, and the train won't be cancelled if they don't tuen up for work for whatever (good) reason there happens to be.

 

Ipso facto - you don't have to be a Guard to issue and check tickets.   In fact on-train my ticket has been inspected countless times more by someone who isn't a Guard than someone who is a Guard,   Guards are provided for safety reasons when a line is not suitable for DOO operation of passenger trains (or in one or two cases where union resistance has prevented them being removed).  And in my experience there are plenty of places where do have Guards and those Guards can't be bothered - for whatever reason (usually none at all) - to issue or check tickets so are  busily selling short a part of their duties.

[The Stationmaster]

3 hours ago, njee20 said:

 
(this seemed to be in reference to people buying Railcards)

And people for whom that’s the case are erm… ‘dwindling’, shall we say. Ought we keep water towers too, for the odd steam excursion? 
 

 

Why are the 'numbers dwindling' ?   I would have thought the opposite was the case - certainly for the Senior Railcard (which is just one of the six nationally applicable types of Railcard),   Plus the seventh which is the Network Railcard so geographically restricted (albeit to a fairly large area, and a good percentage of the English population, for regular local rail travel  but equally available to anyone irrespective of where they live should they find it offers a saving)

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

And in my experience there are plenty of places where do have Guards and those Guards can't be bothered - for whatever reason (usually none at all) - to issue or check tickets so are  busily selling short a part of their duties.

... and thus helping to make the case for automating them out of a job.

[lmsforever]

Just seen a news item saying govt is to halve fares that would be an excellent way to get people back on rail now all they have to do is sort out you know who so we have reliability back with full time trains.

[andyman7]

5 hours ago, Nick C said:

 

The guard is there, fundamentally, in case something goes wrong - closing doors and issuing tickets are secondary really - although it was clearly demonstrated recently why it's important to have someone other than the driver closing the doors, as it turns out that the fancy on-baord CCTV cameras that allow the driver to see what's going on, have a habit of freezing over in very cold weather.

 

But the Salisbury crash was a good example - the driver of the SWR train was trapped in his cab, and only the guard was available to deal with the situation. On an airliner, there's a legal minimum of, IIRC, one member of safety-trained staff for every 50 passengers - and that's not including the pilots. Yet somehow we seem to think it's fine to have a 1200-passenger commuter train with no staff (other than the driver, who needs to concentrate on driving) on board?

The problem is the binary nature of the argument in the face of huge amounts of actual, factual data. 

 

Firstly, it is absolutely the case that many train services need to have on board train crew. This is regardless of operational requirements. Secondly it is absolutely true that many urban train services have been DOO for many years and that there is an absolutely proven statistically backed archive of data to show that such method of operation is safe. It's not a case the 'somehow we seem to think it's fine'; there is an established, long tested and provable process. Trains are not airliners; if we are going down the rabbit hole of comparisons, when that train crashed at Salisbury there was no necessity to get everyone off the train in 90 seconds down escape slides - that is why airliners have the staff-to-passenger ratio you mention. 

 

 

 

[Nick C]

8 minutes ago, andyman7 said:

there is an absolutely proven statistically backed archive of data to show that such method of operation is safe. It's not a case the 'somehow we seem to think it's fine'; there is an established, long tested and provable process.

I can quote you several incidents in which passengers have either directly been in danger due to not having a competent member of staff avaliable to assist (e.g. North Pole Junction, North London PTI), or would have been in danger if there hadn't been (e.g. Salisbury). I was about to add "just because no-one has been killed, doesn't make it safe" - but that's not true either, because This one at Waterloo did result in a fatality...

[Reorte]

At the end of the day I'm never keen on removing humans from any role; it's something I find ultimately self-destructive. I can see the temptation of cutting costs but I really don't like where going down that path is leading us. The only exceptions are jobs that are too dangerous or unpleasant for anyone to really want to do.

 

Now you can nitpick at the details and always find reasonable exceptions, but that's the case with anything (coming up with simple rules and rigidly applying them to everything is never a good idea). As a general principle, as a starting point, that's always how I feel about it.

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, andyman7 said:

The problem is the binary nature of the argument in the face of huge amounts of actual, factual data. 

 

Firstly, it is absolutely the case that many train services need to have on board train crew. This is regardless of operational requirements. Secondly it is absolutely true that many urban train services have been DOO for many years and that there is an absolutely proven statistically backed archive of data to show that such method of operation is safe. It's not a case the 'somehow we seem to think it's fine'; there is an established, long tested and provable process. Trains are not airliners; if we are going down the rabbit hole of comparisons, when that train crashed at Salisbury there was no necessity to get everyone off the train in 90 seconds down escape slides - that is why airliners have the staff-to-passenger ratio you mention. 

 

 

 

Perhaps not, but it is desirable to deter passengers from taking matters into their own hands and baling out in an uncontrolled manner, possibly onto adjacent live running lines.

 

That's going to be much easier if there is someone on board to provide reassurance and take charge. 

 

John

Edited February 7, 2023 by Dunsignalling

[Dava]

We know the govt & operators want to close ticket offices, I don’t agree with this as many of the staff are excellent (eg Newark & Loughborough) if understandably a bit grumpy at times. I have a railcard which buys me a Park &  Ride return at a good discount over the tickets + parking cost and can’t be sold by machine. Often the ticket machines won’t accept people’s prebuy orders requiring staff help, which is also needed by travellers with various needs. Finally I detest tickets on mobiles as the blasted things are always going dark when you need them and hiding the download files etc. I don’t want a digital railcard for that reason. 
 

A railway station or train with no visible staff is not a safer place. Keep the staff and printed tickets.

 

Dava

[phil_sutters]

Buying Southern tickets to London I was advised to book a ticket with a London Travelcard included. I asked if the current card tickets would be readable by TfL scanners, as I have had problems in the past. 'Where did you get your ticket from?' I booked on line and collected from the machine. 'Ah well the ones issued by the machines sometimes don't work, but the ones we issue should be OK.'... As it happens the barriers at the other end were open and unattended.

Edited February 7, 2023 by phil_sutters

[njee20]

6 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Sorry but it ought to!  These illogical pricing anomalies mean the railway is not charging for the services that you do use.

 

yep, agreed! Doesn’t mean I want them to close the loophole! FWIW Billingshurst to Aldershot, a journey of 2 hours 9 minutes is £23.50 for a day return (not off peak). Billingshurst to East Croydon, which every one of those trains must stop at is £35.60. Getting off the Aldershot train at Woking: £43.70. Daft. 

5 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Why are the 'numbers dwindling' ?   I would have thought the opposite was the case - certainly for the Senior Railcard (which is just one of the six nationally applicable types of Railcard),   Plus the seventh which is the Network Railcard so geographically restricted (albeit to a fairly large area, and a good percentage of the English population, for regular local rail travel  but equally available to anyone irrespective of where they live should they find it offers a saving)

Because you need a photo card driving licence or passport (IIRC). The number of people who don’t have those are declining as it’s primarily the older members of society. 
 

As an aside to that continued off topic thread the OBS on my Southern train has just checked my QR-code ticket. Among the 8 people in the bays of seats around me there were 2 paper tickets.   

[Bernard Lamb]

33 minutes ago, Dava said:

 

A railway station or train with no visible staff is not a safer place. Keep the staff and printed tickets.

 

Dava

But there will be visible staff.

From recent experience the ticket office is often closed but security staff patrol the station area at all times. I presume that these people are employed by security firms and these firms have contracts with the railway company. I would prefer to see the ticket office staffed by railway staff and a visible presence of BT Police and staff actually on the train. Not seen any guard or ticket checks by revenue protection since the pandemic.

Take away the drug traffic and the railways take a big revenue hit.😀

 

A question.

How come BOGOF is OK for Tesco but no longer OK for TOCs?

Bernard

 

[Michael Hodgson]

3 minutes ago, Bernard Lamb said:

A question.

How come BOGOF is OK for Tesco but no longer OK for TOCs?

Bernard

 

Why should I have to pay twice as much for my ticket as the bloke sitting opposite me and his good lady did for theirs?

[black and decker boy]

3 hours ago, lmsforever said:

Just seen a news item saying govt is to halve fares that would be an excellent way to get people back on rail now all they have to do is sort out you know who so we have reliability back with full time trains.

The quantity of people travelling isn’t the problem as such as passenger numbers are now close to 2019 levels and some operators are now higher than that benchmark,

 

however, revenue from those travellers is still way down, last stats I saw was passengers at 95%, revenue at 75%
 

the government/ Treasury therefore want costs to fall to match. They do not want to fund that revenue gap.

 

lots of talk on other forums about planned service / formation cuts to come in May with more expected in December. DfT have imposed a funding freeze for 2023 so operators need to absorb the 10% inflation into their budget. That means cuts.

 

GWR are sending all of their 769s off lease in April and starting the withdrawal of the HST 2+4 sets, to be complete by year end. No new stock to replace so use of 5 car IETs instead of 10 cars to release 5 cars for the HST diagrams. Cardiff - Portsmouth to be 3 cars not 5 cars.

 

Talk of LNER not ordering more sets to replace the final 91 & MK4 sets.

 

Northern cutting rural lines with bus substitutions.

 

good useable trains now starting to fill siding space. 156s from EMR parked at Ely. 221 Super Voyagers from AWC parked at Worksop. Full fleet of 379s parked at various places.

 

You get the direction we are heading.

[BernardTPM]

3 hours ago, njee20 said:

Because you need a photo card driving licence or passport (IIRC). The number of people who don’t have those are declining as it’s primarily the older members of society.   

What a brilliant concept for a Senior Railcard then - disenfranchise those who can apply.

[njee20]

34 minutes ago, BernardTPM said:

What a brilliant concept for a Senior Railcard then - disenfranchise those who can apply.

Increasingly those eligible will have them though, which was my exact point. In fact I think it'll only be a very small proportion of people, even those applying for the senior railcard, who can't do so online. You're talking about anyone born before 1963, it's not exactly the dark ages!

[Nick C]

4 minutes ago, njee20 said:

Increasingly those eligible will have them though, which was my exact point. In fact I think it'll only be a very small proportion of people, even those applying for the senior railcard, who can't do so online. You're talking about anyone born before 1963, it's not exactly the dark ages!

What about people who don't have a driving licence at all? They're probably more likely to be using the train after all...