Talk Morgan Forums Thread Like Summary - Some good news today ;-)

Plans to close rail ticket offices in England scrapped

I signed the petition against the closing of these offices knowing several rail travelers down here that are not happy with IT or those machines.

Full story.

I know we have a TM member whose job was under threat if they closed, so hopefully he has had a reprieve.

I noticed one of the justifications for the closures:

"Train companies said that only 12% of tickets were now bought at station kiosks."

A quick Google brought up this:

How many rail tickets are sold each year UK?
In the past year there were 1.4 billion separate rail journeys, so 168 million tickets were bought in ticket offices.12 Jul 2023

That is not an insignificant proportion, the government are right to step in, IMHO.

Common sense for once. Maybe an election is coming.

I signed a similar petition against Sadiq Khan's plan to scrap Travelcard tickets that give a reduced price for passengers travelling into London out of peak hours. It seemed illogical to me that the person claiming to want to reduce the number of vehicles in London would increase train fares thereby encouraging people to drive. I'll be honest, I nearly didn't bother with the petition because I thought there was no way that Khan would back down, I was shocked to hear that he has done just that. Whatever next? Politician's listening to the electorate.
Mind you, I wouldn't have thought there's much chance of him getting re-elected.