He informed the Commons’ Transport Select Committee: “If it’s the case that the ticket office is either closing or the ticket office is being reduced in hours very significantly, I think the ticket vending machine has got to be able to replicate pretty much what the ticket office can do at the moment.
“So, I think we would argue that you would want to delay (changes) until you’ve got that capacity in place, otherwise people are being disadvantaged.
“There are certain types of ticket you can only get at the moment from a ticket office.
Mr Smith mentioned ticket machines are “great” for easy purchases however he “wouldn’t dream” of making an attempt to make use of one for a sophisticated transaction.
Train operators are proposing to shut the overwhelming majority of station ticket places of work in England, whereas Avanti West Coast can be planning to close its workplace at Glasgow Central.
More than 680,000 responses have been submitted to consultations on the plans.
Transport Focus and fellow watchdog London TravelWatch are analysing the proposals and responses, earlier than revealing whether or not they help or oppose operators’ plans for every station by the tip of October.
If the watchdogs object to plans to shut sure station places of work, the related operators can refer their proposals to Transport Secretary Mark Harper for a closing resolution.
Christopher Brooks, head of coverage at charity Age UK , informed the Transport Select Committee it’s “extremely difficult” for individuals who don’t use the web to purchase a practice ticket from a machine “however intuitive some tech-savvy designer thinks it is”.
He added: “There’s a significant number of people, millions of pensioners, who will find it very, very difficult if we go down a more automated route.
“It will obviously have the impact that it will put some people off travelling altogether.”
Rail bosses have insisted that the proposed widespread closure of station ticket places of work will profit passengers by extra employees being deployed on platforms and concourses.
Avanti West Coast managing director Andy Mellors was requested by the committee what the affect the corporate’s plan to shut its workplace at Glasgow Central would have staffing.
He replied: “We have about 27 staff, I think it is, at the moment at Glasgow Central.
“These proposals would, if they were enacted in full as we proposed, reduce that number by about nine or 10.”
He confused that the proportion of Avanti West Coast journeys created from Glasgow Central utilizing a ticket purchased from its workplace on the station is 1%.
It is Britain’s fourth busiest railway station exterior London, with 15.3 million entries and exits recorded within the yr to the tip of March 2022.
Mick Lynch , common secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, described the suggestion that ticket workplace employees will probably be redeployed as “nonsense”.
He informed the committee: “A quarter of the jobs are going to be cut on stations, 2,300.
“The companies have notified us of that already under the statutory letter.
“So they’re not taking them out of the ticket office to work on the platforms, they’re taking them out of the ticket office to make cuts, to cut the jobs out of the system.”
He added that employees “will not be there” at off-peak durations, and other people travelling then “will be left to fend for themselves”.
Cost is part of it, however primarily we’re following the wants of our clients and the calls for of our clients
Simon Moorhead, chief data officer on the Rail Delivery Group, which represents practice operators, informed MPs that closing station ticket places of work is partly about slicing prices.
He mentioned: “Cost is a part of it, but primarily we’re following the needs of our customers and the demands of our customers.
“This year, around 80% of the tickets that have been issued are either bought online through digital channels or they are with customers tapping in and tapping out from gate lines or machines on platforms.”
