Ticket office ‘illogical and inconvenient’

ARRIVA Trains Wales has been accused of building a new suburban station ticket office on the “wrong” side of the tracks.

The current ticket office at Llandaf station in Llandaff North, Cardiff, is under the station canopy on the platform for trains going to the city centre.

But it will be replaced this summer by a ticket office on the other side of the station, beside the car park and the platform for trains towards Pontypridd.

ATW said this was the only suitable location but transport expert Professor Stuart Cole said there was plenty of land beside the southbound platform, where he estimates 90% of passengers start their journeys.

“The ticket office will be on the northbound platform, which has 10% of the passengers,” he said.

“They’ve built a new ticket office with very limited protection from the rain, whereas the old one is under the canopy.

“It may have been the cheaper option, but for the passenger it is illogical and inconvenient.”

Currently, disabled people and passengers with buggies or suitcases only had to make one journey in the new station lifts if entering the station from the Whitchurch side of the station and needing the ticket office. In future, they would have to use the lifts three times, Prof Cole said.

“Travelling by train ought to be easy. This does not make it so, nor does it make it easy to buy a ticket,” he added.

An ATW spokesman said: “The current ticket office is not compliant with accessibility standards. The majority of passengers access the station from the car park side [which] is the only viable location for a new ticket office which conforms with current standards.

“The new ticket office will be located closer to the new lifts and footbridge than the existing.

“This is a Welsh Governmentfunded project and these improvements are all designed to feed into the wider Metro vision for south east Wales.”

Passengers would be able to buy tickets from two new ticket vending machines on the southbound platform or use ATW’s smartphone ticketing system, he said.

But Prof Cole warned: “The ticket machines take about two to three minutes to dispense a ticket, twice the time of the ticket office staff. In the peak period they will be totally inadequate as passengers will be buying their season tickets.”

He said there was spare railway land, where there were once tracks for coal trains, alongside the southbound platform for a ticket office meeting accessibility standards.