Obtaining our tickets

Scare stories have suggested that all ticket offices will be closed within three months. I find the suggestion that our railway could do anything in such a timescale quite laughable.

My recent visit to Bristol Parkway to buy a ticket to Ebbw Vale Town (opened 2015) from a Great Western Railway Ticket Vending Machine (TVM) met with the same (sadly, entirely as expected) outcome as my attempt at Cardiff Central to buy a ticket to Okehampton (opened November 2021) from a Transport for Wales TVM.

Despite the industry’s incompetence in designing and configuring TVMs, I shall not be signing any petitions that oppose T ***** O ***** closures. (I use asterisks because I don’t want to give more oxygen to a term that

misses the point by conflating the HSP (human service provider) with the CDW (chair at a desk behind a window).

We should call for the retention of what is actually needed (human service provider), rather than the infrastructure that often accompanies it (chair, desk and window), and let the rail industry have the flexibility to provide it in the best way possible.

Jerry Alderson, Cambridge