Scotrail plans to close or curb opening hours of station ticket offices
Scotrail has announced plans to close three ticket offices and cut the opening hours of 120 of its 140 others after a big reduction in sales.
Scotland’s main train operator said there would be no redundancies, with staff redeployed to help tackle fare dodging instead.
It said ticket offices had seen business halved over the past ten years as more passengers bought tickets from vending machines and online.
Under a consultation to be launched on Wednesday, stationsatclydebank,cartsdykein Greenock and Woodhall, near Port Glasgow, would lose their ticket offices.
Reducedopeninghoursatall, buttenofscotrail’sotherticket offices would include Kilmarnock’s closing at 5:30pm rather than 11:30pm. Some stations would see only small changes, such as Bearsden’s ticket office closing about 25 minutes earlier than currently.
However, Paisley Gilmour Street,scotland’sfourthbusiest station, would have its office’s evening opening hours curtailed by up to nearly 90 minutes, closing between 9:45pm and10pm.partick’singlasgow, the fifth busiest station, would closetwo-and-a-halfhoursearlier, at 9pm on all but Fridays and Saturdays.
The three ticket offices earmarked for closure are open from early morning to early afternoon at present.
Scotrail said it had based the proposalsonticketsalesin2019, pre-pandemic.
A spokesperson: “Keeping a ticket office open that sells only ten tickets a day is not the best use of people. The changes will enable more focus on revenue protection duties.”
In a report published in August last year, Professor Iain Docherty of the University of Stirling, the country’s leading transport academic, questioned “whether legacy business activities such as the provision of ticket offices is viable in future”.
However,scotrailsaiditsticket offices review started before the report.
Manuelcortes,generalsecretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, which represents ticket office staff, said: "Closingbookingofficesand/or reducing their opening hours is a retrograde step. Scotrail’s plans will make the railways feel less safe, particularly for women, especially in the darker months, and will result in an increase in anti-social behaviour.”