Thursday, February 21, 2013

Which report on ticket machines

Not great reading for those of us near stations where the Liberal Democrat transport minister agreed to let London Midland - named as one of the worst operators in the country - cut back on ticket office opening hours.
Buying a ticket for tomorrow was restricted to after 4pm at one station and unavailable at others. Information buttons often failed to provide anything about ticket validity - get this wrong, and you could get a fine or miss your train altogether.... Which? executive director Richard Lloyd told us: 'Ticket office hours are being cut, often leaving people with little choice but to use a machine. It is only fair that machines sell exactly the same tickets as websites or ticket offices. We are calling on the train companies to update their machines and also make it crystal clear how, when and where tickets can be used.'
Remember that ticket office cut - it was a decision taken by a Liberal Democrat minister where he could genuinely have chosen to help the people in Acocks Green. He chose not to. At least he had the good grace not to turn up for a photo opportunity.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Who makes these useless ticket machines? In Germany, where most stations are unmanned, they had superb ticket machines which take credit/debit cards, notes and coin and you could buy whatever tickets you wanted. I don't speak German but that wasn't a problem. They're multilingual too!