Last month, the Government announced proposals to permanently shut down nearly 1,000 ticket offices nationwide, with many such services across South London earmarked for closure, including those at Clapham Junction and Wandsworth Town in my own Battersea constituency.
Presented under the familiarly flimsy guise of a “modernisation” drive, it’s plain that this damaging decision is anything but progressive. Rather, it constitutes the latest chapter in the managed decline of our railways.
But their rationale isn’t the only thing that’s been misrepresented. From initial attempts to blindside opposition with a scandalously short 3-week consultation period, to already fraying claims closures wouldn’t cause redundancies, deceit has defined the entire decision process.
Therefore, it’s worth reiterating the arguments against Tory ticket office closures.
Firstly, and contradicting Tory assurances, it’s now clear that these closures will cause mass job losses, with 2,000 staff expected to be shed across the networks.
Cuts will be equally pernicious for passengers. Against attempts to characterise ticket offices as underutilised relics of the railway’s past, according to the Government’s own statistics, 1/8 tickets remain sold at ticket offices, representing over 150 million journeys over the last year alone.
Further, with many of the cheapest options only available at ticket offices, an insidious side-effect of these closures will be effective price hikes, potentially immobilising low-income passengers.
Vulnerable commuters will be especially impacted. The 50% wheelchair user discount, for instance, can currently only be purchased at a ticket booth. Accordingly, campaigners are already suggesting that these cuts could breach equalities law.
In fact, elimination of discount options constitutes merely one of the exclusionary impacts of these cuts. For many elderly and disabled people, especially blind and partially sighted passengers, these cuts could see them excluded from rail travel altogether. RNIB research has found that only 3% of people with sight loss could use a ticket vending machine without problems, with 58% deeming it impossible.
Given these issues, it’s no surprise that rail staff are now dubbing this decision “the Beeching of the booking offices” – a reference to the infamous 1960s episode of railway roll-back in which 55% of the nation’s stations were dismantled. Assessing the decades long decline of our railways, the former Tory Transport Minister observed that many communities “still live with the scars” of those Beeching-era cuts. This admission only further underlines how short-sighted this latest act of infrastructural self-harm really is.
So much for “modernisation,” these ticket office closures appear indicative of a typical Tory resignation to the decline of our country.
But we must reject this fatalism. Public outcry has already forced the Government to extend the consultation period. I’m urging all those who value our railways to utilise this extended window –now open until September 1st– and help end these damaging cuts entirely.