Belatedly it has dawned on the government that closing more than 1,000 of England’s railway station ticket offices, in an election year, would not be very smart politics. As a sound of screeching brakes emanated from Whitehall last week, the transport secretary, Mark Harper, announced that train operators had been asked to withdraw the cost-cutting strategy, which the government itself had originally pushed on them. The writing was already on the wall in the summer, when public outrage led to an extension of the consultation period on the proposed closures. By the time it ended, 750,000 responses had been recorded, 99% of them negative.
The public’s concerns were over future access to travel advice and information, assistance for disabled people, safety at understaffed stations, and consequences for the less digitally savvy and the digitally excluded. But the passionate backlash also underlined a widespread sense that railway stations must be more than arid transit zones, to be navigated solely through the use of a smartphone. Combined with a reformed fares and ticketing system, that insight should now inform a positive approach to reinvigorating England’s railways and attracting more people on to trains.
