COMMENT
buying facilities as identified in recent waves of Passenger Focus’s National Passenger Survey and at stations where issues had been experienced.
The research shows how frequently queuing times exceed the industry requirement of five minutes during the peak and three minutes at off-peak times. The longest queues were observed at Guildford, Winchester and Basingstoke. At these stations at least a third of queues at the ticket office are longer than recommended by the industry standard – despite ticket machines standing empty. Researchers observed that passengers were more likely to face queues at off-peak times.
The 2010 work follows previous Passenger Focus research at Britain’s major stations which also found that ticket offices had longer queuing times than ticket vending machines.
Passenger Focus’s research on ticket queuing times and ticket machines confirms that at some stations industry guidelines on queuing times are not being met. The problem tends to be more acute outside of peak times, when passengers are more likely to be making unfamiliar
journeys – the very tickets that machines make it difficult to purchase. As pressure to reduce staff numbers increases it is even more important that the industry sorts out the problems with its ticket machines, including finding a way to display ticket restriction information clearly and simply.
As a result of this research some changes have already been made to machines and Passenger Focus is now working with train companies who are looking to simplify the process of getting a ticket. Passenger Focus is calling for ticket machine improvements to give clearer, better information about ticket restrictions and validity and having staff available at the machines to help passengers with transactions.
Ticket machines have an important role to play at the station with millions of tickets sold to passengers simply, quickly and without problems. However, programming changes have to happen to make the machines more useful for passengers making unfamiliar journeys. Our next steps include speaking to the government, train companies and other industry bodies to increase awareness of passengers’ difficulties in purchasing a ticket at the station. Finally, results from the 33 stations surveyed in the most recent queuing time research will be reviewed with the individual train companies in order to seek improvements to the issues identified at these stations.
Passenger Focus’s National Passenger Survey Spring 2010, Ticket Vending Machine Usability and queuing research Still waiting for a ticket are available to view online at www.
passengerfocus.org.uk
Ashwin Kumar is rail director, Passenger Focus
Oct/Nov 10 rtm13
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