July 5th - The verdicts come in on what could be the biggest revolution in the railway industry in a generation
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the biggest upheaval in the railway industry for a generation, the vast majority of railway stations in England will be left without ticket offices: that is the plan from the major train operators, with the blessing of government ministers.
But disability campaigners claim the scheme will prevent disabled people from using the rail network entirely, while the boss of the biggest rail union insists it will “create the conditions for a muggers’ paradise on the railways”.
Here's my assessment.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. |
| 0:06.2 | It's Wednesday the 5th of July and I'm actually recording this pretty late in the day. |
| 0:11.9 | That's because I've been speaking to dozens of people about what I think is the biggest upheaval in the railway industry for a generation. |
| 0:19.9 | The closure of the vast majority of ticket |
| 0:23.5 | offices in railway stations in England. That has what's been announced today. It will involve |
| 0:31.2 | the ticket offices that are managed by the 14 train operators who are effectively controlled by the Department for Transport. |
| 0:40.7 | That includes, of course, the intercity operators like LNER, Great Western, Avanti, West Coast, |
| 0:47.3 | and also the commuter lines, northern trains, West Midlands, Trains, Chiltern, |
| 0:52.0 | and then the big London operators, Gatwick Express, |
| 0:57.0 | Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern, plus Southeastern and Southwestern Railway. |
| 1:03.1 | So it will affect millions of people, and the plan is that this will be taking effect |
| 1:08.3 | completed within three years. |
| 1:10.9 | And here's what happens. |
| 1:12.7 | The government says, okay, you want to do this? |
| 1:15.9 | You've got to put out to consultation the fact that you want to do this. |
| 1:21.5 | Now, the train operators do that. |
| 1:24.5 | Then anybody who's unhappy and there will be an awful lot of people, and I've |
| 1:28.9 | spoken to a lot of them, immediately has got three weeks to talk to transport focus, or in the |
| 1:36.3 | London area, London travel watch and say, this is my local station, I think it's a terrible |
| 1:41.2 | idea, I object to it on the following grounds. |
| 1:44.7 | And what grounds would they be? |
| 1:46.4 | Well, the government says that the plan is to transition staff |
... |
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