Ticket Office - taking a local look for Warminster now and to the future

Written in preparation for a radio interview that will be broadcast on Warminster Community Radio between 9 a.m, and midday tomorrow, 11th November 2023. I will encourage you to listen to the broadcast as it's very different to this preparation work.

Ticket options and other rail information is so complex that people making new journeys or wanting to purchase unusual tickets need access to a skilled staff member to help them. For stations like Dilton Marsh, where passenger number are low, that can be the train manager once you have joined the train. But for other stations such as Warminster, especially at busy times of day, a person giving advice and selling tickets is at present a necessity.

Ticket Vending machine and online applications have dramatically reduced the umber of tickets sold over the staffed counter - but those are mostly the standard tickets to the confident and fit regular travellers that are easily automated, and it leave the rump of perhaps 15% of journeys for which ticketing help is needed. This includes for people who are unsure what they need, who are disabled, who are frankly frightened by threatening notices about penalty fares, or who want to purchase tickets not easily available from machines or elsewhere such at rovers, train tickets including buses (plus bus), tickets in advance or from other stations, tickets sold for cash or against a rail warrant, sail-rail including ferry crossings to Ireland or mainland Europe, groupsave tickets for groups of 3 or more, CIV^▸ tickets which are honoured even if your international service is delayed and can be lower price if you're travelling out at peak domestic time, etc.

Advise from a ticket clerk is often useful in helping customers find their most cost effective ticket too - travel from London to Warminster on Friday evening on the 17:48 from Paddington, change at Swindon, and go back the same route on Monday morning on the 06:56 and you'll be charged £235.60 for an anytime return. Book Advance tickets and (for this weekend) you would have saved £30. Ask a ticket clerk for a weekender Paddington to Chippenham, and the Chippenham to Warminster and Warminster to Chippenham singles and you'll pay just £83.60. But I doubt you'll be able to get that from a machine at Paddington!

So there's a huge immediate relief that the ticket office at Warminster will remain open. But yet there remain concerns.

GWR^▸ have had trouble providing enough staff to keep ticket offices open even during the hours they are contracted to do, and it's perhaps worse arriving at a station to buy your ticket and finding you can't that knowing not to go there in the first place. Will GWR be fixing this issue?

Now that the total closure of all West Wilts ticket offices (and Bath Spa, Chippenham, Frome and Pewsey too) has been ruled out, will we find in coming years that hours and offices get reduced without suitable alternative provision?

In reality, the ticketing system needs simplifying and modernising and multiple ticket windows at bigger stations can be reduced in numbers. But we are a long way off being able to removing the ability to purchase tickets from a human at a fixed location in places like Warminster.

The West Wiltshire Rail User Group covering Warminster, Westbury, Trowbridge, Bradford-on-Avon, Melksham, Dilton Marsh and Avoncliff meets 4 times a year - next meeting on 29th November at the Bethesda Church Hall, just across from Trowbridge Station, from 19:00 (tea and coffee) for 19:30; with a senior manager (Dan Okey and / or Thomas Lydon) from GWR with "An update on current GWR train and station services in West Wiltshire, and a look ahead". I'm sure ticket offices will be a topic for discussion, together with industrial relations, service reliability and much more. Annual membership £8, family £10, or just come along as a guest for £2. Search WWRUG^» online and / or on Facebook to find us.