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Can't say I've used an in person ticket booth in years, decades maybe. They're always shut anyway.
When I went to Japan on holiday there were staff members hovering around the ticket machines helping people if they needed it - and I did. Not a ticket office on sight. Why can they do it but we can't? Dunno.
In japan every station I went to had a ticket office...
Well shit.... maybe the ones I went to didn't or I didn't see them 😂.
Still, my experience was that I needed to use a machine I had no idea what I was doing some helpful staff member came over saw I was having issues had a chat to me for a minute and I was sorted. Wasn't hard at all.
I think there is room for both, infract I feel our train stations are woefully understaffed already. The reason there was someone to help you in Japan is they had enough staff to have a ticket office open, and to have people manning the ticket machines during busy times. Especially in the big stations. The current plans say they are to move staff to be "roaming" but it's clear the real plan is to remove all the staff they can.
For busy stations the cost of staff is miniscule, and they can help enough lost people as to be worth it . However for less busy stations having someone stand around doing nothing all day isn't useful.
In the Tokyo area (with JR East) many major stations will have a みどりの窓口 (Green window booth) for assistance with buying tickets and special ticket packages, often in a room that's fully separate from the ticket vending machines, and usually only one when the ticket vending machines could be in multiple areas. Most stations have a person on duty (or stationmaster for smaller stations) by the ticket gates, which you can purchase tickets from when it's not crowded.
They need manned staff at the fare gates for now, because the 青春18 ticket still needs a station master to stamp the date and verify it for entry.
In a rush to buy 3 travel cards last week, as the train was literally pulling into the station, my finger slipped and I accidentally bought an extra child’s ticket.
When we changed trains at the next station I went to the counter and they sorted a refund of that extra ticket for me.
I asked how it would be possible to do something like that in the future with only ticket machines and the guy said he didn’t know.
yeah it's all these little things, but it was easy to know what to do, go to the ticket office and ask.
At Leeds, the people behind the counters are the best. They have all these off peak traveller tickets in West Yorkshire and the machines never prompt you for the right one to use, but the people behind the counter just know and give you the cheapest combination by default. The saved me a fiver this week
A century ago, in America, the largest retailer - Sears & Roebuck - tried shifting from handwritten letters to typed to their customers. There was a huge backlash because the typed letters came across as cold and impersonal. The company (temporarily) went back to handwritten letters, at greater expense, until the practice was more widespread.
I use trains on a regular basis but can't remember the last time I saw any staff in the station.
I now just use the train app on my phone. from, to, time, press pay and use the finger print scanner to pay.
Buying a ticket should be simple.
Even the buses here I just tap my phone against I reader and sit down.