THE plans look promising. A sleek new building with an all-glass front and a swooping copper ceiling. An expanded concourse with more space for passengers. Space also for longer trains which means less chance of over-crowding. All in all, the redevelopment of Queen Street station in Glasgow should mean a much improved, modern facility for the city and one that, in the words of the Scottish Government, better serves the needs of passengers.
But will it really? In the old Queen Street station, as well as self-service ticket machines, passengers could use the ticket office and buy their tickets from staff. But there are now concerns that the redeveloped station may not include a ticket office at all. For many passengers – even those who regularly buy their tickets by machine – that will come as a bit of a shock.
The alarm bells started ringing when staff noticed a reference in a railway magazine to the new redeveloped Queen Street station not having a ticket office; the RMT union is now seeking clarification on the issue and has said it will not accept ticket office closure in any way, shape or form.
The response of ScotRail is that it is still considering the matter. The way customers buy their tickets is changing, it says, with more and more buying tickets online or using self-service ticket machines and that means the company has to change the way it does things. The direction of travel would seem clear.
But if – as feared – ScotRail does have plans to ditch the ticket office at Queen Street completely, it should think again. Obviously, what it says about changing customer habits has a firm basis in reality – high street banks have experienced exactly the same trends with the growth of online banking, which has led to a dramatic reduction in the number of branches across the country. High street stores have also had to adapt to the move online – adapt or die.
But even though banks, supermarkets – and railway companies – have to adapt to the changing world, that does not mean that they can ignore their responsibilities to provide a service to all their customers – those who use the internet and those who do not. It is true that many love the convenience of online but not everyone is in that situation. Hard as it may be for some to believe, there are some people who are not online or comfortable using automated technology. They deserve a service too.
In particular, ScotRail should consider its responsibilities to elderly passengers, some of whom may not be comfortable using ticket machines or simply prefer dealing with a person rather than a touch-screen. And what about the tourists who use Queen Street station, as a jumping off point to other parts of Scotland? Is a computer screen really the best welcome they can expect?
There also has to be a concern about the effect getting rid of the ticket office might have on the value for money customers can expect. Often, it is a member of staff in the office who alerts a customer to a cheaper or better way to buy tickets – the chances are that, if a computer replaces the staff in the ticket office, many more passengers may end up paying more than they should for their tickets.
The question for ScotRail as it makes decisions about what the new Queen Street station will look like is how to balance responding to the inevitable and unavoidable changes in the way many customers behave with its duty to provide a service that works for all its passengers. The new station will undoubtedly look good – and a lot of money, some £100million, is being spent achieving it.
However, a modern station should be judged not on how it looks, but on whether it works well for the passengers who pass through its doors. We will have to wait to see whether Queen Street can pass that test.
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