18 January 2024 , 00:02
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Train travellers often end up forking out more than twice as much when buying tickets through station machines than online, a new investigation suggests.
Train station ticket machines are charging up to 154% more than booking online, with the best value fares unavailable or hidden in a bewildering array of fare options, Which? has found.
Mystery shoppers were sent to 15 stations – each run by a different train operator – and checked the price of 75 journeys from a ticket machine against the price available from the UK’s biggest ticket site, Trainline. At each machine, they attempted to buy the cheapest one-way ticket for travel that same day, the following morning and in three weeks’ time.
It was discovered that fares purchased online were cheaper around three-quarters of the time, and on average, same day journeys cost a hefty 52% from machines than online.
The study suggests buying tickets online is a lot cheaper in many cases (Getty Images)Some of the price differences were particularly eye-watering. Researchers purchasing a same-day, one-way ticket from Holmes Chapel in Cheshire to London would have paid a staggering 154% more for their ticket from the station’s ticket machine compared with buying online, with the machine charging £66 against Trainline’s £26 split-ticket option.
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Similarly, someone buying a same day, one-way ticket from Northampton to Cardiff would have paid £107 for their ticket from the machine, 148% more than buying online, where the price was just £43.
Last year the Mirror successfully led calls to save ticket offices. Despite the huge public backlash to the proposals, huge numbers of travellers are already reliant on ticket machines or online booking.
Currently, just one in six of the 1,766 train stations under the Department for Transport's control has a full time ticket office, 40% are staffed part time, and 43% don’t have a ticket office at all. In 2022 12% of tickets were purchased from a machine - around 150 million journeys.
Which? found the services offered by different ticket machines could vary significantly, with passengers often facing restricted choice and as a result, higher prices.
One of the key reasons why tickets from machines are often more expensive is because most don’t offer ‘advance’ fares, cheaper tariffs which are available for buying in advance of travel. Depending on the route, these can even be available up to 10 minutes before departure. However, just five of 15 machines tested offered them.
Some machines may also lead to passengers unwittingly missing out on cheaper fares. At first glance, many machines visited didn’t appear to sell off-peak tickets at peak times.
When a mystery shopper visited Hitchin first thing in the morning and looked for a one-way ticket to York later that day, the only option they found was an anytime single priced at £133, even though the time they would be travelling would qualify for an off-peak fare. When looking online, the journey could be booked through the Trainline for just £55 off-peak, with the added advantage of using split ticketing to cut the cost.
Great Northern, the train operator responsible for the machines at Hitchin, said off-peak tickets for same-day travel could be found by selecting the ‘tickets for future travel’ button on the machine’s homepage. However, many travellers are likely to be caught out by this quirk, given future travel is usually considered to apply to a date in the future. Even then, the lack of split ticketing would have resulted in more expensive fare.
In all, just a third of stations visited had the most advanced smart ticket machines - but even these don’t offer split ticketing. They do however offer real-time information and can sell tickets up to three months in advance - functions many machines lack.
Stations visited and tickets inspected
- Avanti West Coast - London Euston
- C2C - Limehouse/Grays
- Chiltern Railways - London Marylebone
- East Midlands Railway - Market Harborough
- Great Northern - Hitchin
- GWR - Oxford
- Greater Anglia - Tottenham Hale
- LNER - London King's Cross
- London North Western Railway - Northampton
- Northern - Holmes Chapel
- South Western Railway - Vauxhall/Waterloo/Clapham Junction
- Southeastern - Brixton/Deptford/New Cross
- Southern - East Dulwich/Blackfriars/St Pancras/Victoria
- Thameslink - Nunhead/Tooting
- West Midlands Railway - Canley
RDG, London North Western and Northern did not provide a comment for publication.
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A spokesperson for Great Northern (part of GTR - responsible for Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern, Gatwick Express) said that off-peak tickets can be purchased at any time via its machines by clicking the ‘tickets for future travel’ button on the machine homepage. They added: “Our ticket machines are optimised to give people fast service for the simple journeys that most people are making. If that off-peak were to be placed on the home screen, customers might easily select an invalid ticket if they were in a rush.”
East Midlands Railway said it had installed a number of smart kiosks across its network and is ensuring customers are able to board and buy their ticket on the train or at their destination if necessary.
A spokesperson for GWR said that ticket machines are not intended to provide the same range of tickets as online or in person sales, instead offering ‘ticket collection following a digital sale’ or ‘walk-up fares’ prior to departure. It added that ‘current regulations do not allow train operators to recommend split tickets from ticket machines or ticket offices’.
The Department for Transport said that the need for modernisation of fares and ticketing was raised in the consultation on ticket office closures and will ‘seek to support the industry to modernise ticket machines.’
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