Train staff are invaluable to people like me for this very important reason

Ticket office staff are skilled in providing multiple kinds of support that people can’t get from an app or a machine (Picture: Erik Matthies)

Using my white cane to step safely off the train, I stood to one side patiently to wait. But after several minutes, it became clear the passenger assistance I’d booked wasn’t coming.

Registered blind, I took a few embarrassing and increasingly stressful false starts to get across to the other platform, where I eventually found the ticket office.

I joined the queue there and, when I reached the front, the staff member at the counter said, ‘You must be the chap who booked the assistance. I’m sorry I couldn’t get over there to help, it’s just me here and I had a queue.’

Just as my heart was beginning to soften towards him, he broke further bad news.

‘You shouldn’t have come this way at all. If you’d gone straight to Manchester Piccadilly, you’d have four trains an hour to Leeds. Here there’s only one. And the next one’s just been cancelled. I tried to call Mauldeth Road to have them let you know…’

As I looked at him in dismay, I explained there were no staff at that station.

What only made this drizzly morning worse was the knowledge that these kinds of problems are only going to be made worse – and more frequent – if closures to almost all ticket offices in England go ahead as proposed.

It is difficult enough for myself and other blind and partially sighted people to navigate train travel with their help – and without them, it will be almost impossible.

Just for this journey, I’d bought my tickets online, which is technically ‘accessible’ but proved so difficult to use that I hadn’t been able to tell I’d inadvertently booked an overly-complicated and unnecessarily lengthy route.

Another time, I was once nearly stranded in Preston, when I attempted to change trains seven-and-a-half hours into a nine-hour train journey.

I don’t have a choice about using trains because of trips that I have to make for work (Picture: Erik Matthies)

Again, I’d booked assistance that hadn’t turned up and, it being an unfamiliar station, I had no idea of what to do except to rush to the ticket office where I knew there would be staff who could help me.

These issues are faced by many blind and partially sighted people whenever we try to travel by public transport.

We’re twice as likely to be ‘digitally excluded’ as sighted people, which means more of us lack access to the internet.

And even those of us with smartphones can find travel websites and apps particularly difficult. When I magnify my screen to see the words more clearly, it means I can’t see the full page all at once, which makes it difficult to keep track of all the details.

To many, these apps and websites are completely inaccessible, as are the ticket machines at stations. An RNIB survey revealed that only 3% of blind and partially sighted people said they could use ticket vending machines without problems. 

Even the term ‘ticket office’ might be a misnomer – their worth is so much greater than the number of tickets sold there.

Ticket office staff are skilled in providing multiple kinds of support that people can’t get from an app or a machine.

They have prevented me from accidentally buying the wrong ticket, told me about concessions that I wasn’t aware should apply to my journey, contacted staff at my onward stations to rearrange assistance while I panicked about delays and cancellations, checked if I was OK using stairs when a lift was broken, and guided me safely down the platform and onto my train.

The ticket office closure proposals say they want to bring staff out from behind the glass, as if they’re fish trapped in a bowl. To me, that’s far from a positive thing.

The static location of a ticket office, which I can learn and reliably navigate to, is invaluable to me as a registered blind person, and I have yet to hear any proposal that explains how moving them to a roving or floating role around the station will help me locate them.

I don’t have a choice about using trains because of trips that I have to make for work. But like many blind and partially sighted people, I’m increasingly making my journeys around the availability of family, friends or others who can assist me on the journey. 

I grew up in a rural part of the U.S. with no public transport at all, which meant a frustrating time as the only teenager who couldn’t drive. Not only was I guaranteed to be uncool, there was no chance of me working because no one could drive me to and from every shift.

Moving to the UK in my 20s was the first time I could get myself from one city to another. I carry an echo of that first magical feeling with me even 20 years later, even when trains are cancelled or I’m waiting in the rain. I’ve always treasured that independence and I really don’t want to lose it.

People might be surprised to hear a colleague of mine describe this as ‘a new Beeching’, referring to the major route closures and service changes in the 1960s under Dr Richard Beeching, but it doesn’t seem like an exaggeration to me. 

Only this time it wouldn’t be whole lines closing, just lots of individuals cut off from the railway – and the world.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing [email protected]. 

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We’re twice as likely to be ‘digitally excluded’ as sighted people, which means more of us lack access to the internet.