'Unstaffed railway ticket offices leave us at the mercy of faltering machines'
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day

Why railway ticket offices are here to stay
Ross Clark for The Spectator
The government has made the "right decision" in U-turning on the closure of England's railway station ticket offices, partly because "the technology employed by rail companies seems to be increasingly defective", says Ross Clark in The Spectator. "Twice in recent months I have arrived at ticket barriers with a perfectly valid ticket only to find it refusing to let me through," says Clark. "To have stations which have ticket barriers but which are entirely unstaffed will deliver us into a dystopian world where we are at the mercy of faltering machines."
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