A railway without people? The government’s dystopian vision that’s hurtling down the line

Government’s big idea is for a railway with fewer human operators, and closing ticket offices is just another step towards that goal. Keep on like this, warns Christian Wolmar, and they’ll soon have no passengers at all

Plans to close railway station ticket offices have been condemned (Alamy/PA)

Passengers may be on to something when they joke there is a deliberate plot in government to try to stop people from using the railways.

Last month, in my Calling All Stations podcast, I revealed that ministers were asking train companies to stop providing wi-fi in order to cut costs. Not surprisingly, that caused an uproar as passengers complained that the existing lousy reception on many trains is at least better than nothing. But still they kept on coming back to the railways, with passenger numbers rapidly returning towards pre-Covid levels.

Deep in the Department for Transport, a bright spark seems to have decided this rush of eager travellers must be stopped. This clever chap – probably Mark Harper, who is nominally secretary of state for transport but whose heart lies clearly in his old job as an accountant – devised a much wider scheme to prevent anyone letting the train take the strain: close nearly all the ticket offices to make it hard for people to buy them. That’ll show ‘em!