ADVICE AND TICKETING

For train to be the travel mode of choice, it needs to offer convenient advice and ticketing choices to passengers. 

Retail advice should be available at www.nationalrail.co.uk and by telephone. It should be reliably available face to face in March and Thetford at specified times each week.

Virtual tickets for all point to point journeys should be available on smart phones and tablet computers. Staff who need to check these tickets should be provided with the kit to do so rapidly.

It should be possible to print Advance purchase tickets at home.

No ticket barriers should be operated unless passengers have the opportunity to buy a ticket through a real person before reaching the barrier. That person could be a clerk in a booking office or a floor walker assisting passengers with the use of vending machines or a staff member with a portable machine.

All passengers joining trains at March, at Thetford and at any station when it is unstaffed should be able to buy the full range of tickets, including railcard discounts and without any penalty fare, from a professional on the train. 

Ticket vending machines are an attractive option for some passengers but do not meet the needs of some people with vision, language or confidence problems and should never, without assistance, be the only method of paying for the journey. Nor should smart cards nor m-tickets.

No passenger should have to queue at destination to pay for the journey already made.

We also believe that clean toilets and heated waiting rooms should be reliably available to passengers at March and Thetford stations for at least 70 hours a week.

May 2017 (updated July 2023)