Metro-North to close two station ticket offices next month

If they mean a combination Monthly rail ticket and monthly MetroCard, that's available at ticket machines, through WebTicket, and through Mail&Ride. Frankly, why any regular monthly customer doesn't subscribe to Mail&Ride escapes me...what could be easier than having your ticket delivered to your home up to 10 days before you need it? You don't even have to pay for it in advance, you have til the 10th of the month to get your payment in - IF you haven't signed up for automatic payment. It's just too easy, and yet the majority of monthly customers still don't use it. I don't get it....

Jim

Maybe the brass downtown should all pull a ticket agents slot 2-3 times a month. 8-1 and then go downtown. This would give them a dose of reality and some good applied customer relations experience, before shuffling their papers at 347 Madison. Set up a duty roster.
One of the things usually overlooked, are the customers who are not daily commuters, who don't get their monthly railpass in the mail, don't always know where they are going. The agents serve as friendly advisors to all the other users of the RR ,moms, kids, parents, grandparents ,tourists, occasional business in NYC people etc. Mass transit doesn't need to be mass production. We are all individuals who need a friendly face.
I might also add that there have been some incidents involving crime at the Pelham (and I am sure others) station when no agents were on duty. Cutting out RR ticket agents and also subway ticket booth agents is a poor security device, in these days of homeland security etc.
I wish Metro North would reconsider this unwise decision.
TO WHOM SHOULD WE WRITE OR E-MAIL? Thanks,
Roger

Go to the MTA home page (http://www.mta.info), and click on the "FAQs/Contact Us" icon on the left; follow the links until you get to the e-mail page.

That said, you need to remember that these are the taxpayer's dollars that pay for that warm and fuzzy feeling you get from a ticket agent. We all like that warm and fuzzy feeling, but there aren't enough of your tax dollars to pay for one at every station.

Actually, there are plenty of your tax dollars to pay for it, but your duly elected legislators in Albany and Washington think they have a better idea of how to spend them. So think about what's more important: a wam and fuzzy feeling at your train station, or health care for those who don't have health insurance, or whatever else Albany and Washington are pissing our money on this week, then elect someone who will spend it the way you want it spent.

Give the MTA the money to pay for it, and they'll put a 24/7 agent at every station. It's as simple as that.

And by the way, I, as well as many of those who took part in making these decisions, have years of face-to-face customer service experience on the railroad, and know precisely what the agents go through, and the customers as well. We're not all faceless bureaucrats with no real-world lives.

Jim

Dear MN Jim - Sorry to p@#$ you off, really meant in jest. The logic of your position, though, is interesting. According to the way you or your associates at Metro North seem to think, all ticket agents would be dispensable, and are likely to be replaced by non- warm and fuzzy machines.
I still can't understand why the Pelham agent was chosen for a cut at exactly the moment when MR railroad or the MTA was getting an increase in revenue from leasing Pelham station, and, higher fares. There must be other stations less busy and less self-supporting through auxiliary revenue.
While your colleagues are replacing persons with ticket machines at our various stations, why not put one or two machines on the opposite side, so passengers would not have to trudge through tunnels or over bridges to purchase a ticket. The surcharge for purchasing on trains has become burdensome.
Roger

First, you didn't piss me off...I just felt a need to set the record straight.

FWIW, I personally believe that there should be ticket agents selling tickets. But to play devil's advocate, besides catering to people's desire to interact with other people, and besides being another face to scream at when the railroad has pissed you off, and reducing it down to it's most basic level, what does a ticket agent do that a ticket vending machine doesn't do, at a station like Pelham that has two trains in each direction each hour, all going to the same stations? It's not like the agent is directing you to the right track and train. You don't get a discount from him. He doesn't make reservations for you. He won't stop someone from mugging you - except that the mugger might rob him, instead of you. At it's most basic level, at a station like Pelham, the ticket agent sells tickets, and that's all he does. And that's all machines do.

White Plains, Stamford, Croton-Harmon...all have extenuating circumstances that make a ticket agent a very valuable thing - so no, the railroad doesn't think that ALL ticket agents are dispensable. But Pelham? Warm and fuzzy is all he gives, and that isn't justification to spend very limited taxpayer dollars (in my own very humble opinion; I do NOT speak for the railroad, now or ever in this forum, for that matter).

I happen to agree with you about the TVM locations. Again, it's $$ that drive those decisions, as well. Many stations with significant outbound ridership have TVMs on both sides.

Jim

MN Jim -
I must have been thinking of your problems, because I had a dream last night that Metro North, by bold leadership and fiancial acumen, had reversed its financial woes by:
-closing all ticket windows, ticket machines only. Rented vacant great hall of GCT to Cipriani's for catered weddings and banquets. Fired all ticket agents.

-fired all engineers. Automated (San Francisco style) computer controlled trains equipment installed by Kawasaki

-fired all conductors. Passengers spot checked by East German security firm equipped with Uzis and Dobermanns. Riders without valid ticket fined $100. oo cash on spot or three days jail.

-outsourced all computer control and signal operations to the Calcutta Transportation Authority at one third the labor cost. Satellite link. Fired all computer and signal employees

-outsourced all remaining track and building maintenance to Chinese Peoples Prison Labor Authority, which provided supervised work gangs at competitive prices well below union scale. Based on good experience of Central Pacific RR. Fired all maintenance personnel.

-All other office functions outsourced via satellite linkup to Bengladesh Office Services. inc. Fired all office personnel.

-all remaining MTA and Metro North board members, presidents and staff moved to small suite at the Waldorf. Rented 347 Madison to Disney Organization for workshops in Virtual Reality.

-Metro North in brilliant financial health.

I am sure you professionals can do much better in reality than a poor railfan in his dreams. I wish you well, with all respect.

I look forward to the most interesting days in local rail financing since Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould.

Roger

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