Column: Andrew Jones MP - The change since 2010 is remarkable

​Instinctively I am sure everyone wants to keep ticket offices open. But when only slightly more than 1 in 10 tickets are now bought at a ticket office you can see why rail companies want change. I know many communities will seek to persuade operators that their ticket offices should remain open. Were our ticket office threatened I would be doing the same. That is part of an MP’s role.

Harrogate ticket office has a long-term future because of the volume of ticket sales. Some ticket offices are only selling one ticket an hour. Harrogate does much more than that.

This underlines the impact of the investment in our local line over the last 13 years. That investment has maintained and increased passenger levels. The change since 2010 is remarkable.

Back then the workhorse of the line was the pacer train. These were introduced in the early 1980s as a short-term solution to a lack of rolling stock. Thirty years later they were still trundling along the Harrogate line – noisy, dirty and unreliable though they were.

In 2010 we had no direct trains to London. The track infrastructure was old. The only option for buying tickets was the ticket office so if you were running late and there was a queue you had a problem. Now we have much-improved rolling stock. It is refurbished, reliable and has onboard wifi. We have modern Azuma trains running direct to and from London every day. This was an essential upgrade to support our conference and exhibition business.

The signalling and track has been upgraded to the tune of £10m enabling more services and faster services between Harrogate, York and Leeds. These changes have been delivered in stages reflecting prolonged investment and campaigning, but the changes have extended beyond the tracks and the rolling stock.

Our station has seen £900,000 of improvements with the smart wall allowing people to buy tickets on the concourse as well as fast-ticketing machines on both platforms. Back in 2010 if you wanted to go towards Leeds from platform three you were exposed to the elements. Now there is a smart enclosed waiting room as well as a covered area.

So what have these changes meant for passenger numbers? Entry and exit data are the standard usage measurement for stations and in 2010 there were 1.22m of these at Harrogate station. Immediately pre-pandemic this reached 1.77m; an increase of 45 per cent.

These improvements happened because of the alignment of Government, MP, rail companies, councils, local groups and customers. Much of the work is done behind the scenes drawing the threads together. This style might not suit the headline-driven political culture where tearing down others seems the norm. It is though I think the best way to get real results.