EVANSTON, Ill. — Reflecting the continuing transition of passengers to mobile ticketing, Metra and Union Pacific will close the ticket office at the Evanston Central Street station at the end of its business day on Oct. 31.
Metra reports the station on the Union Pacific North Line sells the fewest tickets of any agent-staffed location on its Union Pacific lines. The station, which serves about 1,300 passengers on weekdays, is currently staffed from 5:25 a.m. to 12:55 p.m. on weekdays and averages just 940 ticket sales per month this year.
About 47 percent of Metra passengers now use the Ventra app to purchase tickets, the commuter railroad reports.
The station becomes the 21st on the Metra system to eliminate on-site sales. A complete list of the earlier closures is available in Metra’s announcement of the Evanston closure. The station itself will remain open to passengers.
Those of us of a certain age remember when ticket sellers also dispatched their block. (Not sure I have the words right.) Nothing like a staffed station, so rare in today’s railroad world. A decade ago at Amtrak Detroit New Center, there was one security guard (who escorted patrons up to the single one-track platform) , one ticket seller, no checked baggage. Don’t know if it’s that many now. How does that compare to the staffing levels (airlines and concessions) at Detroit Metro Airport? What, maybe 5,000 employees to two, I can only guess. I don’t know but I assume the other Detroit-area stations are unstaffed – Pontiac, Troy-Birmingham, Royal Oak and maybe even Dearborn and Ann Arbor. As Troy-Birmingham is also a bus station maybe someone is there, perhaps not an Amtrak employee.
Even in the Northeast, the cause is lost. Last month, at BOS Boston Logan Airport we stood in a very long queue at one of the numerous counters at the rental car center. The concourse (i.e. not including the multilevel parking garage) of the rental car center at Logan would put any rail station in America to shame.
Do they also use vending machines at the stations? Those also eliminate the need to staff the station and are convenient for those that use the service intermittently.