KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Kalamazoo will become the latest Michigan city to lose a staffed ticket office at its Amtrak station, WWMT-TV reports.
The TV station reports the ticket office will close “at the beginning of 2020.” It follows similar moves East Lansing, Niles, Jackson, and Flint, which saw their ticket offices close in 2018 [see “East Lansing to join list of unstaffed Amtrak stations in Michigan,” Trains News Wire, Sept. 6, 2018].
Citing increased use of online ticketing, Amtrak has closed a number of ticket offices across its national network in recent years.
Figures.
Drop 1st class dining, make cost allocations look like a Ponzi scheme, cancel trains when there’s a cloud in the sky (like an airline).
It’s pretty obvious that the Amtrak board and their lapdog Anderson have one goal in mind – shut it down.
Does anyone really want criminals handling their luggage?
Mr McFarlane, how about community service volunteers from court.
Gerald McFarlane – here you go again with common sense. Amtrak leaders have their heads spinning from this. They will not do this, as it takes away from their control mindset. It would work, and be helpful to most.
Agree with what Jim Norton said.
Tickets can be bought on line. It’s the station experience that matters. The point is, Amtrak is what Amtrak is. Detroit is a glorified flag stop. Why would one expect better at Battle Creek, Ann Arbor, K’zoo. Dearborn, Pontiac, Royal Oak, let alone the smaller towns. That I know of, there’s no checked baggage anywhere in Michigan.
There is only one staffed station (Portland) on the Downeaster line in Maine and it carries over 500,000 passengers a year. They all get along quite well. And,like all the stations on the Chicago – Detroit line there is no checked baggage. So they are not losing anything other than the ability to buy tickets at the station. This is a good move by Amtrak and they should continue to look for areas to economize.
This is significant because KAL is the second-busiest station on the Wolverine corridor.
Kalamazoo’s station has a lot of traffic. Will there be automated ticket dispensers like at some movie theaters?
Have you been to CHI lately? With the recent remodeling, try to find the ticket windows.
Hell, if they are closing KZoo, they might as well close A2, Detroit, Pontiac, and Chicago……… WTF?
Do any of you realize that a staffed station doesn’t have to be an employee of Amtrak, the cities could have volunteers do it, just like they have volunteer staff at Airports for customer service not related to the Airlines that fly out of them. Instead of closing the facilities, Amtrak should be contacting the cities and discussing ways of having volunteer(aka either retirees, or better yet, use workfare and have people on “welfare” do the job in order to get their welfare benefits).
Next we will probably learn that ridership to and from Kalamazoo has also dropped, in part for the reasons Jim Norton cites.
Crazy! Give your head a shake Amtrak.
Ticketing might be a casualty of technology. That I can understand. But when it comes to helping people, moving luggage and managing the train boarding experience a staffed station is a must. But should we expect anything different from Amtrak?