CAMPAIGNERS say plans for ticket barriers at York Station should be permanently scrapped following the collapse of rail operator National Express East Coast (NXEC).

Controversy has raged since NXEC outlined proposals last year for automated ticket barriers at the station.

The plan is due before York councillors on July 16, and campaigners today called for political support against the scheme.

Verna Campbell, chair of the lobby group Campaign Against Barriers at York Station (CABYS), said she feared NXEC may win permission for the barriers and install them before quitting the East Coast Main Line (ECML).

She said: “It is more than possible that they will disappear over the horizon only to leave the inconvenient and unnecessary barriers behind as their permanent legacy to York.”

She urged councillors and York MP Hugh Bayley to call on National Express to withdraw its plan, adding: “If they don’t do something soon, this will go through by default.”

Fulford councillor Keith Aspden also called for the barriers to be shelved.

He said last week’s news that National Express was to give up the ECML franchise made it “very unlikely” barriers would be built in the immediate future.

He added: “There is a great deal of local opposition to these plans and I think that now is the right time to look again at the proposals.”

Coun Aspden said the Government, which will take over the ECML later this year, should listen to local views before deciding whether to pursue barriers at stations.

Fellow Liberal Democrat councillor Christian Vassie called for answers from Westminster.

“The city needs the Government to make clear whether they intend to push ahead with ticket barriers at York,” he said.

Andy Chase, who will stand for the Green Party in York at the next General Election, said: “The barriers fiasco is just a symptom of a wider malaise in the rail industry. Years of robust passenger growth fuelled by an economic boom seem to have given rise to a certain complacency – a belief that fares can be hiked every year above the rate of inflation, and that passengers can be treated like cattle without any consequences.”

Mrs Campbell said the council should look at wider issues than the impact of the barriers on the listed building, a view echoed by York Environment Forum.

Spokesman Jonathan Tyler said: “Whatever its legal status, the station belongs to the people of York. In keeping with the council’s commitments, they should be involved in its future. It should not be treated as a private fiefdom by a short-term tenant.”