The passenger watchdogs Transport Focus and London TravelWatch say more than 100,000 people have responded to the consultation about the proposed closure of more than 800 station ticket offices in England.
Time is running out, because the deadline for responses is Wednesday.
The Rail Delivery Group and the Department for Transport say only about one in eight passengers still use ticket offices, because the rest buy from machines or book online.
The plan is to bring staff from out of their offices on to station concourses, where they can help passengers with ticket purchases or any other queries they may have.
The unions have been protesting at the plans, saying they believe the changes are the first steps towards thousands of redundancies, while a group of city Mayors in the North of England is challenging the lawfulness of the consultation itself.
The transport authorities in the north, who make up the Urban Transport Group, say the changes are inconsistent, pointing out that Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street, which have over 32 million and 22 million annual users respectively, are losing their ticket counters, while the offices at Leeds (19 million), Sheffield (7 million), Newcastle-upon-Tyne (7 million) and Liverpool Lime Street (10 million) will remain open.
The UTG added that Avanti West Coast is proposing to close all its ticket offices, including London Euston, Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street, while state-owned LNER is proposing to keep the offices at London King’s Cross, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Edinburgh.
Transport for Wales is making no changes to the ticket offices it operates in England, which include Chester, Shrewsbury and Runcorn East, although nearby Runcorn, which is run by Avanti West Coast and has four times as many passengers as Runcorn East, is set to see its office closed.
The managing directors of individual operators have been defending the proposals.
Greater Anglia managing director Jamie Burles said: ‘The station proposals are aimed at providing a more modern and flexible service for our customers. They reflect the more convenient ways in which passengers are looking to buy their tickets and check travel information.
‘Station colleagues would undertake a new, more flexible role – bringing staff closer to customers. Passenger assistance arrangements would continue as they do now, from first to last trains, but with additional mobile teams to give greater flexibility in providing assistance across the network.’
Transport Focus chief executive Anthony Smith said: ‘We’ve had a huge response to the consultation so far. There’s still time to respond to the consultation if you haven’t done so yet. We want to hear from everyone, so we can consider the needs of all station users and local communities.’
Transport Focus added that it will ‘scrutinise the proposals and any mitigations in detail, alongside the public responses’.