Is it acceptable to miss connections due to ticket checking?
So if you hop, jog, run or sprint you should be OKThe wording on the announcement is:
"First Transpennine Express complies with the National Rail Conditions of carriage, therefore, if you have chosen to walk past an open ticket office today, you will only be able to purchase standard full fare tickets on board this service"
problem is people can't complain about the barriers being rude
I think the barriers come as close to being rude as a machine can do. It's pretty rude to reject a valid ticket and display the incomprehensible drivel 'reject passback'.
To make this no longer incomprehensible, "reject passback" means that the system thinks you have tried to pass a multiple-journey ticket (e.g. a rover or a season) back to the person behind you who attempted to reuse it. The cause of this is that the time the ticket last passed through a barrier is encoded on the stripe, and the system is programmed not to accept it if reused within a certain time.
What exactly the time is in the UK, I don't know, nor do I know if they can detect different stations (would someone making a short journey between two consecutive barriered stations like HYM-EDB on a season fall foul of this?). In Ireland, I can tell from experience that it's more than six minutes. On the New York Metro it is eighteen.
I think you have to produce a ticket when required by an authorised person, which (god help us all) the G4S staff are.
To make this no longer incomprehensible, "reject passback" means that the system thinks you have tried to pass a multiple-journey ticket (e.g. a rover or a season) back to the person behind you who attempted to reuse it. The cause of this is that the time the ticket last passed through a barrier is encoded on the stripe, and the system is programmed not to accept it if reused within a certain time.
What exactly the time is in the UK, I don't know, nor do I know if they can detect different stations (would someone making a short journey between two consecutive barriered stations like HYM-EDB on a season fall foul of this?). In Ireland, I can tell from experience that it's more than six minutes. On the New York Metro it is eighteen.
It doesn't only trigger for multiple journey tickets. I have experienced it many times with an AP from north of Leeds to London; popped out to get a sandwich, come back 10 minutes later, guaranteed I'll get "Reject Passback".
The annoying thing is if I have been away a long time (and thus far more likely to have broken the T&Cs of the ticket) it'll be fine - I've not the T&Cs but can have a 40 minute connecting time on a Sunday.
The barriers do the job they were clearly designed to do, and that is to irritate regular customers, cause an unnecessary obstruction, cause delay, and put people off travelling by rail. It is the DfT who insists that barriers are installed at inappropriate locations, not the TOCs (the TOCs have to commit to it as part of the franchise agreement).An eagle-eyed fare dodger would see this and then just carry any duff ticket precisely because he wanted to get it rejected and then waved through by the overworked barrier attendant..
This happened to me on an open return Shipley > Narborough last week, when I went through the barrier at Leeds to collect an advance ticket for a couple of weeks' time from the machine. 5 minutes later I came back, (obviously) going the other way this time, and got reject passback. Same thing happened at Leicester on the way back when I went out to take a photo of the station frontage. So it would seem it can happen on any type of ticket, even one where break of journey of up to a month is permitted! When I asked the guy at Leicester "what's wrong with this ticket?" he mused that it was something wrong with the magnetic strip (ha!). He was by far the busiest person at that station at that time as an HST had just arrived from Nottingham and disgorged several dozen passengers, many of whom had difficulty with the barriers (stuck in waaaay too narrow a place at the end of the bridge and making a serious bottleneck that would be bad enough even if the barriers actually worked.......). If someone had a problem he didn't look at their ticket; he simply let them through. An eagle-eyed fare dodger would see this and then just carry any duff ticket precisely because he wanted to get it rejected and then waved through by the overworked barrier attendant.
I guess the Bradford Interchange thing of not accepting tickets from the Calder Valley to the Aire Valley via route Not Leeds is just one of programming the machine properly, and at least the message 'not valid at this station' is in proper English, even if it is 100% balls.
At Nottingham the barriers can (or could, last time I visited!) be by-passed by using the footbridge, there's an entrance near the mini Tesco.
Think this is code 105 on the London type machines, and does indeed mean that the ticket has been through a barrier twice in quick succession. I thought it just applied at the same station but am happy to be proved wrong. Do the barriers up north really give the full message in words, rather than just a number?
Agree about uuuuupppp north being 'different' - they queue for buses up there still.
They give a message in words, but not in English as any normal person would use it. Surely the system should be able to tell if a ticket has been through an outbound and an inbound gate in quick succession, and see that that is different from going through two inbound ones in quick succession. Or are these gates about as technologically advanced as a Speak N Spell machine?
I'm not sure if 'reject passback' is more or less annoying than 'unexpected item in bagging area', but it's in the same ballpark.
I am sorry but refusing to show your ticket is just being confrontational or stubborn for your own reason, G4S are employed by Northern and TPE, if Virgin or XC don't want to do ticket checks on the station that is up to them.
Whilst I am not a fan of G4S, I do agree with ticket checks being done on major stations whether by machine or by person, either way your going to have issues, problem is people can't complain about the barriers being rude
If the rest of the station was barriered would there be any need to have the mob at 13 & 14? I dont understand why those two platforms get special treatment compared to the rest of the station. At lot of people are connecting trains are people connecting trains more of a revenue risk then people using the terminating platforms.
once again they have the right to barrier their trains if Virgin and XC dont want to participate that is their problem
This misses the point in several respects. It's no excuse not to train them sufficiently, but also why not put in barriers at Deansgate and Salford, if that is the real issue?Also the unique problem 13 and 14 have over the main shed would be evaders coming in from Deansgate and Salford where the guard has no cat in hells chance of doing the doors and revenue alongside TRANSEC and DDA announcements, no barrier there and we may as well advertise free travel.
Virgin etc have the right not to participate in a scheme whereby passengers are treated in an unacceptable way by 3rd party security goons, and I will defend that right. So I am unsure how you could eliminate disagreements between TOCs without it being bad for passengers.I don't accept any TOC vs TOC argument as we are supposed to have an integrated rail network. Any infighting between TOCs needs to be sorted elsewhere.
Virgin etc have the right not to participate in a scheme whereby passengers are treated in an unacceptable way by 3rd party security goons, and I will defend that right. So I am unsure how you could eliminate disagreements between TOCs without it being bad for passengers.
If Virgin and XC don't agree to ticket checks at Man Picc then there should be no ticket checks at Man Picc anywhere. Northern and fTPE need to agree some kind of settlement (compensation?) with Virgin and XC. It is plainly wrong for people to have 1+ hour delays because of a dispute between TOCs. Would this be happening if all trains from Man Picc were run by the same TOC?