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Leeds to Leicester - 14 tickets for passenger & bike

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AntoniC

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...mplete-simple-round-trip-Leeds-Leicester.html

Martin Robinson in The Daily Mail said:
Train passenger needed FOURTEEN tickets to complete simple round trip from Leeds to Leicester

  • Rachel Woodward had two tickets for herself plus four seat reservations and eight other tickets for her bike
  • The 28-year-old's experience prompted a review by rail bosses who admitted the paperwork was 'excessive'
A railway passenger was left stunned after she needed a staggering 14 tickets just for a simple return train trip.

Project manager Rachel Woodward, 28, booked the easy journey from Leeds to Leicester online, only to be bamboozled by a huge pile of paperwork.

When she arrived at the station she was shocked and confused when the machine spewed out 14 separate tickets for the £16.50 trip - plus a receipt... (more)

Spotted this in the ever so train friendly Daily Mail.

14 tickets for a return journey with bike is a bit bonkers isnt it ?

How much paper & ink have been wasted ?

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Deerfold

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hairyhandedfool

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So she has two tickets with "Valid only with Reservations" printed on them showing the origin and destination, four reservations with "Seat Reservation" and "Valid only with Ticket XXXXX" printed on them showing a mid point station and either the origin or destination, and eight bike coupons with "Bicycle Reservation" printed on with four of those also having "ATTACH TO BICYCLE" printed on them and she doesn't know which ones to use in the barriers? I really do have to worry about the state of the education system if she is a project manager!
 

Squaddie

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Oh, come on, guys...

I realise that this is a rail industry forum but surely no-one can deny that issuing 14 separate pieces of paper for a simple round trip with bike is laughable?
 

GadgetMan

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Oh, come on, guys...

I realise that this is a rail industry forum but surely no-one can deny that issuing 14 separate pieces of paper for a simple round trip with bike is laughable?

Absolutely right, we could do away with cycle reservations altogether. That would get rid of 8 coupons straight away.

As for wasting paper and ink, how many Metros/Daily Mails/(other papers) get printed and binned daily?
 

Cherry_Picker

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Be sure to look out for tomorrows exciting issue of The Daily Mail where they take to task all of those blank cards in a deck of playing cards!
 

SS4

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Be sure to look out for tomorrows exciting issue of The Daily Mail where they take to task all of those blank cards in a deck of playing cards!

Playing cards give you cancer ;)

Not much surprises me with them any more. As HHF implied it's actually very easy to account for those tickets but then that wouldn't make a topic.

Isn't project manager one of those roles that can mean practically anything and we all know the amount of useful work done and the vagueness of the job title follows the inverse square law ;)

Also please say I wasn't the only one who assumed the OP wanted Leeds to Leicester for 14 people and 14/1 bike(s) :oops:
 

SS4

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Not a bad looking wench tho.....

Not worth the trouble lad ;)


Don't they have to credit google maps if they include their image?
These examples are too rare to consider overhauling the system
 

IanD

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If she's that concerned about the environment then why not bike the whole way?

Hope she got some extra tickets to get to and from the station she is pictured at. Must be building up a massive collection by now.
 

DaveNewcastle

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Oh, come on, guys...

I realise that this is a rail industry forum but surely no-one can deny that issuing 14 separate pieces of paper for a simple round trip with bike is laughable?
I'm not laughing.
I've just looked on the forum tonight after checking I have my tickets for going to work tomorrow (with bike). Frankly, I didn't check them all, I just counted them. I knew it should be 16 and it was (plus the 'Collection Receipt' and one 'VOID' actually making it 18).

It's not at all unusual.
As many on here know, my regular journey is Newcastle to London and back and I sometimes 'split' the tickets to reduce my cost.
With bike, that's 8 and with a 'split', that's 16.

Many of us are experiencing this on a regular basis. It's certainly not 'news'.

But this story does give me the opportunity tell another!
I was recently in Newcastle station collecting tickets for my next month's journeys, and after entering the code, I stood back for a few minutes and waited. There was going to be 60 - 80 coupons. During that time, a man behind me said something that sounded like astonishment. So I turned and it seemed as if he thought the machine had broken because it was apparently in an endless cycle of printing coupons. He asked in a very friendly way if I was buying for lots of people or was going to be making lots of journeys.
I explained that it was lots of journey and that taking a bike doubles the number.

By coincidence, I saw him a couple of weeks later, and he said "Oh, Hello. You're the ticket man!"
 

lyesbkz

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But this story does give me the opportunity tell another!
I was recently in Newcastle station collecting tickets for my next month's journeys, and after entering the code, I stood back for a few minutes and waited. There was going to be 60 - 80 coupons. During that time, a man behind me said something that sounded like astonishment. So I turned and it seemed as if he thought the machine had broken because it was apparently in an endless cycle of printing coupons. He asked in a very friendly way if I was buying for lots of people or was going to be making lots of journeys.
I explained that it was lots of journey and that taking a bike doubles the number.

Well, you should have contacted a newspaper (in the loosest sense of the word). ;)
 

craigwilson

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Daily Mail
...she did not know which one to show at the barrier or show the guard on board the train.
You have to wonder if people actually bother to read their tickets sometimes. Most of the ones that aren't travel tickets have what they are for printed in big letters along the top of the ticket.

I note that she picked up her tickets at the station. I always think that's asking for trouble if you're on an Advance (as she is...it's the top ticket in the photo), and she probably wouldn't have been so confused if she'd collected them beforehand and sorted out what was for what.
 

trc666

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A lot of people don't bother to read their tickets, even for a simple journey from say London Waterloo to Honiton on an Advance single which is one ticket and one coupon (plus a receipt if requested), they get 'confused' over which one is the actual ticket and try to put the seat reservation through the barrier. Same goes for OUT and RTN parts of tickets.
 
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lyesbkz

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I honestly believe a solution to this is to have a specific stock colour for tickets to make them more easily identifiable in a handful of various coupons.

The only issue being that presumably in their current state, not all TVMs would be able to cope with this.
 

hairyhandedfool

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Not only would you have to refit the TVMs, but you'd have ticket offices sitting on surplus tickets (the minimum order for common stock is 10,000 tickets) just in case someone asks for a reservation. Then you'd have to consider the cost of refitting ticket office machines against the time taken to hand feed dozens of tickets into the ticket office machine.
 

SS4

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I honestly believe a solution to this is to have a specific stock colour for tickets to make them more easily identifiable in a handful of various coupons.

The only issue being that presumably in their current state, not all TVMs would be able to cope with this.

Or you know, people could read.
 

island

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Not only would you have to refit the TVMs, but you'd have ticket offices sitting on surplus tickets (the minimum order for common stock is 10,000 tickets) just in case someone asks for a reservation. Then you'd have to consider the cost of refitting ticket office machines against the time taken to hand feed dozens of tickets into the ticket office machine.

Not to mention the trouble with rethreading the tickets on roll-fed machines!
 

Deerfold

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Or you know, people could read.

That thought did occur to me.

There's plenty of room for improvement in tickets and yes, it should be possible to do this with fewer than 14, but any reasonably intelligent, educated person should have no trouble telling which ticket is for what.

Now finding out any restrictions may be harder (except on an advance ticket).
 

bb21

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Here is a photo that I believe will amuse a few of you. ;)
 

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Deerfold

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Here is a photo that I believe will amuse a few of you. ;)

Hmm, that seems to be poorly worded - that suggests they'd never ask to see the reservation whereas some staff might if it's an advance ticket.
 

hairyhandedfool

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It does ofcourse rely on the passengers ability to read, which, it seems, cannot be guaranteed!
 

pemma

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I really do have to worry about the state of the education system if she is a project manager!

It didn't say she was a good project manager!

Exactly. There's someone I worked with who is young and inexperienced in the world of work and claimed she was a project manager in her previous role. She was made redundant from the previous role but a good bull ****ter and managed to get herself a lower level job ahead of the other people who applied but that was still too advanced for her. She can't even spell basic words but as she's from Hull it might be a dialect she uses that I don't know about.
 
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zero

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Hmm, that seems to be poorly worded - that suggests they'd never ask to see the reservation whereas some staff might if it's an advance ticket.

To me it suggests that a ticket is required at the gate and a ticket is not required at your reserved seat. How difficult is it for someone to write "Please show your ticket, not your seat reservation, at the gateline"?
 
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