Lack of knowledge and common sense on Chiltern gatelines

[Benjwri]

It's very lucky in that case you were in enough time to realise what was going on, walk to Moor Street, argue with the staff about the ticket gates, buy a new ticket, then cross to a train around half an hour before your intended one.

I was travelling about 3 hours into the disruption, and had been talking to Avanti on Twitter. As I was taking the bus I’d left around an hour, and it was just a case of getting off a stop earlier at Moor Street. I was planning on stopping at spoons for lunch, which was substituted for a meal deal, giving me the time to go via Chiltern.

Was originally on the Avanti at around 14:20, arrived at Moor Street around 13:10 which gave me enough time to make the 13:43 to Marylebone, although this was just coincidental, and I agree lucky it gave me time to deal with the gateline staff.

 

[The Sorcerer]

Under British Rail up until the late 90's staff on revenue duties/ticket examiners went to training school for two weeks and then had to pass an exam at the end. A full understanding of the routing guide and excessing/combining tickets had to be understood.

Now quite a lot of staff are through an agency, there might be two or three days in a class room. No where near a proper understanding of ticketing.

The pay is also far, far lower than it was in the past. An example is Transpennine Express their revenue inspactors were on £30,000 + in 2014, their penalty fare staff are now on cica £26,000. The inspectors roll has gone.

Minimum wage is £24761.

On train cleaners are not far behind revenue staff.

 

[bananas]

Are you allowed to jump the ticket barriers if you have a genuinely valid ticket? (And is it a good idea?)

 

[Benjwri]

Are you allowed to jump the ticket barriers if you have a genuinely valid ticket? (And is it a good idea?)

No it’s a Byelaw offence regardless of if you have a ticket, and I believe a strict liability offence as well. Definitely not a good idea.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The issue isn’t confined to Chiltern. The issue is the same across the industry, and can best be summarised as peanuts/monkeys.

It is a badly paid job with poor working conditions, so of course you end up with a load of people who are, to put it politely, a 10W bulb in a 50W fitting.

And why would the TOC change? You paid again. You may well argue the toss and get your money back but I’ll bet most of the people you saw won’t argue the toss and won’t get their money back.

 

[X-City-WM]

Perhaps the staff's confusion arose because some Avanti trains were still going through?

I was on the 13:17 Avanti from New Street to Euston, which was delayed 20 minutes on departure from BHM and 45 minutes late into EUS (after making additional stops in Rugby and Watford Junction).

We didn't hear about any ticket acceptance with Chiltern.

I'm surprised the Chiltern staff said ticket acceptance had ceased mid-journey *eye roll*; it seemed to me that, if anything, the issue had worsened by 3 pm.

 

[Benjwri]

Perhaps the staff's confusion arose because some Avanti trains were still going through?

I was on the 13:17 Avanti from New Street to Euston, which was delayed 20 minutes on departure from BHM and 45 minutes late into EUS (after making additional stops in Rugby and Watford Junction).

We didn't hear about any ticket acceptance with Chiltern.

I'm surprised the Chiltern staff said ticket acceptance had ceased mid-journey *eye roll*; it seemed to me that, if anything, the issue had worsened by 3 pm.

Yeah I was hoping to travel earlier, but Avanti Twitter said I had to use my advance service if I wasn’t using ticket acceptance, to be fair presumably there wasn’t much space in earlier services.

Ticket acceptance was advertised on National Rail Enquiries, and even when I showed this to the staff member he would not let me travel.

 

[Ben Rhydding]

Is it a criminal offence for railway staff to deny boarding to a passenger holding a valid ticket?

Is it a criminal offence for railway staff to deny exit from the station or to demand money from a passenger holding a valid ticket?

On every journey, we are told multiple (unbearable) times to report anything suspicious to BTP.

 

[Watershed]

Is it a criminal offence for railway staff to deny boarding to a passenger holding a valid ticket?

For them personally, no. However, their employer might be committing an offence if the conduct of the staff member (and possibly others) amounts to an unfair commercial practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, as described in this government guidance.

Is it a criminal offence for railway staff to deny exit from the station or to demand money from a passenger holding a valid ticket?

It could be argued to constitute false imprisonment - but the question would be how this works given the fact that the Byelaws require you to pass through a barrier in the 'correct' manner. The train company might defend any putative civil claim or prosecution on the basis that this gives them lawful authority to detain you.

As for demanding money, see above.

On every journey, we are told multiple (unbearable) times to report anything suspicious to BTP.

As frustrating as the situation is, I think we can be fairly sure the BTP would not attend, let alone second-guess a member of barrier staff. Most of the officers have little to no ticketing knowledge. After a discussion with gateline staff, I was told by a BTP officer who happened to be nearby that my ticket was invalid because "it's before 09:30". My ticket was not Off-Peak at all; it was in fact valid all day.

 

[Benjwri]

Chiltern have already got back to me with a, to be fair well worded, apology, and resolved the ticketing matter. They have stated that they will pass the issues onto the respective station managers.

 

[thedbdiboy]

Under British Rail up until the late 90's staff on revenue duties/ticket examiners went to training school for two weeks and then had to pass an exam at the end. A full understanding of the routing guide and excessing/combining tickets had to be understood.

Now quite a lot of staff are through an agency, there might be two or three days in a class room. No where near a proper understanding of ticketing.

The pay is also far, far lower than it was in the past. An example is Transpennine Express their revenue inspactors were on £30,000 + in 2014, their penalty fare staff are now on cica £26,000. The inspectors roll has gone.

Minimum wage is £24761.

On train cleaners are not far behind revenue staff.

Under British Rail there was no routeing guide. Tickets either had a geographical route (e.g. 'via London') or were valid via any reasonable route. The Routeing Guide came in during 1996 but was frankly unintelligible to staff on the ground. We have a paper copy in the archive.

The biggest setback from that period was the increasing polarisation of staff over 'their' TOC as opposed to other TOCs, As a Station Manager in the Network SouthEast era I had little time for staff blaming other bits of the organisation when deflecting customers and always made clear to them that it was all British Rail - this loss of 'one railway' was a grievous loss under privatisation especially given the cobblers spouted by politicians who claimed it would be better for passengers. Their stock response was that they would ensure that TOCs co-operated. One only had to read these forums to know how that's worked out. lI don't thing rules and enforcement will ever achieve better outcomes than a properly embraced organisational culture of empowering staff to make positive decisions for customers on the ground when the opportunity exists.

The quicker that this spirit is identified and recovered on the road to GBR the better - as others have said, it doesn't have to wait until the organisation formally exists; it is a cross-industry cultural and training issue and is frankly one of the more affordable and realistic things that industry and government could embrace now.

 

[SuspectUsual]

The quicker that this spirit is identified and recovered on the road to GBR the better - as others have said, it doesn't have to wait until the organisation formally exists; it is a cross-industry cultural and training issue and is frankly one of the more affordable and realistic things that industry and government could embrace now

That's entirely laudable, but the big issue is obviously that its not so much about how to "recover" it as to "create" it, as the majority of railway staff (and a disproportionately high share in frontline customer facing roles) have never known the "old railway"

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Is it a criminal offence for railway staff to deny boarding to a passenger holding a valid ticket?

Coming rather late to this (and yes, I'm going off at a tangent) - but we should never want this to be the law. Would we really want the railway to be in a position to not refuse travel to people who were unfit through drink or drugs? Or passengers holding a valid ticket in one hand and a 14 foot canoe in the other?

 

[Horizon22]

As an aside: The way ticket acceptance is organised, activated / deactivated and communicated urgently needs a complete overhaul - with passenger rights codified into the NRCoT.

Sometimes the internal communication is just fine - I've seen it - and teams on the ground simply do not apply it correctly which is just downright frustrating for the people who sort these things out.

Other times there isn't enough buffer to allow people who have been re-routed to complete their journey before the ticket acceptance is withdrawn.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Today at 17:16 ==

Ticket acceptance was advertised on National Rail Enquiries, and even when I showed this to the staff member he would not let me travel.

Utterly bizarre mentality. I'd have asked to be escalated to a supervisor or manager who might have a bit more sense.

 

[Benjwri]

Other times there isn't enough buffer to allow people who have been re-routed to complete their journey before the ticket acceptance is withdrawn.

You can never have enough buffer though… It just has to be accepted. As long as it’s advertised someone could legitimately start their journey on that route, no matter what you do you have to accept people at the other end for a reasonable amount of time (ie the time from the other end, with a bit of flex) after acceptance ends.

Utterly bizarre mentality. I'd have asked to be escalated to a supervisor or manager who might have a bit more sense

I asked if there was someone else they could check with and was told there wasn’t. In retrospect I should’ve gone to the ticket office to get my ticket and tried to get them to go let me in, but I didn’t think of it in the moment.

 

[Watershed]

Coming rather late to this (and yes, I'm going off at a tangent) - but we should never want this to be the law. Would we really want the railway to be in a position to not refuse travel to people who were unfit through drink or drugs? Or passengers holding a valid ticket in one hand and a 14 foot canoe in the other?

That has nothing to do with refusing a valid ticket though, does it. The first example could be in breach of the Byelaws and can therefore be removed from the railway under those powers (if not the Public Order Act etc.) anyway.

The second example is of a passenger who's exceeding the luggage allowance in the NRCoT - so their ticket does not cover the transport of the canoe. They should be given the option of travelling without the canoe.

I'm afraid this strikes me as whataboutery. When there are criminal penalties, on a strict liability basis, for passengers who make a mistake then I see no reason why this shouldn't be reciprocal.

Objections to making it reciprocal merely serve to illustrate how absurd a strict liability offence is - as opposed to the likes of Penalty Fares, which are more reasonable in principle as there is no question of people being threatened with a criminal conviction. Even there, it's arguable there should be an reciprocal equivalent, like the penalties that broadband and utility providers have to pay customers when they mess up.

 

[Horizon22]

You can never have enough buffer though… It just has to be accepted. As long as it’s advertised someone could legitimately start their journey on that route, no matter what you do you have to accept people at the other end for a reasonable amount of time (ie the time from the other end, with a bit of flex) after acceptance ends.

Not really. If the disruption ended at 1000, you wouldn't be accepting passengers until 1500, especially if the alternative route was more expensive/circuitious or the alternative operator is seeing very high passenger loadings. A reasonable time is the differential between the normal route and the alternative route for someone taking it just before there was a good service.

Even then, it's all about common sense - if someone presents to you a couple of hours after it having been told to take the route at origin, and you're aware of earlier disruption, it is reasonable to give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

[Benjwri]

Not really. If the disruption ended at 1000, you wouldn't be accepting passengers until 1500, especially if the alternative route was more expensive/circuitious or the alternative operator is seeing very high passenger loadings. A reasonable time is the differential between the normal route and the alternative route for someone taking it just before there was a good service.

Even then, it's all about common sense - if someone presents to you a couple of hours after it having been told to take the route at origin, and you're aware of earlier disruption, it is reasonable to give them the benefit of the doubt.

As I say a reasonable amount of time. If in your example they stopped advertising ticket acceptance at 1000 I agree, but you can’t authorise someone to travel via another route and retrospectively take it back, you have to leave a reasonable amount of time after you stop advertising it.