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Joined up railway?

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DarloRich

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If something like this happens all the time, the system is utterly broken and needs to be fixed urgently.

Let's not forget a lot of public money goes into the railways (though not as much as I'd like to see personally, but that's another matter) and our fares are higher than ever, so if it's wasted it's not good value for money for any of us.

of course. But that only a complete change of political direction will fix that. Until then.....
 
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mailbyrail

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Until then------------more people get prosecuted with the wrong ticket, jump in their cars to avoid any problems, Forum users defend the indefensible comparing airlines with trains and Rail companies carry on as though nothing is broken. 10 out of ten to EMT for effort, 0 for execution
 
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Sounds like a very simple communication failure. Boring I know and sadly not the vast conspiracy many here always jump to!
Look on the bright side. Two pages in and the OP, having admitted he attended a football match and travelled by train, has not (so far) been accused of being a 'hooligan' by (probably) the same element on here.

That has to be some sort of progress...
 

Deepgreen

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To address the OP's question - yes, the railway is very far from joined up. There are innumerable examples of uncoordinated, fragmented and wasteful regimes everywhere. Privatisation has led to this fragmentation, as widely expected, but political dogma refuses to acknowledge it. The railways lack two fundamental features which privatisation requires - genuine competition and genuine profit. What we have is a series of franchises which are based on bids submitted which have costings and financial forecasts of questionable accuracy, and which have to contend with political interference outside their control (the DOO conflict, for example). The rolling stock strategy is almost non-existent and progressive things like electrification are pushed to the side with no-one willing to tackle the issue effectively (the GW debacle is a case in point). Any attempts to get the various elements of the railway to co-operate usefully are straining unsuccessfully against the drivers of internal shareholder rewards and minimal investment by the franchisees. There is no effective incentive for the railway's elements to act in unison.

In short, joined-up operation has become an unnatural regime for the railway.
 

Andrew1395

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To be honest it would be my expectation that the ticketing back-end might not be able to process it as well but I was under the perhaps false impression that ticket sales in terms of ORCAT attribution were not processed immediately but after some amount of time (daily, weekly I'm sure one of our members experienced in ticket retailing might have the correct answer.) I'm fairly certain ticket sales from on-board machines aren't processed in real time or they would require a constant data connection back to a server.

Likewise I'm pretty sure the newer ticketing systems seem to require the original ticket number to be inputted (at least the ones I have asked for an excess from on Northern, TPE and XC) and thus would be traceable. It would seem to be a matter for perhaps the RDG to investigate if they actually want to simplify ticketing for customers even without wholesale reforms.
All on train machines (should) send shift data over night to be processed by the LENNON settlement system (Latest Earnings Networked Nationally over Night). Lennon applies allocation factors both ORCATS factors and agreed allocations to every individual ticket that data has been submitted for. A TOC only ticket will apportion using a 100% allocation factor for that TOC. So a Northern only ticket Lennon allocates 100% of the sale value (minus any commission) to create the earnings for Northern on that ticket. So the excess rules would effectively need to preserve all of Northerns earnings from the original purchase. The Lennon System can do that, (it recalculates retrospective transactions like refunds matched to the original purchase), but perhaps the front end (the staff) would not effectively work out what the excess was as they would need to sell a fare that preserved the original earnings.
 

Randomer

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Andrew thanks for the detailed reply.

I guess my follow up question would be if the LENNON system processes every night and can recalculate things like refunds retrospectively is there a technical reason that it couldn't calculate excesses retrospectively if appropriate information was inputted into the system at the front end.

E.g. Ticket type purchased was X > Ticket Type excessed was Y leaving the system to calculate the allocation having this data. I know that some ticketing machines already ask for both types of ticket in order to calculate the excess rather than leaving it to be calculated manually.
 

Rob F

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Look on the bright side. Two pages in and the OP, having admitted he attended a football match and travelled by train, has not (so far) been accused of being a 'hooligan' by (probably) the same element on here.

That has to be some sort of progress...
True! Also, I am happy to report that I witnessed no bad behaviour, no chanting or excessive foul language on the trains or the stations and a group of young lads went to a great deal of effort to make space for a lady with a baby to sit down when she got on to a very overcrowded train at Alfreton.
 

trainophile

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[snip...]A ticket office is required to help if they are in a position to do so; the caveat here is that Merseyrail might not have access to the TOD collection system.[.../snip]

So what happens if I turn up at South Parkway wanting to collect a pre-booked ticket for immediate departure and the machine is out of order?
 

yorkie

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So what happens if I turn up at South Parkway wanting to collect a pre-booked ticket for immediate departure and the machine is out of order?
This is supposed to happen 'at manned locations', according to the Ticket on Departure Code of Practice:
In cases where the Ticket Vending Machine (TVM) is not working and a customer has their CTR reference number and/or appropriate proof of purchase and appropriate identification; the customer shall be instructed to seek assistance from the Booking Office. In such circumstances, the Booking Office shall fulfil the product.

If they don't have access to the TOD collection system they would not be able to issue the tickets, so this should happen, as if the booking office was 'closed':
In cases where the Ticket Vending Machine (TVM) is not working and a customer has their CTR reference number and/or appropriate proof of purchase and appropriate identification, the customer will be instructed to board their train and be allowed to travel and advised to collect their tickets at the first available opportunity

Except in Penalty Fare locations, then apparently this may happen:
In cases where the customer has their CTR reference number and/or appropriate proof of purchase and appropriate identification but is obliged to purchase another ticket, the customer shall be instructed to claim a refund.
But I personally don't believe that would be lawful under contract and consumer laws; the customer has already paid and may not have the ability to pay again.
 

Llandudno

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This is supposed to happen 'at manned locations', according to the Ticket on Departure Code of Practice:


If they don't have access to the TOD collection system they would not be able to issue the tickets, so this should happen, as if the booking office was 'closed':


Except in Penalty Fare locations, then apparently this may happen:

But I personally don't believe that would be lawful under contract and consumer laws; the customer has already paid and may not have the ability to pay again.
Brilliant!

How the hell is the ‘normal’ punter just hopping on a train to a bit of shopping or sightseeing likely to know that!

How many barriers does the industry have to put up to de incentivise people to leave their car at home and travel by train - unbelievable!
 

Matt_pool

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Fortunately I went down to Liverpool South Parkway the day before I was travelling, and fortunately I was able to collect my tickets from Lime Street instead, even if it was out of my way.

But what if I had turned up on the day of travel to collect my tickets, 10 minutes before my train was due (which a lot of people do).

Ticket machine out of order, ticket office staff not willing to help apart from telling me to contact Northern or EMT.

The clock is ticking down, do I demand to be let through the barriers to catch my train? Do I attempt to board the train without a ticket through no fault of my own, and cross my fingers and hope that the guard/conductor will let me continue my journey?

And all because the Northern ticket machine is out of order, and the Merseyrail staff don't want to take responsibility, because I'm travelling on an EMT service!?
 

LowLevel

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South Parkway are actually very good at dealing with their ticket machine being out of use, given they're hamstrung by it not being one they own.

They can't issue TOD tickets themselves, it's not possible from the retail system Merseyrail chooses to use.

They do however have pre printed Merseyrail/Northern branded cards that they hand out to passengers stating that the TVM is out of service and to allow travel until they can be reasonably collected (or in our case we print them for the passenger on board as Envoy can do that).

I would be very surprised at any major problem at South Parkway as the traincrews know a) that the solitary TVM is useless and b) they're very good at doling out their pre-printed cards.

As for the original issue, the football special, Northern choose to have their own poor value tickets and plenty of people get charged twice travelling on EMT services with them between Nottingham and Sheffield and Manchester and Liverpool.

Northern set up this conflict with their tiny discount and are quite happy to profit from the arrangement.
 

Class 170101

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Individual services do not make a loss, as such, but yes it was totally pointless running the extra train in the end.

Northern are not as keen as the likes of EMT when it comes to extras. I am not saying they never run them.

I remember a similar scenario for a Norwich v Peterborough FA Cup fixture (3rd Round as I recall). GA provided a Loco Hauled set between Norwich and Peterborough (and return). This was full of fans on EMT fares (as EMT would be the fare setter for the journey). I gather a claim was made against EMT later on.
 

yorkie

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I remember a similar scenario for a Norwich v Peterborough FA Cup fixture (3rd Round as I recall). GA provided a Loco Hauled set between Norwich and Peterborough (and return). This was full of fans on EMT fares (as EMT would be the fare setter for the journey). I gather a claim was made against EMT later on.
I don't know the details of that case, but these would not be dedicated EMT fares, as EMT set the flow, so the fares would have been inter-available.

Presumably the ORCATS revenues could have been adjusted accordingly for journeys made on that particular day.
 

LowLevel

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20190509_143329.jpg 20190509_143324.jpg

Just to bump the thread, thought you may be interested to see what LPY issue to passengers when their vending machine is out of service. As you may note it's branded for old Northern so it's not a new thing.
 

Matt_pool

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View attachment 62735 View attachment 62736

Just to bump the thread, thought you may be interested to see what LPY issue to passengers when their vending machine is out of service. As you may note it's branded for old Northern so it's not a new thing.

Thanks for the info.

I actually boarded a Northern train at Lime Street yesterday evening. It was the stopper to Man Oxford Road.

Before we left the guard announced that EMT and TPE tickets were not valid on this service.

I'm guessing they have had problems in the past with passengers with EMT and TPE tickets (perhaps Advance tickets??) who have decided to just jump on the first train going to Manchester.

I've actually seen it myself when the train stops at Mossley Hill and they say "oh no, this is the slow train that stops everywhere!".

Well, if you'd taken a few seconds to look at a timetable you'd know to get the faster EMT or TPE services which take half the time to get to Manchester than the Northern services!
 

mattmtfc

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You would of thought the guard or duty station manager would of used there common sense and accepted northern only tickets.
 

urbophile

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So what happens if I turn up at South Parkway wanting to collect a pre-booked ticket for immediate departure and the machine is out of order?
If you are travelling the next day but can't get the ticket without making a round trip of at least 30 minutes (maybe late at night) to the nearest working TVM (Lime Street), you'll be directed as I was to the nearest Northern-administered station (West Allerton) where the kind but harassed member of staff was able to print one out for me. How anyone is expected to make sense of this defeats me, especially as both Parkway and W Allerton have identical Merseyrail signage and are both served by Northern trains. And both appear to have identical ticket machines in the booking office.
 
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