-
Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Manchester Piccadilly G4S and their interpretation of the NRCoC
- Thread starter Lampshade
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
Failed Unit
Established Member
No, that would be an interesting one on the delay repay! It already happen unfortunately at stations exactly like Piccadilly where you can't connect without showing you ticket. I have missed connections at Edinburgh Waverley for that reason - AP would go through gates and the manaul gate was too busy letting people heading away from the trains off. Scotrail said people heading for the train should always get priority.
I did wonder if all the people heading away from the train could not have use the gates.
My experience at Piccadilly is poor the know nothing about routing points for example.
So if you hop, jog, run or sprint you should be OK
Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
Am I the only person on here who has never had a problem with the check at the top of the stairs to platforms 13 / 14?
Even when passing through it several times a day while "on the bash" with the local one day rover ticket thingy ( forgotten the name of it! ).
Even when passing through it several times a day while "on the bash" with the local one day rover ticket thingy ( forgotten the name of it! ).
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'. Or as happens at Bradford Interchange on tickets from (for example) New Pudsey to Saltaire via route Not Leeds to display the message 'not valid at the station'. You may think that's not rude, but it's certainly not very welcoming!
With the times given i'm guessing the OP has arrived on the 15.33 Crewe - Manchester Picc via Man Airport service, boarding at a station between Gatley and Mauldeth Rd. The ticket offices along this section of the line close between 11.00am ansd 2.30pm and there are indeed no ticket vending machines. Due to the close proximity of stops it is almost impossible for guards to check/issue tickets between stops (it is timetabled at 2 or 3 minutes but generally takes less). Northern did have conductor AFC's on the line however decided it is cheaper to employ G4S at Piccadilly.
Northerns arguement is it would not be financially worth it to man the ticket offices, people just walk past them when they are open anyway. This line is known for being the worst in South Manchester for fare evasion, yet Northern don't make it easy for the honest passenger to pay. Sometimes the queues at Manchester Piccadilly G4S barriers exceed 15 minutes which is unacceptable after an 8 minute journey from Mauldeth Rd and often there are no barriers at all (Weekends), where Northern must loose thousands.
The solution would be to man the ticket offices, at least until after the evening peak and to install TVMs. A penalty fares scheme could them be implemented but there needs to be the means to buy tickets in the first place. Using barriers at Manchester Piccadilly as the only means of fare collection is ludicrous as:-
1) It massively inconveniences honest passengers, not only those with connections but those who may be late for other things due to the huge queues.
2) It means those travelling between other south Manchester stations (eg. Burnage - Gatley) travel free
3) It looses Northern revenue and customer loyalty
Northerns arguement is it would not be financially worth it to man the ticket offices, people just walk past them when they are open anyway. This line is known for being the worst in South Manchester for fare evasion, yet Northern don't make it easy for the honest passenger to pay. Sometimes the queues at Manchester Piccadilly G4S barriers exceed 15 minutes which is unacceptable after an 8 minute journey from Mauldeth Rd and often there are no barriers at all (Weekends), where Northern must loose thousands.
The solution would be to man the ticket offices, at least until after the evening peak and to install TVMs. A penalty fares scheme could them be implemented but there needs to be the means to buy tickets in the first place. Using barriers at Manchester Piccadilly as the only means of fare collection is ludicrous as:-
1) It massively inconveniences honest passengers, not only those with connections but those who may be late for other things due to the huge queues.
2) It means those travelling between other south Manchester stations (eg. Burnage - Gatley) travel free
3) It looses Northern revenue and customer loyalty
Failed Unit
Established Member
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.
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 matter whether I can understand it or not, as I know I have the correct ticket and that the machine is wrong. A normal may well not have this confidence and may well be intimidated by it as the media bombards people with stories of how easy it is to buy the wrong ticket. Problem is there is no explanation in sensible English ('passback' is not even a word FFS) as to why the ticket has been rejected, resulting in unnecessary stress. Also delays as the passenger has to unnecessarily go and find one of the slack-jawed morons manning the barrier, or tries repeatedly to get his valid ticket through the 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.
blacknight
Member
Says something about modern railway when you have to produce a ticket to someone who's ticket knowledge lamentable. Staff I have seen dont even have clippers or mark a used ticket with cross just quick look & hand it back to passenger so in theory it is possible to get a refund on unused ticket.
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.
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.
Last edited:
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).
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. I use that entrance unless I can be bothered arguing with the staff over whatever they want to argue about this time (e.g. an annoying woman was moaning about Red Dot Day and arguing saying customers would "have to wait" because they wouldn't work in the barrier and she was busy with other customers, I recall, I gave her a telling off in front of her manager for being rude about the company's promotions in front of customers, can't remember what she said but she clearly didn't like Red Dot Day and the inconvenience it was causing her. To be fair to her she was quite busy, I also mentioned to the staff chatting at the barrier that more staff were needed to actually let people through!).
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.
Scotty
Member
They sometimes have a manual barrier there.
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?
Failed Unit
Established Member
In that respect yes, which is amazing when you consider what they can be programmed to do. It is about 5 minutes before it forgives you on a season at Glasgow. But when you think about it you could have genuine reasons to pass by multiple times.
Example:
At Edinburgh Waverley pass through barriers (12-18)to catch train but miss it. Ticket Ok.
Can't pass back so go to manual barrier to get let out onto concourse.
Next train is also from 12-18 but you are not forgiven and back to manual barrier who let's you through.
This is where the problem lies you can do that until the ticket expires, hand you ticket someone else etc.
True, and the silly thing is that if you do go out and come back in, it will trigger this (as it does for me at Potters Bar, or did before it stopped accepting my ticket completely) and you go to seek assistance and they let you through anyway.
Thus, anyone can 'passback'.. just tell the person behind to walk off and come back a few minutes later. Okay, it doesn't work if the station is quiet and the staff are watching - but I bet it would in many locations just fine.
At Potters Bar, it's longer than 15 minutes. FCC never could confirm the correct time, or what it actually was supposed to be (the general consensus from customer services and a manager in charge of revenue was 15 minutes), but I waited more than 15 minutes and still got the error (33?). I suspect it's nearer 20-30 minutes. May as well be all day, especially if staff will let you through anyway. After all, you'll go to the them and say 'it said seek assistance' and the chances are they'll just assume it was a faulty magstrip - it's not as if they'll go over and watch you try again (or check the computer, which I presume can show a log of errors per gate?).
Last edited:
I had this a Potters Bar a while back (with annual season ticket)
Went throught he barriers & just missed a train by a couple of seconds, so decided to go to Sainsbury's next door.
The barriers let me out again but wouldn't let me back in. The staff let me through.
2 weeks ago at Leeds:
Got off train from Carlisle. Left station. (with return portion of anytime return ticket)
2 hours later returned to station & re-entered platforms. (I think I used the EC advance ticket). Boarded the EC service as soon as it was ready for boarding then was told a few minutes later that the train we had boarded was now cancelled (due to the sig probs at Finsbury Park) so it would now be the next service - due to leave in 45 minutes.
Decided to go to M&S at the front of the station. The barriers let me out but said "reject passback" on trying to reenter. put the outward portion of the return ticket in & the barriers let me through.
The other good one is KX platforms 9-11 barriers rejecting my ticket at 07:30 in the morning peak because it is an off-peak ticket (to Cardiff which is valid on the 08:15 from Paddington which is the train I was intending to catch)
The barriers at Letchworth reject most advance tickets (though I can put my season ticket in there so not an issue for me) & they also reject all half-fare tickets issued to HCC bus pass holders for travel within Hertfordshire,
Went throught he barriers & just missed a train by a couple of seconds, so decided to go to Sainsbury's next door.
The barriers let me out again but wouldn't let me back in. The staff let me through.
2 weeks ago at Leeds:
Got off train from Carlisle. Left station. (with return portion of anytime return ticket)
2 hours later returned to station & re-entered platforms. (I think I used the EC advance ticket). Boarded the EC service as soon as it was ready for boarding then was told a few minutes later that the train we had boarded was now cancelled (due to the sig probs at Finsbury Park) so it would now be the next service - due to leave in 45 minutes.
Decided to go to M&S at the front of the station. The barriers let me out but said "reject passback" on trying to reenter. put the outward portion of the return ticket in & the barriers let me through.
The other good one is KX platforms 9-11 barriers rejecting my ticket at 07:30 in the morning peak because it is an off-peak ticket (to Cardiff which is valid on the 08:15 from Paddington which is the train I was intending to catch)
The barriers at Letchworth reject most advance tickets (though I can put my season ticket in there so not an issue for me) & they also reject all half-fare tickets issued to HCC bus pass holders for travel within Hertfordshire,
FCC set their gates to reject an awful lot of tickets, which must pay off for them - but does leave a lot of honest passengers becoming confused or thinking their ticket isn't valid (or damaged). I am sure some people must get quite stressed over it.
They should really make it clear that certain railcard and child users are going to need to be checked manually, so they don't hold up other people when their ticket absolutely cannot and will not work the gates. If nothing else, it saves them the embarrassment of having people moaning at them for not using the gates properly.
They should really make it clear that certain railcard and child users are going to need to be checked manually, so they don't hold up other people when their ticket absolutely cannot and will not work the gates. If nothing else, it saves them the embarrassment of having people moaning at them for not using the gates properly.
I didn't say I would usually refuse to show tickets-I said I happily show my tickets usually-but I wouldn't if rushing for a connection thanks to a delayed train!
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
That was exactly my point re: the other platforms-good to see a logical view of this topic from most people.
As a frequent traveller I really don't want further increases to fares due to fare evasion but outsourcing jobs to incompetent but to be fair untrained staff is not the solution.
The reason that 13 and 14 get special attention is because those platform are served 90% of the time by Northern and TPE, once again they have the right to barrier their trains if Virgin and XC dont want to participate that is their problem that is also why individual platforms are barriered on the main concourse for TPE arrivals and departures
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.
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.
Last edited:
They don't have the right to make people miss connections. On time running is far more important than revenue protection.
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.
gordonthemoron
Established Member
considering that both TPE & EC issue print at home tickets with barcodes, it would be sensible if Leeds City had barcode readers on the barrier gates
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?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
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?
If that TOC were the one insisting on putting semi-trained baboons on the ticket checks, then yes.
- Status