Manchester Piccadilly G4S and their interpretation of the NRCoC

[scrapy]

Thast's not just down to a lack of TVMs. Keighley, Shipley and Bradford stations have TVMs but still no ticket pickup. Some but not all of these are in the ticket office so unavailable out of hours anyway.

Northern don't sell advance tickets for any of their routes so they don't see it as financially worth it to pay for the software to allow ticket pickup when another TOC takes the majority of the revenue - another problem of a fragmented privatised railway.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Are you suggesting that they have to pay a software license fee per machine? Any idea how much it is? Or could it just be the expense of having to have an always-on internet connection to query the booking database?

Anyway I think that reasoning is fairly obvious; the point I was making was whether there could be a deeper reason than this; that encouraging people to buy advance purchase "&connections"-type tickets online and pick them up at their local station might actually reduce revenue from the flows to the nearby stations (e.g. Leeds) from which AP Intercity tickets are available.

 

[142094]

Metrolink is in (Greater) Manchester and doesn't have a problem with theft from TVMs, not always in the most savoury of locations, same for the Tyneside Metro.
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Exactly, and I think the T-W Metro system is as well.

All the Metro stations have at least two machines per platform, although of course they still do get vandalised. I haven't heard of anyone being able to steal from them as they are surrounded by a protective collar a massive lock.

I don't think there are plans for the new ticket machines to be the same stock as National Rail, although I haven't heard much abotu them so they may well be.

 

[34D]

This raises an interesting question - how much freedom do the Intercity TOCs have to create their own "& connections" type advance tickets and then are the connecting TOCs always forced to accept these?

Yes - as with any inter-available ticket (also of course a connecting TOC could well be an Intercity TOC aswell).

How is the revenue shared with the possible TOCs that provide connecting services?

Orcats. There must be a thread here about it?

Is it possible that Northern don't like the availability of "& connections" tickets that result in them receiving less revenue than if the passenger splits tickets at the relevant station where the connection would be made (e.g. Leeds)?

They may well not like it - but they signed up to interavailable tickets when they won the franchise.

On a similar note, I read that a new negative easement had been introduced in the most recent update to the routeing guide to stop "& connections" tickets being valid to connect onto any Scotrail sleeper service at Carlisle.

Do you have the link to this please?

 

[Paul Kelly]

http://www.atoc.org/clientfiles/File/easements.pdf
Easement 600095:

Customers holding tickets routed 00452 or 00456 travelling via Carlisle may not connect onto First Scotrail Sleeper services. This easement applies in both directions.

In NFM08, 00452 is "VWC & CONNECTNS" and 00456 is "AP TPE & CONNECT".

So this suggests that Scotrail is refusing to accept those tickets - which indeed seems reasonable to a certain extent. I understand completely the requirement for the TOCs to accept inter-available walk-up tickets with fares set by the lead operator for the appropriate flow; but these "& connections" tickets seem to me to be sort of different.

E.g. somebody mentioned in another thread being able to travel from Nottingham to Blackpool North via Derby and Leeds on an "XC &CONNECTIONS" ticket for as little as £18.50. The XC leg would end at Leeds. Northern would be compelled to accept the ticket, even though their fare from Leeds to BPN is £19.00. As the ticket costs less than that, there is no way they would be getting the same revenue. But why are XC allowed to do that? They are not the lead operator for the NOT-BPN flow, and it is quite a contrived route even to manage to use XC. (And of course since the direct Nottingham to Leeds Northern service started, the booking engines don't even allow you to specify this route so you can't buy the ticket, but that is irrelevant to the point I was making ).

 

[WillPS]

First off, I've just read this topic through, so my apologies for dragging up a few quotes.

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! ).

Clearly, they don't have a problem accepting tickets. Indeed, they're so good with accepting tickets they'll accept any ticket with the relevant dates on it. I gave them a (Nottingham) Kangaroo ticket (printed as a single Carlton - Kangaroo). Accepted.

The problem seems to be when people legitimately do not - their only training seems to be in accepting tickets and stopping those without; as if railway ticketing is a boolean thing like that.

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!).

The Nottingham situation is a joke. Before they had periodic but comprehensive manned barriers. They now have a totally flawed system, which as far as I can tell will continue to be so until the Hub scheme finishes. It's daft.

As for your situation with Red Dot Days - why not just leave the bloody barriers open if you can't programme them to accept them? A good amount of their custom that day would have been from RDD customers, a good number of which would not normally use the railways. Is this the experience EMT want to promote?

They sometimes have a manual barrier there.

Very rarely compared to the previous effort. I have yet to see it at all. Even when they were, they'd let anybody through who wanted to cross the bridge rather than access the station.

 

[Aictos]

Well I encountered the infamous G4S guys at Manchester Piccadilly yesterday and while they were perfectly pleasant to chat to, I was quite surprised to find them accepting any rail ticket that got presented to them - Is a Liverpool to Ormskirk Any Permitted ticket actually valid at Manchester?

It just went to strengthen my view that Northern should get on with it and bring ticket examiners in house rather then out sourcing them.

 

[WillPS]

Well I encountered the infamous G4S guys at Manchester Piccadilly yesterday and while they were perfectly pleasant to chat to, I was quite surprised to find them accepting any rail ticket that got presented to them - Is a Liverpool to Ormskirk Any Permitted ticket actually valid at Manchester?

It just went to strengthen my view that Northern should get on with it and bring ticket examiners in house rather then out sourcing them.

Well my Kangaroo ticket (a Nottingham area bus/train/tram ticket, in this case issued as a Single Nottingham - Kangaroo) was also accepted, and that certainly isn't valid.

 

[island]

Is a Liverpool to Ormskirk Any Permitted ticket actually valid at Manchester?

No. Liverpool group is a routeing point; Ormskirk has Liverpool Group as an associated routeing point so the only valid route is a through train or the shortest route, which would appear to be the direct Merseyrail one.

 

[Aictos]

No. Liverpool group is a routeing point; Ormskirk has Liverpool Group as an associated routeing point so the only valid route is a through train or the shortest route, which would appear to be the direct Merseyrail one.

That's what I thought, I had the valid ticket on me though hidden between my rail passes.

What I can't understand is as they seem to be so useless, what do they actually do?

 

[yorkie]

What I can't understand is as they seem to be so useless, what do they actually do?

I think they stop people who look dodgy (to them) or who appear to be acting dodgy. Then they may claim their ticket is invalid (although they don't have much knowledge on tickets so are unable to really say either way whether a ticket is valid or not).

They also ensure that people have an orange shaped piece of card that looks like it could resemble a ticket, and if you don't have something resembling a ticket they will insist you buy one even if you started your journey at an unstaffed station and have a connection to make.

Basically, they only catch the really dumb evaders, other than that they are just an inconvenience to customers.

 

[4SRKT]

From a legal perspective, is accusing someone of fraud in front of a queue of witnesses when they haven't committed fraud slander or not? Surely a successful case against either the individual concerned, G4S, or Northern would see the end of this odious business.

 

[12CSVT]

I think they stop people who look dodgy (to them) or who appear to be acting dodgy.

So what consitutes looking / acting dodgy ? Being in possession of a camera ? Writing down train numbers ?

 

[island]

As everyone holding a DSLR camera in the UK is automatically presumed to be a terrorist, I would say that is probably the number 1 thing.

 

[Chapeltom]

I've had a few problems with them e.g. my railcard and they also look very closely at my tickets. I'd rather take the 15 minute walk across to Manchester Victoria if it suits my travel plans to continue my journey there.

 

[142094]

Don't Northern normally have G4S staff at Victoria as well?

 

[Chapeltom]

I've never once had a problem at Manchester Victoria, they've never bothered me. I don't know about anyone else.

 

[table38]

Don't Northern normally have G4S staff at Victoria as well?

They do, but I regularly see people leave the station "via McDonalds" in order to avoid the checks at the exit to Platform 3.

 

[Deerfold]

Are you suggesting that they have to pay a software license fee per machine? Any idea how much it is? Or could it just be the expense of having to have an always-on internet connection to query the booking database?

Anyway I think that reasoning is fairly obvious; the point I was making was whether there could be a deeper reason than this; that encouraging people to buy advance purchase "&connections"-type tickets online and pick them up at their local station might actually reduce revenue from the flows to the nearby stations (e.g. Leeds) from which AP Intercity tickets are available.

The second is what I was suggesting - I doubt there is much additional cost in having the machine able to issue tickets.

If the choice is a £4ish single to Leeds or their share of a £15 advance to London I'm guessing they get more of the former.
Incidentally I was rather surprised to see that SON now has a ticket machine (card only, no ticket pick up and looking very delicate for its very exposed location).

 

[Olympian]

They do, but I regularly see people leave the station "via McDonalds" in order to avoid the checks at the exit to Platform 3.

I used to use Victoria quite a lot in the mornings and often used to exit that way to avoid the crush if a few trains arrived at once. I always had a ticket and once got followed out of the station by plain clothes revenue who challenged me just before the exit and was most disappointed when I produced my valid ticket! The other thing I once tried was arriving at the station on foot, going to McDonalds and then exiting through the doors and down the stairs to the G4S "gateline". I had no ticket as I hadn't arrived by train, but they let me through no problem after I said I'd been to McDonalds and thought this was the way out. It's a rather odd arrangement not to also man those doors with G4S and I've often wondered where the station area ends and the MEN Arena starts and at what point you could no longer be asked to produce a ticket because you've left the station premises.

Interestingly I tried, and actually failed, to properly encounter G4S at Piccadilly 13/14 this afternoon and put them to the test by accidentally showing them a reservation coupon from my train to York this morning. Although there were at least 4 of them on the way across to platform 14, only 1 was "checking" tickets (of arriving passengers) and the other 3 were too busy chatting away and not even stopping anyone going down to the platform...