Redesigning gatelines?

[Bletchleyite]

One thing I've noticed ever since the manual gate was removed from most gatelines is that it's really hard to see from the gateline itself (just after your ticket gets rejected) where the staff are, and they are often standing very randomly, often blocking one or more gates as they do. This causes delay for everyone as people hover around looking and trying to make it work when it clearly won't.

Personally I think they should reinstate a dedicated staff position at one end (or both at busy gatelines) clearly signed from above and the side. This could be a bidirectional wide gate or could be back to a manual gate. That way it's easy to see where to get help and those who aren't confident using the gateline (e.g. due to a disability) could just go straight there.

What do people think?

 

[LittleRedTrain]

Would agree with this, staff should generally always be near the wide gate as that's the one most likely to be used by people who need additional assistance (and abused by those trying to dodge their fares).

Had a real problem at the Elizabeth Line entrance at Farringdon recently trying to find a staff member when my (valid) ticket wasn't working the barriers. Staff member was at the opposite end of the gateline to the wide gates, instead using a 'normal' narrow gate to let people through, and it took me a couple of passes up and down the gateline to spot them through the crowd.

It also doesn't help with the myriad of different uniforms worn by TOC staff and contractors, some of which don't exactly stand out. At least an orange hi-vi is generally easy to spot, though I think Chiltern's bright blue shirts are a good compromise between professional and visible.

 

[Dstock7080]

If the member of staff is helping someone retrieve a paper ticket from the jaws of a gate then they can’t be at the dedicated staff position?

 

[Indigo Soup]

Notwithstanding my feeling that gatelines are a sign of hostility toward passengers and ought to be got rid of... yes, there really ought to be a clearly indicated 'Help' point.

If the member of staff is helping someone retrieve a paper ticket from the jaws of a gate then they can’t be at the dedicated staff position?

At least if they have a designated position, one knows that the member of staff ought to be returning to it once they've done what needs to be done elsewhere.

Particularly busy gatelines might justify having two members of staff at any given time, which would allow for one to roam and the other to hang around the designated position. Alternatively, you could imagine having CCTV at each gate linked back to the 'help' position. This needn't be too expensive, it's routinely done for self-checkouts at even very small supermarkets.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If the member of staff is helping someone retrieve a paper ticket from the jaws of a gate then they can’t be at the dedicated staff position?

Paper tickets very rarely get stuck in gates, and going forward there won't be any ingested paper tickets outside London soon anyway, they'll all be barcodes (and there aren't many in London either as most people use contactless these days, with Project Oval increasing that further). Thus this is almost a Standard Minority case, because staff will spend a tiny proportion of their time doing this. And if they are doing it, they can't help someone else, so the sensible thing for the person needing other assistance to do is to wait in the marked area for their return.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jun 2025 ==

Particularly busy gatelines might justify having two members of staff at any given time, which would allow for one to roam and the other to hang around the designated position. Alternatively, you could imagine having CCTV at each gate linked back to the 'help' position. This needn't be too expensive, it's routinely done for self-checkouts at even very small supermarkets.

This would help, but the best thing to keep flows moving is that the person who is stuck moves away from the gate as soon as they can. Having a clear, obvious place to go if you have a problem, as was the case when manual gates still existed*, aids that.

* Bletchley still has one!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jun 2025 ==

It also doesn't help with the myriad of different uniforms worn by TOC staff and contractors, some of which don't exactly stand out. At least an orange hi-vi is generally easy to spot, though I think Chiltern's bright blue shirts are a good compromise between professional and visible.

I have heard it commented before that the original Virgin Trains red was very good for this, not just because it's visible but also because hardly anyone else (even given the increasingly Potteresque uniforms of various academy trusts) wears a red formal jacket, except maybe Michael Portillo who probably knows enough to assist anyway!

FirstGroup have tended to use hi-vis jackets of different colours for the same purpose. It looks scruffier and more industrial, but it does also work.

 

[LMS 4F]

Why have gatelines at all? On a trip to Berlin late last year I made extensive use of the various rail service.
None of the stations have any gate, the procedure is to buy a ticket from a machine and verify it at another machine within I believe about an hour and off you go.
To deal with evasion there are pairs or revenue enforcement staff seen frequently and I was told no ticket means a 60 Euro fine and refusal to pay leads to a free holiday at Spabdau or it’s more modern equivalen.
I don’t know how they measure up in miles of track or passenger numbers but the system seemed extensive to me and plenty of the services were very full at all times of the day.

 

[Sonic1234]

Why have gatelines at all?

There's a lot of people who pay only when challenged, and the gatelines provide that challenge. Yes, they may have a short fare, or a child ticket, or a railcard discount they're not entitled to, but at least they've paid something. A good proportion of people will have the right ticket knowing they need to pass through gates.

On train ticketing checking needs expensive staff. Gatelines can be staffed by minimum wage agency staff.

I'm no fan of gatelines - I'd say the only good gateline is an open one (frequently falling foul of gates not programmed for break of journey and GTR's Advance ticket block), but they're there as part of cost saving and destaffing trains.

 

[HSTEd]

The number of staff required for saturation ticket checking on trains would be very large.

It would impose major new costs on the railway - whereas a well designed station can potentially check very large numbers of people with a single staff member.

 

[bramling]

Why have gatelines at all? On a trip to Berlin late last year I made extensive use of the various rail service.
None of the stations have any gate, the procedure is to buy a ticket from a machine and verify it at another machine within I believe about an hour and off you go.
To deal with evasion there are pairs or revenue enforcement staff seen frequently and I was told no ticket means a 60 Euro fine and refusal to pay leads to a free holiday at Spabdau or it’s more modern equivalen.
I don’t know how they measure up in miles of track or passenger numbers but the system seemed extensive to me and plenty of the services were very full at all times of the day.

In principle I agree - I don’t really like gatelines.

However they do keep an element of trouble out, although arguably they seem to be fulfilling this function less effectively nowadays than in the past for various reasons - especially in the London area. On that basis I’d say they’re unfortunately a necessary evil.

I was pretty shocked to be on a midday GTR stopping service into London a few weeks ago, and when revenue came through I was the only person on the carriage with a valid ticket. There were about 10 others in the carriage, most of whom had joined at Stevenage, which is gated (and presumably the gates would have been in use at that time of day). Not only that, but in all the cases the revenue had massive difficulty extracting details out of the individuals concerned, such that only a small number actually got dealt with. This is now unfortunately the scale of things in the London area, so I dread to think what it would be like if the stations weren’t gated.

 

[LMS 4F]

In principle I agree - I don’t really like gatelines.

However they do keep an element of trouble out, although arguably they seem to be fulfilling this function less effectively nowadays than in the past for various reasons - especially in the London area. On that basis I’d say they’re unfortunately a necessary evil.

I was pretty shocked to be on a midday GTR stopping service into London a few weeks ago, and when revenue came through I was the only person on the carriage with a valid ticket. There were about 10 others in the carriage, most of whom had joined at Stevenage, which is gated (and presumably the gates would have been in use at that time of day). Not only that, but in all the cases the revenue had massive difficulty extracting details out of the individuals concerned, such that only a small number actually got dealt with. This is now unfortunately the scale of things in the London area, so I dread to think what it would be like if the stations weren’t gated.

This suggests to me that not enough effort is put into ensuring everyone has a ticket, be that at the gate or onboard.
Of course more stringent penalties could be imposed but that would no doubt affect the offenders mental health and that would never do.

 

[Indigo Soup]

The number of staff required for saturation ticket checking on trains would be very large.

Ideally, you're not trying to identify everyone travelling without a fare - you're trying to impose a combination of a sufficient likelihood of getting caught, and sufficient penalties if you are caught that deters people from travelling without an appropriate ticket.

Unfortunately, in the UK there's a cultural acceptance of fare evasion. Which does bring us back to needing to check everyone's ticket. You couldn't apply large enough penalties to deter people without incurring (even more) criticism of heavy-handed revenue enforcement.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The other one (and it might be another reason Northern like Advances) is that you make it more expensive to buy on the day, so people are encouraged to buy in advance which then becomes muscle memory, effectively.

It's not very palatable but I think it might work to an extent.

 

[Sonic1234]

which then becomes muscle memory, effectively.

See also Oyster and Contactless. Tapping in becomes habit.

Also has the bonus the fares are "hidden" (OK, they are available, but how many people know what a tube journey costs? Or what the mixed-mode fare scale is?) so fewer complaints about the price of travel.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Paper tickets very rarely get stuck in gates, and going forward there won't be any ingested paper tickets outside London soon anyway, they'll all be barcodes

Are they going to start selling barcoded paper tickets at train stations then?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Are they going to start selling barcoded paper tickets at train stations then?

Yes, in time all tickets will be barcoded ones printed on "bog roll" or till roll, same as an e-ticket (the till roll ones even look like the e-ticket format). Some TVMs and booking offices have already changed over, though the problem of TfL remains for the moment.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Yes, in time all tickets will be barcoded ones printed on "bog roll" or till roll, same as an e-ticket (the till roll ones even look like the e-ticket format). Some TVMs and booking offices have already changed over, though the problem of TfL remains for the moment.

And are they going to make the gates bigger so the fact that barcoded tickets take longer to process isn’t an issue?

 

[Bletchleyite]

And are they going to make the gates bigger so the fact that barcoded tickets take longer to process isn’t an issue?

The vast majority of people are already using barcoded tickets, so no, they're not.

 

[brad465]

My gripe with ticket barriers is how they reject so many otherwise valid tickets, and/or only accept certain formats that you can't tell until you get to it (e.g. you have a paper ticket but the slot is taped over). Not so bad at small stations, but at major terminals with 100+ passengers going through at once, it exacerbates chaos. If TOCs want to catch out anyone cheating the system with tickets that are lower than the correct fare, have more staff to manually check then, don't hold everyone else up in the worst possible way.

 

[Brubulus]

There's a lot of people who pay only when challenged, and the gatelines provide that challenge. Yes, they may have a short fare, or a child ticket, or a railcard discount they're not entitled to, but at least they've paid something. A good proportion of people will have the right ticket knowing they need to pass through gates.

On train ticketing checking needs expensive staff. Gatelines can be staffed by minimum wage agency staff.

I'm no fan of gatelines - I'd say the only good gateline is an open one (frequently falling foul of gates not programmed for break of journey and GTR's Advance ticket block), but they're there as part of cost saving and destaffing trains.

Agree regarding the best gateline is no gateline. However I can't see the German system working in the UK, at least not without at least doubling fare evasion rates.

I know it's a hobby horse of mine but I'd love to see facial recognition gatelines, so you would no longer have to scan your ticket, with a database to link tickets to faces/ID. This would also make Railcard/season ticket abuse near impossible since railcards and season tickets would be linked with their user. This could be rolled out initially on an optional basis, though mandatory for Railcard and Season ticket users.

Secondly gatelines should probably become more robust, with vision based obstacle detection to prevent walk throughs, and a height increase to prevent jumping.

 

[HSTEd]

My gripe with ticket barriers is how they reject so many otherwise valid tickets, and/or only accept certain formats that you can't tell until you get to it (e.g. you have a paper ticket but the slot is taped over). Not so bad at small stations, but at major terminals with 100+ passengers going through at once, it exacerbates chaos. If TOCs want to catch out anyone cheating the system with tickets that are lower than the correct fare, have more staff to manually check then, don't hold everyone else up in the worst possible way.

And how much extra do you want the Treasury to give them to pay for that?

Barcode reading ticket machines will likely prove considerably more reliable than magstripe based ones, so this transition should (if anything) be accelerated.

In any case, staff are hardly a panacea, I have experienced manual ticket checks at Manchester Piccadilly, and they are far more of a mess than a proper gateline would be.

Yes, in time all tickets will be barcoded ones printed on "bog roll" or till roll, same as an e-ticket (the till roll ones even look like the e-ticket format). Some TVMs and booking offices have already changed over, though the problem of TfL remains for the moment.

The best bet would probably be to issue TfL compatible magstripe ticket stock with a barcode ticket printed on it. WIth something along the lines of "Magstripe for LU only".

We can then eliminate magstripe ticket readers from the National Rail system entirely.

 

[MatthewHutton]

The best bet would probably be to issue TfL compatible magstripe ticket stock with a barcode ticket printed on it. WIth something along the lines of "Magstripe for LU only".

The question then is if there are other stations where you need to be quicker about getting people through than you can with the barcodes? Because that is TfLs excuse for sticking with the orange tickets - and also matches my experience.

Although I guess contactless works for them?

 

[Bletchleyite]

The question then is if there are other stations where you need to be quicker about getting people through than you can with the barcodes? Because that is TfLs excuse for sticking with the orange tickets - and also matches my experience.

Although I guess contactless works for them?

As I said, barcoded tickets are the majority now anyway. Sit on any train where a ticket inspection takes place and it is just "beep" after "beep", hardly anyone offers a CCST ticket any more. So if changes were needed then the ship has already sailed.

 

[HSTEd]

The question then is if there are other stations where you need to be quicker about getting people through than you can with the barcodes? Because that is TfLs excuse for sticking with the orange tickets - and also matches my experience.

Well, a lot of barcoded tickets are in use already.
So if catastrophic issues were going to occur, they probably would have done so already!

Then again, London Underground runs its gatelines much harder than National Rail tends to in terms of passengers per gate per minute.

Although I guess contactless works for them?

Well, according to alibaba, paper bodied MiFARE disposable tickets are available for prices as low as 15 US cents each.

I think we're probably reaching the point where using a contactless solution and accepting the cost of contactless physical tickets would be cheaper than maintaining the magstripe capability. (You'd have to do a study on the cost of a return and reuse option for soft printed plastic cards vs disposable paper ones)

That is, of course, if barcoded tickets are inadequate - and I am not sure there is much evidence that they are. Contactless tickets would have some useful features like local storage of validation information, but I doubt it is worth the effort with barcodes already entrenched.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Well, according to alibaba, paper bodied MiFARE disposable tickets are available for prices as low as 15 US cents each.

Gosh

 

[JonathanH]

Sit on any train where a ticket inspection takes place and it is just "beep" after "beep", hardly anyone offers a CCST ticket any more.

It does depend on where the travel is being done. The WMR machines at Euston are now issuing barcode tickets for journeys which are enabled, so they have reached London, but I don't think the similar ticket machines operated by the South of the River TOCs have moved over yet.

 

[MatthewHutton]

That is, of course, if barcoded tickets are inadequate - and I am not sure there is much evidence that they are. Contactless tickets would have some useful features like local storage of validation information, but I doubt it is worth the effort with barcodes already entrenched.

To be fair a contactless ticket would work well for London travelcards etc.

 

[JonathanH]

To be fair a contactless ticket would work well for London travelcards etc.

TfL certainly thought so. If Travelcard had been withdrawn it would have reduced paper ticket use in London considerably at a stroke. Take up of Travelcards on TOC smartcards has been very slow.

 

[MatthewHutton]

TfL certainly thought so. If Travelcard had been withdrawn it would have reduced paper ticket use in London considerably at a stroke. Take up of Travelcards on TOC smartcards has been very slow.

I think the challenge with getting rid of the travelcard is that it benefits a lot of people even if the passenger usage is low. This is because I am sure it is used by a bunch of people who travel into London very occasionally.

But replacing with one of those single use smart tickets they have in Asia could be a good option.