Season tickets not fit for purpose - barriers on WM nnetwork

[boxy321]

I may have mentioned this before, but things have changed:

Each month I get two tickets - a zonal all modes ticket, plus 1st class train add-on for the West Midlands.

Invariably, they fail either at one station's barriers or all of them and I get it replaced at a station ticket office. I have had every reason this is my fault or someone else's said to me - X-ray machines, mobile phones, other cards, alien intervention. I don't care.

Virgin can no longer print these replacements due to a new system (I tried on Thursday) so I now get to stand behind the fare dodgers, foreign tourists, infrequent shoppers and the like (normally 20 deep) at places like Coventry or New street during rush hour.

I have an idea. Why can't a 2D barcode replicating the mag-strip data be printed on the front of the ticket to enable laser scanning like people with e or m-tickets? How big do these images need to be? Assuming the actual data recorded was correct in the first place, this would remove the need to repeatedly feed the flimsy cardboard through the machines and speed things up.

If they (name changes every week) don't fix this perhaps I should telephone every time I get stuck (six times per day since Solihull doesn't have barriers yet) to remind them?

 

[transmanche]

I have an idea. Why can't a 2D barcode replicating the mag-strip data be printed on the front of the ticket to enable laser scanning like people with e or m-tickets?

Why not a smartcard? Surely more reliable than a barcode.

 

[gazthomas]

Many tickets come with QR codes now and readers are being rolled out

 

[boxy321]

Why not a smartcard? Surely more reliable than a barcode.

On train staff have know way of knowing if you have a 1st class ticket with smart cards, apparently. Why they can't issue a smart card and a monthly 1st add on is beyond me.

 

[transmanche]

On train staff have know way of knowing if you have a 1st class ticket with smart cards, apparently.

Well, that's solved by issuing staff with smartcard readers that are correctly programmed...

 

[CentralTrainer]

Don’t Virgin run the barriers at NS and Cov?

So to lay the blame at who you sniffily label “whatever they are this week” is factually and hilariously incorrect.

Plus I’m sure my partner has a similar pass for the rail - which is a smart card /Aztec/QR Code (I’ll double check later) - which doesn’t fail at New Street. So no queuing for her behind the fare dodgers, non British tourists, school kids, people with the sheer brass neck to attempt to use the transport network for a day out at Grand Central (maybe a Law in place to make them walk instead so they don’t inconvenience you in future), anyone else different...

 

[142blue]

The new system will allow printing on traditional stock or paper tickets which will have a QR code.

However it's the paper tickets that you would have to fold and have the code visible for scanning on the barriers

First I've heard about not being able to replace damaged/faded tickets, unaware of that

 

[Royston Vasey]

Why not a smartcard? Surely more reliable than a barcode.

And like a mag strip, a smartcard can't be photocopied, unlike a barcode

 

[Signal Head]

I may have mentioned this before, but things have changed:

Each month I get two tickets - a zonal all modes ticket, plus 1st class train add-on for the West Midlands.

Invariably, they fail either at one station's barriers or all of them and I get it replaced at a station ticket office. I have had every reason this is my fault or someone else's said to me - X-ray machines, mobile phones, other cards, alien intervention. I don't care.
...

I have an idea. Why can't a 2D barcode replicating the mag-strip data be printed on the front of the ticket to enable laser scanning

I have similar problems with seasons. Before my local station got 'gated', I kept the ticket in one of the plastic sleeves in my wallet, kept in perfect condition and easily visible for inspection.

On the first day of the gates, VT staff insisted that the ticket had to be put through the gate, rather than a visual inspection.

I suggested that this wasn't going to work very well, I can't keep it in the plastic sleeve, because that won't stand up to the ticket being dragged in and out 4 times a day, so it now lives in the credit card part, where of course it can't be seen properly for a visual inspection, eg. on-train, so has to be pulled out for that.

The response from the VT staff member to my concerns - "we're getting tickets with barcodes on, so you will be able to keep it in your wallet and scan it."

Perfect solution, *except* she "didn't know" when these magic barcode tickets would be introduced. *Three years* in, and still no barcodes, so were VT management feeding duff info/lies to their staff, or were the staff lying to me?

Tickets tend to last between 2 weeks and a month before failing with a code 9.

I did used to get nagged at to have it replaced, but now when it's failed I think they've given up and just open the gate after a visual check!

 

[Bletchleyite]

@Signal Head Those with seasons in the South East have coped with this for years - it's not new!

 

[exile]

A few years ago I got a season ticket which over the months gradually faded until it was unreadable. I always got the impression the gate staff who had to peer at the ticket thought this was somehow my fault.

 

[pt_mad]

I may have mentioned this before, but things have changed:

Each month I get two tickets - a zonal all modes ticket, plus 1st class train add-on for the West Midlands.

Invariably, they fail either at one station's barriers or all of them and I get it replaced at a station ticket office. I have had every reason this is my fault or someone else's said to me - X-ray machines, mobile phones, other cards, alien intervention. I don't care.

Virgin can no longer print these replacements due to a new system (I tried on Thursday) so I now get to stand behind the fare dodgers, foreign tourists, infrequent shoppers and the like (normally 20 deep) at places like Coventry or New street during rush hour.

I have an idea. Why can't a 2D barcode replicating the mag-strip data be printed on the front of the ticket to enable laser scanning like people with e or m-tickets? How big do these images need to be? Assuming the actual data recorded was correct in the first place, this would remove the need to repeatedly feed the flimsy cardboard through the machines and speed things up.

If they (name changes every week) don't fix this perhaps I should telephone every time I get stuck (six times per day since Solihull doesn't have barriers yet) to remind them?

I find leaving my pass next to a television overnight stops it from working in the barriers. Must damage the magnetic element.

Although I find going through the staffed accessible part of the barrier isn't too painful. And staff are kept in jobs staffing it. So good.

Wheelchair users have to use it and I doubt they mind.

 

[Signal Head]

@Signal Head Those with seasons in the South East have coped with this for years - it's not new!

I don't doubt it. I'm quite happy to have my tickets checked BTW, what annoys me is doing a "half-arsed" job - putting in gates with built in barcode scanners, but failing to introduce tickets to match, and (apparently) lying about it.

After about a year of operation, I asked one of the other gateline staff about barcodes, and why I had been told we were getting them, when quite clearly we weren't. The response was "Oh, they (VT management) tell us all sorts - doesn't mean it's true!"

What a wonderful endorsement of the company, by its own staff!

 

[Stampy]

Slightly off topic, but IF I now catch a train where I have to change at Birmingham New Street (like for example, Saturday - when I went to Bescot Stadium) - i find it easier to buy 2 tickets....

A Return to Birmingham, and a return from Birmingham to wherever I'm going...

The reason is simple...

EVERY bloody time I go through the barriers at B'ham New St, it swallows the ticket!!!

Then you have to find somebody who's willing to fish your outward (or return) ticket out of the machine so you can continue your journey!!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I don't doubt it. I'm quite happy to have my tickets checked BTW, what annoys me is doing a "half-arsed" job - putting in gates with built in barcode scanners, but failing to introduce tickets to match, and (apparently) lying about it.

I agree about the bluster, but the barcode scanners are for print at home and m-tickets, not for seasons. Some TISs seem to print them on orange card tickets, but it's fairly rare and I'm not aware of any particular strategic view to do so.

 

[whhistle]

Well, what do you expect?
You're hassling some chump on the front line who probably doesn't know a whole load.
Plus, there was a plan to introduce barcoded tickets. Since asking the first time, the plans may have changed. Many ticket offices are only just catching up with the "new" 2014 layout, let alone the ultra-new layout.

Futher reading from Daily Mail

Further reading with a FOI request

Further reading from someone who redesigned the tickets themselves - that looks better than anything around at the moment, that can also fit on existing ticket stock.

 

[stut]

Yup, I generally got through 3-4 annual season tickets a year, and that was with barriers at only one end of the journey. Could be a frustrating experience getting them reprinted though, particularly if the stations you travel to/from are only manned part time (or not at all) - plus, some of them will insist that tickets bought online can't be reprinted in stations (not true).

Smartcards are a partial solution but, due to the fragmented nature of the railways, they don't really work very well when there's more than one TOC involved. Or you need to extend your journey regularly. Or you value data privacy.

There are lots of other convoluted solutions that have been looked at although somehow, using stronger card seems to have passed by...

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

Slightly off topic, but IF I now catch a train where I have to change at Birmingham New Street (like for example, Saturday - when I went to Bescot Stadium) - i find it easier to buy 2 tickets....

A Return to Birmingham, and a return from Birmingham to wherever I'm going...

The reason is simple...

EVERY bloody time I go through the barriers at BNS, it swallows the ticket!!!

Then you have to find somebody who's willing to fish your outward (or return) ticket out of the machine so you can continue your journey!!

Simple solution: change platform at the B-end overbridge. There are no barriers there are it has access to all platforms. Obviously not much use if you're going from an A end of one platform to the A end of another, but if you do frequent B end transfers (like me) then it's a godsend after some very annoying person decided to put a barrier between two or three platform groups on the A end concourse.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Given that the New St barriers return tickets to Birmingham Stations, I'm surprised they are retaining for other journeys. Which journey specifically?

 

[Stampy]

Simple solution: change platform at the B-end overbridge. There are no barriers there are it has access to all platforms. Obviously not much use if you're going from an A end of one platform to the A end of another, but if you do frequent B end transfers (like me) then it's a godsend after some very annoying person decided to put a barrier between two or three platform groups on the A end concourse.

Funnily enough - I changed trains (from Walsall coming back to Stamford on Saturday) in the middle of the station and found I could do cross platform changes easily..

Given that the New St barriers return tickets to Birmingham Stations, I'm surprised they are retaining for other journeys. Which journey specifically?

From memory:-

Rugby - Liverpool Lime Street - (Trent Valley Line was closed, advised to change at New Street - ticket retained at New Street)
Rugby - Stourbridge - (Ticket retained at New Street - was changing and walking to Moor Street)
Stamford - Sutton Coldfield - (Ticket retained at New Street)

 

[Bletchleyite]

Very bizarre. Did you make a complaint?

 

[Stampy]

Very bizarre. Did you make a complaint?

Virgin Trains chap I spoke to the 1st time blamed the Software in the gates..

2nd and 3rd time, the ticket was retrieved without too much fuss.

 

[diffident]

Virgin Trains chap I spoke to the 1st time blamed the Software in the gates..

2nd and 3rd time, the ticket was retrieved without too much fuss.

Even still, that's a right pain in the backside though - and what if that was to happen at rush hour, with an exit point blocked whilst a ticket is fished out?!?!

 

[i4n]

South East commuter here (long time forum lurker, this thread has been the kicker to sign up and comment!).

To the OP, when taking the tickets out of the barrier or the wallet try holding them from the sides either side of the magnetic strip and not on the magnetic strip.

I was averaging one replacement a month on my annual ticket that went through 10 gate lines a day (including underground) and I also assumed that it was my phone or other cards causing the problem. On one renewal the person in the ticket office said it could be down to the oils on my fingers getting onto the magnetic strip. Thinking it'd be worth a shot I started holding the ticket by the edges rather than the center strip and it went out to 6 months before it needed replacement (and that was because my thumb rubbed off my photocard number and one of the South Eastern Railway Enforcement Officers gave me grief because apparently they couldn't link the ticket to the photocard and me).

 

[robbeech]

I find leaving my pass next to a television overnight stops it from working in the barriers. Must damage the magnetic element.

Crikey how old is your tv?

The reason is simple...

EVERY bloody time I go through the barriers at BNS, it swallows the ticket!!!

I’m not surprised it swallows it at Barnes!

 

[Signal Head]

Well, what do you expect?
You're hassling some chump on the front line who probably doesn't know a whole load.
Plus, there was a plan to introduce barcoded tickets. Since asking the first time, the plans may have changed. Many ticket offices are only just catching up with the "new" 2014 layout, let alone the ultra-new layout.

If that's addressed to me, I'm not hassling anyone, I merely pointed out that I didn't think the arrangement would work for the long term, got told the arrangement was going to change to a more suitable one, which, so far, it hasn't, and doesn't look like doing so any time soon.

From the passenger's point of view, it's either penny-pinching (unwillingness to invest in new ticket issuing kit), incompetence (the planned change didn't work), or simple lies to fob off the concerns.

I'm quite happy to produce a ticket for visual inspection any number of times, if anything it's the VT staff who have been hassling me about renewing it.

 

[Stampy]

I’m not surprised it swallows it at Barnes!

Oops. sorry, when I posted BNS, I meant Birmingham New Street, not Barnes....

Corrected original post....

 

[whhistle]

From the passenger's point of view, it's either penny-pinching (unwillingness to invest in new ticket issuing kit), incompetence (the planned change didn't work), or simple lies to fob off the concerns.

No, it was just general

But then you must remember too that Virgin is facing the end of their franchise. They won't want to invest anything particularly exciting as they won't see a return. Pus, holding out on barcoded tickets enables them to put that in their bid.

And just because something doesn't work, that doesn't mean the person is incompetent!

 

[diffident]

No, it was just general

But then you must remember too that Virgin is facing the end of their franchise. They won't want to invest anything particularly exciting as they won't see a return. Pus, holding out on barcoded tickets enables them to put that in their bid.

And just because something doesn't work, that doesn't mean the person is incompetent!

I might be wrong, but I thought that as Network Rail run Birmingham New Street, that they were responsible therefore for the gate lines??

In any case, shouldn't ticketing and logically, revenue protection be the purview of the Rail Delivery Group, thus taking those tasks completely out of the hands of TOC's and making a uniform system across the network??

 

[Bletchleyite]

I might be wrong, but I thought that as Network Rail run Birmingham New Street, that they were responsible therefore for the gate lines??

No. Network Rail never does revenue, it subcontracts to the TOCs, in this case VTWC.

In any case, shouldn't ticketing and logically, revenue protection be the purview of the Rail Delivery Group, thus taking those tasks completely out of the hands of TOC's and making a uniform system across the network??

At privatisation I thought it would have been logical to give through ticketing to Railtrack, personally.