Smarter ticket barriers : good news or bad?

[Bletchleyite]

Having stood waiting in the ticket office at Crayford (z6) on many occasions hearing people ask for day travelcards, I can assure you that they aren't *only* used for outboundary tickets.

There are odd use-cases like enthusiasts wanting to ride round the Tube all day without passing through a barrier, but I don't see much case for the paper inboundary ODTC to continue to exist, and certainly not for money to be spent keeping magstripe readers going for it. Indeed, I think LU could quite well abolish paper ticketing entirely without much of a penalty provided the TVMs could instead dispense Oyster cards, which I believe they already can, and take them back to return the deposit as well.

I reckon most people buying them now are doing so because they always did.

If LU abolished them unilaterally, the TOCs would have their hands forced to sort their shop out, too.

 

[Wallsendmag]

An issue with smart barriers that I've found is that the QR Codes printed on many tickets or displayed on many devices are not of great quality. They take time to scan and often won't scan. Anecdotally, I've found queue times to have increased at barriers over the last 2 years as more and more people arrive with QR Codes than with card tickets. Particularly bad offenders are QR codes on those papery tickets issued by guards on Northern and TPE trains.

Don't get me started with barcodes, all I'm saying is seven years.

 

[A Challenge]

What about Family and Friends and Two Together railcards?

 

[cactustwirly]

I say we get rid of all the barriers, and have lots of onboard staff checking tickets, like every other European country!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I say we get rid of all the barriers, and have lots of onboard staff checking tickets, like every other European country!

The entire Dutch system (pretty much) is now barriered, and the Italians have manned barriers at major stations now.

 

[sheff1]

The entire Dutch system (pretty much) is now barriered,

and seems, in my experience, to treat valid tickets as ..... well, valid. Unlike the "will it, won't it" lottery at barriers here.

 

[Bletchleyite]

and seems, in my experience, to treat valid tickets as ..... well, valid. Unlike the "will it, won't it" lottery at barriers here.

By and large because there is no complexity at all, other than that you have to touch out and in between TOCs, which is a nuisance but not at all hard to understand. There isn't even peak and off-peak.