Ticket Barrier Blues

[occone]

The barriers at Manchester Piccadilly are so rude, always glad when it's a machine instead.

 

[sheff1]

Almost certainly this - it's an opportunity for a human to see the railcard. And yes, it's infuriating and clunky.

Yet when my tickets with a railcard discount have been rejected at barriers I have never been asked to produce the railcard. Often the barriers have just been opened without the operator even looking at the ticket. I see others have encountered the same.

 

[Travelmonkey]

I've had problems with my regular run (Snow Hill lines - Derby route) in the past, but I think it has been fixed now. And possibly more so at Snow Hill than New Street.

Worse than this is the bus/rail Derbyshire Wayfarer (as purchased on a bus) which doesn't have a scanny thing to work the barriers in the first place! But the gateline staff at Derby have happily let me through

You'd think with most operators using barcoded returns & period tickets with ticketer machines it would be able to print a rail barcode, tbh the staff at Derby are good at letting you past had a few times where they've let me grab a Greggs as Cross-country have pulled a Cross-country on me (canned my train) or have a longer connection.

 

[sheff1]

On the gates themselves there will be a display which will have a two or three digit code; you can compare that to these lists to see the problem.

Not all gates display a code.
Where they do, and I have checked the code, more often than not the stated reason is not appropriate to the ticket concerned. 123 "TOC ticket prohibits this route at this station", 125 "TOC ticket destination is not valid for exit here" & 126 "TOC ticket origin is not valid for entry here" seem to crop up quite a bit.

'Pass back' codes often appear when doing a perfectly normal thing of passing through the barriers, buying a snack at a station outlet and then returning to continue the journey. In such circumstances I have more than once been told "you have come back too soon" - nonsense, there is no minimum time limit specified in any relevant Terms or Conditions.

What's really annoying is when you know from previous (very recent) experience that your ticket won't work the barrier, so you head to the manual gate which the gateline assistant is already holding open for someone else and they just look at you and your ticket and patronisingly point and nod towards the barriers, completely deny your claim that it won't work, take the ticket from you and try to put it through the barrier themselves, only to be denied, and then just reply with "Oh, you're right." before eventually handing back your ticket and opening the gate (which they were holding open at the start of the whole exchange) just causing unnecessary delay.

Yes variations on this are common.


*********

In contrast, when travelling round The Netherlands for a week recently my tickets were never rejected at a barrier including when I was breaking my journey or popping back out to buy a snack at Amsterdam Centraal after I had forgotten to do so before catching the first train.

 

[occone]

'Pass back' codes often appear when doing a perfectly normal thing of passing through the barriers, buying a snack at a station outlet and then returning to continue the journey. In such circumstances I have more than once been told "you have come back too soon" - nonsense, there is no minimum time limit specified in any relevant Terms or Conditions.

Hello and welcome to Birmingham New Street where due to a delay you have just 3 minutes to make a connection across 5 platforms and two sets of ticket barriers to hurdle with the second never letting you through due to a pass back timer.

Makes me wonder if the different zones' (red, green, blue, purgatory, Aztec) barriers aren't aware they're in different zones and think you've done something you shouldn't.

 

[Mojo]

Not all gates display a code.

Cubic Gates do, S&B don’t (they display a reason, the reason list being in the first list that I linked to in the post you quoted). Given the OP said the barrier tells him to “seek attention,” he will be using Cubic gates; the actual wording being “seek assistance” but this is nothing like what S&B gates say.

 

[Travelmonkey]

Hello and welcome to Birmingham New Street where due to a delay you have just 3 minutes to make a connection and two sets of ticket barriers to hurdle with the second never letting you through due to a pass back timer.

Makes me wonder if the different zones' (red, green, blue, purgatory, Aztec) barriers aren't aware they're in different zones and think you've done something you shouldn't.

B end use the B end!

 

[occone]

the barrier tells him to “seek attention,”

The public do not need telling to be attention seekers

B end use the B end!

I'll learn one day

 

[sheff1]

B end use the B end!

If your train arrives at the A end and the connection also departs from the A end going right down to the B end bridge can cause you to miss it as I found on Saturday. I only did this becuase of previous 'pass back' problems at the A end but the walk to the B end was further than I remembered.

 

[sansyy]

The barriers at Manchester Piccadilly are so rude, always glad when it's a machine instead.

I really don't understand the point of the barriers at Manchester Piccadilly, they were half installed on request of Virgin Trains and now they just have rude Northern employees that rudely grab your ticket and inspect it like you've robbed a ticket office. Always a pain when wanting to grab a snack or drink on the concourse and return. Half the time the same person will check your ticket when leaving and entering like you're a completely different person.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

I really don't understand the point of the barriers at Manchester Piccadilly, they were half installed on request of Virgin Trains and now they just have rude Northern employees that rudely grab your ticket and inspect it like you've robbed a ticket office. Always a pain when wanting to grab a snack or drink on the concourse and return. Half the time the same person will check your ticket when leaving and entering like you're a completely different person.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there's been a related thread on the topic of the ticket gates at Piccadilly in the last week.

See link below...

Manchester Piccadilly Platforms 7 - 12: ticket gates should replace outsourced contractors

Surely it's about time that ticket gates are added to Piccadilly. It looks ridiculous 2/3 being gates and 1/3 being outsourced zero hour contractors (it's a tough job). They are instructed to check every single person's Railcard - including when a busy service arrives and 100s of passengers...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[Travelmonkey]

The public do not need telling to be attention seekers

I know you don't

 

[occone]

I really don't understand the point of the barriers at Manchester Piccadilly, they were half installed on request of Virgin Trains and now they just have rude Northern employees that rudely grab your ticket and inspect it like you've robbed a ticket office. Always a pain when wanting to grab a snack or drink on the concourse and return. Half the time the same person will check your ticket when leaving and entering like you're a completely different person.

It's ridiculous - they should have installed barriers across the whole line. It's a Network Rail station too so I'm unsure why they've only half bothered with it. Who pays the rent-o-thugs anyway?

I know you don't

Remember if you're drawing attention to yourself by photographing trains, just bore anyone who asks with information, they'll eventually regret asking and do anything possible to move themselves on

 

[plugwash]

It's ridiculous - they should have installed barriers across the whole line. It's a Network Rail station too so I'm unsure why they've only half bothered with it.

I suspect it being a network rail station is the problem, network rail don't run gate lines/revenue proection.

So it seems that rather than allocating revenue protection duties to one TOC, they split it up among the main local TOC (northern), the main regional TOC (TPE) and the main intercity TOC (was Virgin, now Avanit), the Virgin (now Avanti) barriers in the middle went in first, followed by the TPE barriers on the low numbered platforms a while later (I forgot how long). At least when the barriers first went in they had the logos of the relavent TOCs on them, i'm not sure if they still do. IIRC the requirements to install barriers for Virgini and TPE were included as part of the franchise/management agreements.

I don't think Virgin themselves ever really wanted barriers.

Who pays the rent-o-thugs anyway?

I would assume they are paid for by the TOCs whose names feature on their Uniforms. TPE for the low numered platforms, Avanti for the middle platforms and Northern for the high numbered platforms.

 

[davews]

Like others I often have my tickets rejected at the barriers yesterday due to having a senior railcard yesterday, at Waterloo Reading line barriers but never on the underground. Yesterday the mag stripe must have got corrupted as it failed at every gateline on the tube/Elizabeth as well. Suggested as possibly the magnet in the clip on my mobile case. But I had my wallet with ticket and phone in the same places that have never caused issues before so I am not convinced. At Waterloo tube there was a long line of people at the manned exit so it appeared loads of people were having issues.

 

[DelW]

"Theoretically" being the operative word. I've quite often had to get a manual check when my ticket has been rejected by a gateline. The majority of my tickets in the last decade have been valid only with a railcard, and yet I can't recall ever having been asked to show that. (It's always in my ticket wallet, but I have to take the ticket out of that to feed it through the gate reader).

Exiting Guildford station on Wednesday reminded me that there was one such occasion, which was when there was a big revenue check at Guildford with lots of RPIs and BTP present. Then my ticket was refused by the gate, and as soon as "seek assistance" came up, one of the RPIs asked to check my railcard before letting me through manually.

There was a similar operation on Wednesday afternoon, but this time my railcard-discounted ticket opened the gate. Maybe they were looking for different irregularities this time.

 

[Snow1964]

There's only so much "memory" in the gate systems and rovers don't work as normal day tickets do.

Not so much gate memory which is cheap nowadays, but the fairly limited basic info held on the magnetic strip.

I forget details now, but there was an article on it about 30 years ago. Was something really basic like three 10 bit numbers (one had a date 1024 combinations, so reused the expiry date about every 3 years, one had bits for peak/off peak flag, railcard flag, validity, and time to avoid pass backs, which left other with limited combinations for identifying stations). Didn't matter at time as wasn't that many gated stations.

I think later when they started adding gates to more stations, some of the smaller ones now have shared code (eg one in SW London, might have same code as one in Leeds area or Glasgow area etc), but not sure about this, although I am sure there was never enough codes for about 2800 stations and 280 TfL stations and few other smaller metro systems, because the magnetic stripe was anticipated as being used in supplementary gates at busy stations when it was planned about 40 years ago, not for general rollout.

 

[mangyiscute]

Ive found more and more places are accepting rangers, I used a Lancashire ranger earlier and it worked at Salford Crescent and Wigan Wallgate, I would've expected it to work elsewhere too. I also can't remember ever being stopped at barriers to show my railcard and I always have a railcard discount, the only exception being during Reading Festival where they check every child and railcard ticket (and in fact this year were checking all tickets manually)

 

[Class800]

I suspect they'll work at Birmingham New Street! Anything seems to work there.

Yes - including once when I accidentally pulled out my Plymouth to Exeter for the next week instead of the ticket I was travelling on!

 

[Recessio]

Every single day that I have travelled in these last two weeks, my ticket doesn't work at Guildford or at London Waterloo. I travel with a 16-25 railcard, sometimes weekdays and sometimes weekends.

This has become extremely annoying because the long queue for the manned gates can mean I don't get a seat. In one case, I actually missed the train. The worst part is often the staff aren't even checking the tickets/railcard and just wave me through, so if this is a deliberate move by SWR, then it's rather pointless.

I've checked with tickets bought straight from the machines, so it's not the magstripe getting affected by cards in my wallet or something.

Either SWR are doing this deliberately and it's really annoying, or there's a mistake in the gatelines for railcard discounted tickets that they need to fix.

 

[Elecman]

All 3 of my tickets didn’t work at Milton Keynes on Thursday

 

[Parham Wood]

Every single day that I have travelled in these last two weeks, my ticket doesn't work at Guildford or at London Waterloo. I travel with a 16-25 railcard, sometimes weekdays and sometimes weekends.

This has become extremely annoying because the long queue for the manned gates can mean I don't get a seat. In one case, I actually missed the train. The worst part is often the staff aren't even checking the tickets/railcard and just wave me through, so if this is a deliberate move by SWR, then it's rather pointless.

I've checked with tickets bought straight from the machines, so it's not the magstripe getting affected by cards in my wallet or something.

Either SWR are doing this deliberately and it's really annoying, or there's a mistake in the gatelines for railcard discounted tickets that they need to fix.

Submit a complaint and follow it up for answers and action.

 

[satisnek]

tbh the staff at Derby are good at letting you past had a few times where they've let me grab a Greggs as Cross-country have pulled a Cross-country on me (canned my train) or have a longer connection.

Same here once when I pulled the (apparently valid) Willington to Birmingham via Derby trick and the 'XC-lite' service was wreckage. The staff member even said, "there's a pub opposite", to which I replied, "there's a better one just down the road " They've even let me out to buy a ticket when I've commenced an outward journey from Willington*. No complaints from me!

*Willington now has a TVM, so I don't know if things have changed. Being an EMR station (although not served by their trains) the machine is purple but it doesn't have its top formed into the shape of an 'M'. They missed a trick there...

 

[Recessio]

Also happened at Clapham Junction. It's occurred to me Waterloo and Clapham Junction and Guildford are owned by NR, not SWR, so not sure who's responsible.

Submit a complaint and follow it up for answers and action.

Indeed I shall complain next week, and keep this thread updated with any responses.

 

[Travelmonkey]

!

*Willington now has a TVM, so I don't know if things have changed. Being an EMR station (although not served by their trains) the machine is purple but it doesn't have its top formed into the shape of an 'M'. They missed a trick there...

That TVM got me into trouble at University and had to pay more, recently as its one of them card only ones, XC don't manage any stations so it's same at the next stop down Burton but that's going green now as the paint is peeling.

 

[Whisky Papa]

My recent bugbear is the gateline at Manchester Victoria, which refuses to allow my ticket office-issued Cheap Day Return from Todmorden during the evening peak. It has a B1 restriction, ie not valid before 0930 but with no evening restriction. Whilst my tickets are bought against a Senior Railcard, this does not appear to be the issue - they work fine on other occasions when I return later in the evening, and of course it has happily accepted the outward portions on my arrival at Victoria.

In fairness, most of the gateline staff recognise the issue and allow travel with no problem, but recently one did suggest I should have a peak ticket. However, it does mean I have to go to the staffed gate, with the possibility that the staff member is tied up with dealing with a genuine issue. Frankly, it is a hassle I don't really need after an afternoon socialising, and I'm sure the staff would rather they didn't have to get involved with passengers they shouldn't really have to.

I eventually reported it to Northern in December 2023, who replied:

I am sorry to hear you have encountered issues whilst at Manchester Victoria using the ticket barriers. We are aware not all tickets are recognised by the readers at the barriers but I can assure you your comments have been logged. They will be fed back to the wider company to highlight the issues our customers are experiencing.

 

[Pinza-C55]

Don’t put tickets in the same pocket as keys . . .

Learnt that lesson the hard way with a 3 day pass for the Paris Metro denying me access to a station - problem made worse as I had to find a station with a manned ticket office to get a replacement pass

Guy behind the glass fronted ticket office asked, “keys with ticket” ? Oui I replied, he raised his eyebrows, shook his head & leant back in his chair

I used to work on the Underground and women would often carry their tickets in bags with powerful magnetic catches on them. Wiped the magnetic strip clean. One woman got furious when I told her this and I explained it was impossible to change the effects of magnetism.

 

[Murray J]

They might have the gates set to reject railcard discounted tickets for checking.

Is this common at stations? I suspect this is the case at Guildford where my ticket has been rejected every single time.

 

[swt_passenger]

Is this common at stations? I suspect this is the case at Guildford where my ticket has been rejected every single time.

It’s not that unusual. There‘s many previous references to it in this forum, perhaps due to the numbers of people ‘forgetting‘ to renew their railcards, or not actually having one in the first place.

 

[HantsExile]

Every single day that I have travelled in these last two weeks, my ticket doesn't work at Guildford or at London Waterloo. I travel with a 16-25 railcard, sometimes weekdays and sometimes weekends.

This has become extremely annoying because the long queue for the manned gates can mean I don't get a seat. In one case, I actually missed the train. The worst part is often the staff aren't even checking the tickets/railcard and just wave me through, so if this is a deliberate move by SWR, then it's rather pointless.

I've checked with tickets bought straight from the machines, so it's not the magstripe getting affected by cards in my wallet or something.

Either SWR are doing this deliberately and it's really annoying, or there's a mistake in the gatelines for railcard discounted tickets that they need to fix.

I posted about this recently in another thread which was closed before I had a chance to post an update.

I've been extremely irritated and delayed over the past few weeks by my ticket being rejected at barriers including Waterloo and Winchester, and having to show it to gateline staff who sometimes do and sometimes don't ask to see my (Senior) railcard. I've had various explanations from gateline staff including "We're doing a survey" and "Dunno mate".

I finally got to talk to a manager at my local station (Winchester) who told me that SWR had set all gatelines for which they are responsible to reject any ticket bought with a railcard. It's a revenue protection exercise, planned to continue until the middle of this month. While at Winchester my railcard is now always inspected, but like other people my experience at Waterloo is that gateline staff either don't know or don't care about checking railcards, and just let you through - so what's the point?