Phillipimo
Member
At my local station Fareham the ticket barriers are rarely in use, it seems a waste of money to buy them but hardly use them, surely people will learn to travel when they're not in operation if they don't want to pay.
At my local station Fareham the ticket barriers are rarely in use, it seems a waste of money to buy them but hardly use them, surely people will learn to travel when they're not in operation if they don't want to pay.
Woking and Guildford are rarely unstaffed. They are only unstaffed if a break's being covered or similar. Obviously if there's no staff due to sickness etc that would be an exception, but there's almost always enough CSA/Revenue staff floating about to have all large station barriers staffed.This doesn't surprise me sadly, SWT have cut staffing hours of many Gatelines at smaller stations, Raynes Park and Earlsfield used to be manned full time and now only during morning and afternoon peak if you're lucky! (or unlucky in the eyes of a fare dodger)
Havant also seems to be manned not as much as it used to be, same as Woking and Guildford, major stations which often have one Gateline out of two open, making it pointless to operate it at all!
This doesn't surprise me sadly, SWT have cut staffing hours of many Gatelines at smaller stations, Raynes Park and Earlsfield used to be manned full time and now only during morning and afternoon peak if you're lucky! (or unlucky in the eyes of a fare dodger)
Havant also seems to be manned not as much as it used to be, same as Woking and Guildford, major stations which often have one Gateline out of two open, making it pointless to operate it at all!
Woking and Guildford are rarely unstaffed. They are only unstaffed if a break's being covered or similar. Obviously if there's no staff due to sickness etc that would be an exception, but there's almost always enough CSA/Revenue staff floating about to have all large station barriers staffed.
The problem with smaller stations (Aldershot and Walton-on-Thames being main ones) is that obviously it makes more financial sense to have the larger ones staffed all the time, and leave the smaller stations open outside peak times. If they were to think outside the box though, the management would probably realise that having even the smallest of barriered stations staffed, the protection of revenue etc would off-set the cost of the extra staff.
Also, by still having smaller barriers staffed in the morning and evening peaks, it looks good for the regular commuters who can see that SWT have their barriers staffed, as these commuters only ever see them operational...If they started having them open all the time, I'm not sure who'd be more scary, the commuters on the Alton line users club or whatever they're called, or the DfT.
It appears to be true of larger stations, such as Southampton and Winchester as well. Once upon a time, I arrived back in Soton Ctl at 8pm on New Year's Day and the gateline was manned and operational. Nowadays you can get in relatively early evening on a weekday and the barriers are open.
I've noticed that phenomenon as well and it strikes me as really bizarre. As you say, it's counter-productive to pay people to man one set of gates when it's obvious to any fare evaders that they can just walk around to the other side.
Woking and Guildford are rarely unstaffed. They are only unstaffed if a break's being covered or similar. Obviously if there's no staff due to sickness etc that would be an exception, but there's almost always enough CSA/Revenue staff floating about to have all large station barriers staffed.
At my local station Fareham the ticket barriers are rarely in use, it seems a waste of money to buy them but hardly use them, surely people will learn to travel when they're not in operation if they don't want to pay.
It's a 'box ticking' exercise, to make the DfT happy.At my local station Fareham the ticket barriers are rarely in use, it seems a waste of money to buy them but hardly use them, surely people will learn to travel when they're not in operation if they don't want to pay.
or are obstructive and deny passengers with valid tickets by making up rules e.g. "Railcards are not valid before 0900/0930/1000" or "Break of journey is not permitted" or "We are not National Rail, we only accept Oyster cards and Travelcards" and all sorts of other ridiculous excuses (London Overground).
My tickets bought at Hooton never work at Liverpool Central.
Last week the excuse was "maybe the magnetic stripe was damaged".
Not a very convincing excuse for a pristine ticket.
Yesterday I got to the bottom of it after another rejection.
The cheery gateman looked at my ticket and said "it's because you bought it with a Senior Railcard".
Uh? Why would Merseyrail reject perfectly valid tickets bought with a Railcard?
Are oldies dodgy travellers? Seems like age discrimination to me...
It would reject it I expect because you need to show your senior railcard. London underground barriers wouldn't accept staff privilege tickets without showing your staff travel card last time I used one (15 years ago).
It's a 'box ticking' exercise, to make the DfT happy.
DfT are obsessed with ticket barriers, but don't seem to mind if the barriers accept nothing but the staff allow everyone & anything through (like Leeds), or are usually left open (as with your example), or are obstructive and deny passengers with valid tickets by making up rules e.g. "Railcards are not valid before 0900/0930/1000" or "Break of journey is not permitted" or "We are not National Rail, we only accept Oyster cards and Travelcards" and all sorts of other ridiculous excuses (London Overground).
If they are properly manned, by well-trained staff who apply the rules correctly (but, if not sure on routeing etc, let passengers through), then I have no problem with them.
But, in reality, it often seems to be one extreme or the other! But either extreme ticks the DfT's box (in fact their mere presence makes the DfT happy), so the inconsistencies look set to continue.
Surely if the gates were configured correctly to allow all them sorts of valid tickets that you've listed then there wouldn't be a requirement for so many staff to be on the barriers.
Some do.I don't buy that.
Other ticket gates don't do that
In that case Chester is among the majority, which don't.(eg Chester)
If a barrier is set to reject Railcard discounted tickets, that does not guarantee that the staff will manually inspect Railcards.and I wasn't asked for my railcard at the manual barrier anyway.
The problem is:
Do you restrict the number of tickets that work in the barriers, so people have to seek staff assistance if their ticket isn't just a plain Anytime to-this-destination ticket, but therefore ensure that every ticket is being fully validated.
Or
Do you maximise the number of tickets that work the barriers, so that people aren't inconvenienced, but you make it easier to do things like doughnutting, travelling without a valid railcard, or using weird and wacky tickets that open the barriers even though they aren't valid for the journey a passenger has just taken?
Ticket gates are not the silver bullet solution to fare evasion on the national rail network. In some locations, at certain times of the day, they represent one technique that, if deployed correctly, can help combat fare evasion and streamline the process of allowing passengers in and out of the station. But this bizarre notion that we should just barrier every single station we can and that'll magically reduce fare evasion is just madness.
I agree,I quite agree with having all barriered stations staffed! Southern seem to do this perfectly, nearly all their stations in Z1-6 are now barriered and have near full time operation of barriers! It really puts SWT to shame...
I quite agree with having all barriered stations staffed! Southern seem to do this perfectly, nearly all their stations in Z1-6 are now barriered and have near full time operation of barriers! It really puts SWT to shame...
It may well do, but the reason is that by the time SN's franchise was let, the DFT allowed TfL to buy in different standards of station manning for the new SN franchise. That two year gap between SWT and SN being let accounts for a lot of the differences.
So it is not really possible to suggest that because SN do it one way, so SWT should as well, because they are funded differently...
This was TfL's press release about it at the time:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/static/corporate/media/newscentre/archive/12041.html
The gateline from Ashford [Kent] domestic to the International Ticket Hall is remotely operated from the Ticket Office but if they get too many assistance calls they tend to leave the gates open.... I would suggest remote operation from the main Gateline but at busier station that's simply not possible, too dangerous!
The gateline from Ashford [Kent] domestic to the International Ticket Hall is remotely operated from the Ticket Office but if they get too many assistance calls they tend to leave the gates open.
Regards
Bushy
ITSO was very poorly-spec'd. I don't know if SWT have technically fulfilled their obligations or not but ITSO is effectively unusable on large parts of the network due to the lack of ITSO readers for non-Waterloo guards.