northwichcat
Veteran Member
Last week I came across my first ever ticket barrier at a mainline station for a domestic service in Europe - which was at Fiumicino Aeroporto station where you scan the QR code on your ticket to get through the barrier, meaning it works whether your ticket was issued at the ticket office, the ticket machine, you printed it at home or you have a mobile ticket. People seemed to move through the barriers much faster than they do in Britain, despite a lot of people going through them being tourists.
Why did we:
1. Have a roll out of ticket barriers at stations which aren't served by a Metro style service like Merseyrail services are, when other countries like Germany seem to get by fine using ticket validation and fines to prevent ticket-less travel and ticket reuse?
2. Go for ticket barriers where you physically insert a ticket and if you don't have a standard ticket then you have to be manually let through? At the time the first barriers were installed web/telesales tickets where you had a seat reservation e.g. Advance tickets were issued on larger tickets but then they changed them to issue two separate tickets, which of course means you could insert an Advance ticket for travel in the evening in the morning and because the barrier doesn't see the time of the booked train it can't check anything more than the date is correct.
Why did we:
1. Have a roll out of ticket barriers at stations which aren't served by a Metro style service like Merseyrail services are, when other countries like Germany seem to get by fine using ticket validation and fines to prevent ticket-less travel and ticket reuse?
2. Go for ticket barriers where you physically insert a ticket and if you don't have a standard ticket then you have to be manually let through? At the time the first barriers were installed web/telesales tickets where you had a seat reservation e.g. Advance tickets were issued on larger tickets but then they changed them to issue two separate tickets, which of course means you could insert an Advance ticket for travel in the evening in the morning and because the barrier doesn't see the time of the booked train it can't check anything more than the date is correct.
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