Great Western Coffee Shop

Sorry, didn't know where to put this, please move if appropriate.

Complaints have been made that new turnstiles at Leeds train station will not accept some season tickets.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7751325.stm

The new ticket barriers at Leeds train station have also been accepting out-of-date tickets.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7736478.stm

With a suitable weapon they would certainly be 'under fire'.  ;D

Er, that would be bad programming. Something FGW knows about too. For a time after the gates at Oxford were installed, they wouldn't accept tickets issued on Cotswold Railcards, as they weren't able to recognise the code for them.

As the gates are new they are probably set up to accept all tickets until people get used to them - that would explain accepting out of date tickets, sounds mad but it does make sense as it gets people used to using the gates, the season tickets that don't work may have their magnetic strips damaged in some way.

Whereas at Temple-Meads it seems they are always set to "reject all"  ;D

A lot of people in West Yorkshire have WY Metro tickets which aren't rail tickets and are valid on both train and bus services.  WY Metro pointed this out to Northern when they first planned to install automated ticket gates, to replace the manual ones that were already there.  Northern obviously ignored it.

I've noticed at Liverpool James Street and Liverpool Central stations, which have automated ticket barriers, plus one or two people manually checking tickets, that most people opt to go to the human checking tickets, even if they have to wait longer.

Is this really all down to Northern - it may be a DfT requirement in the franchise, like most other recent ticket gate installations? And of course Leeds is a Network Rail managed station, so NR will have been heavily involved in the design of the actual layout. 

It strikes me that 'Metro' are no longer the controlling authority here, so need to adapt their ticket type to solve the problem - it seems highly unlikely that they've been unaware of the requirement. Maybe DfT are pushing them to introduce a smartcard - they are certainly in use already somewhere in that area, according to Modern Rail this month.

Going for the 'human checkers' soon loses its usefulness once they send anyone with a 'credit card' ticket that ought to work back round to the gates (unless they have luggage or pram etc), which I've seen at Milton Keynes recently, and at Southampton in the past, and on the London Underground for years...

Paul

Surely "Metro" shouldd change their ticket type, this is the same in Devon with the schollar passes, why Devon county council can't just pay for the students to have season tickets like everyone else!