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
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