Let through automated ticket barriers with expired tickets then charged for new tickets on train?!

zerog

Barriers are "dumb", they can be set to reject all tickets except certain ones, or accept all tickets except certain ones. There is limited information that can be stored on a magnetic stripe.

The reason for barriers is to force people who would otherwise "pay when challenged" to get a ticket. Determined fare evaders will find ways to evade fares despite barriers. Unless there is a police presence nearby, you can usually force your way through barriers with no consequences (well maybe you should hide your face from the CCTV if you want to use that station repeatedly), but the majority of people will not do that. Whereas a larger proportion of people would happily not buy a ticket if they could just walk on and off and they know guards don't always come around, and if they do they will just sell on the train, despite it being a "buy before boarding" station.

Due to inconveniences like minimum wage and employer's NI, as well as the immense complexity of the routeing guide, it is not worth it to employ people to program barriers to correctly accept or reject every possible ticket. However, at some point in the medium-term, magnetic strip tickets will be completely replaced by barcode tickets and scanners which are be easier to program correctly for the majority of tickets (though currently they barely work for anything and require manual intervention).

soolin

I suspect a lot of the time the barriers act on the person in front's ticket or such like, I use an Oyster card and on a couple of occasions have used it to go through the barrier correctly only to be charged for an uncapped journey as the barrier didn't acknowledge the tapping.

When I get the fare adjusted they usually tell me that I should always check the little message that flashes up when the gate opens- I do that for a few weeks then get caught up in commuting and forget.

martindow

soolin wrote: »

I suspect a lot of the time the barriers act on the person in front's ticket or such like, I use an Oyster card and on a couple of occasions have used it to go through the barrier correctly only to be charged for an uncapped journey as the barrier didn't acknowledge the tapping.

When I get the fare adjusted they usually tell me that I should always check the little message that flashes up when the gate opens- I do that for a few weeks then get caught up in commuting and forget.

When it's busy the barriers stay open and the next persons card is touching out before the barrier has a chance to close. It is difficult to be sure that you have touched out correctly.

What I don't understand is what happens with large crowds or in emergencies when staff open gates and ask people to go straight through without worrying about cards or tickets. There must be thousands of incomplete journeys when this happens.

I was at Finsbury Park one afternoon before a concert when this was going on. I don't know the result as I was using a travel card that day.

soolin

martindow wrote: »

When it's busy the barriers stay open and the next persons card is touching out before the barrier has a chance to close. It is difficult to be sure that you have touched out correctly.

What I don't understand is what happens with large crowds or in emergencies when staff open gates and ask people to go straight through without worrying about cards or tickets. There must be thousands of incomplete journeys when this happens.

I was at Finsbury Park one afternoon before a concert when this was going on. I don't know the result as I was using a travel card that day.

We have had real issues in our train lines resulting in re routing through smaller stations that can't cope. As you say the barriers are often open and staff encourage people to walk through quickly and this does cause issues with Oyster cards being overcharged. Having had to reclaim several times where I've been unable to tap out, I always insist now on waiting to use the machine.

t0rt0ise

martindow wrote: »

When it's busy the barriers stay open and the next persons card is touching out before the barrier has a chance to close. It is difficult to be sure that you have touched out correctly.

What I don't understand is what happens with large crowds or in emergencies when staff open gates and ask people to go straight through without worrying about cards or tickets. There must be thousands of incomplete journeys when this happens.

I was at Finsbury Park one afternoon before a concert when this was going on. I don't know the result as I was using a travel card that day.

In this case auto complete will have been set so that when you tap in for the return journey it will automatically close the first journey. It doesn't work of course, if you make your return journey by bus.