Manchester and Leeds ticket barriers latest

Barriers have been introduced over the past year in Leeds and at Manchester Oxford Road stations - these are of a similar type to those proposed at York and other stations on the East Coast Main Line (please note Leeds previously had old-style "manual" barriers). They have been subject to constant problems - valid tickets rejected for no reason, complete malfunction, and inability to discriminate between ticket types. The Leeds barriers were operating for some months on "accept all tickets" mode - i.e. any magnetic stripe ticket would work. In their submission to City of York Council, National Express have claimed that the barriers can reliably allow through up to 30 people a minute - a number higher even than on the London Underground.

Some information below from Richard Malins on the current situation with the Manchester and Leeds Ticket barriers:

Manchester Oxford Road is still in "accept-all-tickets" mode, although apparently new software had been loaded but the system has reverted to previous practice. There was a Scheidt & Bachmann technician present, attending to a physical fault with the ticket reading mechanism, who was surprised by this as he thought the new software was running. I had to demonstrate to him that my collection of previously used, off route and out of date tickets still worked. For the often single member of staff on duty the work remains busy and stressful as the amount of manual intervention is high.

Leeds does now have the software upgrade running, but it does not capture or cancel used tickets. There is a c 10 minute "pass back protection" during which reuse of the same ticket is prevented, but it can be used again beyond that time. In general terms, out of date and off route tickets are now rejected. But there are a lot of other malfunctions with tickets apparently valid being rejected, especially a significant number issued on Avantix mobile machines. Add to that the problems of the many tickets that are not in any case machine readable, or the customer inserts the wrong half of a return, the seat reservation or receipt, as well as all the other people problems, the inexperienced and encumbered, and the rate of manual intervention is also very high.

I would estimate in both cases (using a hand counter), and the staff do not disagree, that about 30% of people passing the gates require some form of manual intervention. This is partly the obvious people problems, but a lot is technical. This is a very high proportion and I am certain Newcastle, York or Sheffield will be similar (the Underground in London is probably 1% or less). As a result the staff are continually having to assist people simply with getting through the barriers, and there is little opportunity for proper passenger help or revenue protection. They are largely there to overcome the problems the barriers create, and other issues are ignored or moved on. It is true there will be some people diverted to purchase tickets or excess fares, but it is a very clumsy way of achieving that extra bit of revenue, and there will be even bigger problems at the moments busier then when I was there. It also means that the notion of staff being in a position to exercise some sort of assistance and discretion is unrealistic. They are too fully occupied and stressed for that, and as Agency staff are not really being paid for it either. They do their best in difficult circumstances.

One observation was the number of people who approach the barriers with something in both hands, or pulling a wheeled suitcase, which then makes it difficult for them to negotiate their way through, even if they have a ticket that will work correctly. Quite often that can be a hot drink in one hand. The overall impression remains one of a disorganised shambles and a system that is overtly hostile to the customer. It is a quite wrong application of technology. I suspect the situation at Norwich remains similar.