Saturday 2 May 2009

Duncan Bannatyne experiences the "benefits" of ticket barriers

Duncan Bannatyne certainly didn't mince his words about National Express's service on the East Coast Main Line in a Telegraph article on the 15th April:

"Most weeks I travel between Darlington and Kings Cross by train. The service used to be operated by GNER and I often thought that it was the best train service in the UK. A first-class train ticket is not cheap at £185.50 but at least I could sit down and work on my computer or read in peace.

Unfortunately, GNER went out of business and the service was taken over by another operator, National Express. In my experience this was a disaster. Their first move was to put up barriers at stations to check tickets, along with a sign saying 'No entry beyond this point without a ticket.' That meant my children could no longer wave me off at the station and, even then, my ticket was often checked as I left Darlington, during the journey and on arrival at King's Cross.

You might think the operator should be applauded for its diligence and for creating jobs. Until, of course, you get on board and are told: 'Sorry, no hot food service today due to staff shortages.' Why couldn't one or two of the half dozen ticket collectors be redeployed on the train to serve food? In fact, why couldn't the ticket collectors already on the train help out?"

After reporting on a particular nightmare journey from Darlington to King's Cross, he added:

"If you're reading this and laughing then please stop, it's not funny. However, if you are reading this and looking for a job, call National Express: they might need even more ticket checkers."

If many high-paying travellers such as Mr Bannatyne are put off by National Express's obsession with checking everyone's ticket umpteen times, the inconvenience and delay of ticket barriers, and the cavalier disregard for customer service, this will rapidly eradicate any gains from catching the alleged army of "ticket dodgers". One wonders, for example, how the people paying £300 a day or more to park in the executive car park at York and then travel to London will feel if they find they have to walk all the way round the outside of the station because the barriers on Platform 1 are unstaffed (as they will be for much of the day) and their ticket won't work. It might not be very long before a few brickbats are seen travelling in National Express's direction.

And of course, this once again demonstrates the huge and unquestioned popularity of barriers amongst the travelling public.

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