Ticket Barriers at Kent
 

Given that ticket barriers have been installed at Kent (not yet in service) - can we assume that TVM's will be installed at Cobh, Rushbrooke, Carrigaloe, Fota & Glounthaune (there is already one at Little Island)

Without TVM's it makes the barriers a nonsense !

Why's that? With barriers at least people who didn't buy a ticket will have to get one to leave.

OK - so at present there is no TVM at Rushbrooke. 30/40 people board there on most morning peak trains. Without access to a tvm, how are they going to be in possession of a ticket to exit at Kent?

They'll buy one on the train if there is a ticket checker, or from an attendant on the gateline if not. Without the gates they would travel free.

Update - all the stations apart from Fota have had work done over the past week that has the appearance of TVM installation

Discussion on Thurles station can continue in this thread.

I assume very few people start their journey at Fota and that the vast majority of people who board there are using the return portion of a ticket issued elsewhere.

Are we likely to see barriers installed at other stations in the Cork Commuter network?

I would have thought that it would make sense in Cobh at minimum.

all the TVM's at stations on the line are now installed but no sign of the barriers coming into service at Kent

Barriers were in operation today.

saw that !

ONLY IN IRELAND -

Barriers are fully operational at Kent but the new TVM's at each station on the Cobh line remain sealed so approx 50 people got on the 8.30 ex cobh at Rushbrooke only to have to queue at Kent to procure a ticket and exit the barriers

And how many of those would not have paid if the barriers were not there?

true Mark, but the TVM is installed at Rushbrooke - it just has a shutter(anti theft) around it preventing access

Surely IR could have rolled out the barriers and the TVM's on the one day !

week 2 of the barriers at Kent and we have the following farce

- TVM's still sealed on Cork/Cobh line

- 30+ passengers walk past sealed TVM at Rushbrooke and board 9.00 Cobh/Cork

- 2 revenue protection staff on board proceed to spend the rest of journey writting out tickets for the customers

- at end of journey, all the passengers have to queue up and show hand written tickets beside barriers as they cannot exit normally !

Totally inefficient utilisation of resources

There is an outstanding capital spending item to enable about 25 extra TVM's, looks like IE reached the limit of the existing back office system and cannot add further machines without some upgrades

Reality is a significant number of passengers are boarding in Rushbrooke who previously boarded at Cobh to dodge the fact you can get a ticket in Cobh.

Odd that they seem to be spending loads of money on putting up empty cabinets for no return whatsoever.

but the TVM's are inside them !

Surely they could issue Crouzets to the on-train staff which can issue magnetic encoded tickets though?

the roller shutters have finally come up and the TVM's are all operating on the line !!

The barriers are very slow to open, causes a bit of a queue, I was expecting the swift working ones, like on the London Underground!

Any news on today's incident in Little Island? I hope the person involved is OK, although I suspect they may not be.

All I know is Cork revenue is up significantly since the barriers appeared

The gates work fine, simple rules

1. Insert the ticket
2. Remove the ticket
3. Do not move forward until you have removed the ticket
4. If following someone as soon as the gate opens from them insert your ticket

Follow these steps and the gate will stay open and you can get a very smooth flow of passengers

It works in London as 90+% are using smartcards. LEAP will be deployed in Cork just waiting on the exact timelines

If they are the same gates as they have in Connolly then there has always been an issue with them when using magnetic cards. The delay between inserting the card and opening the barriers is about a second too long so that if you are walking when putting the card in, you end up too close to the barrier which triggers a sensor that blocks the barrier from opening.

They are fine with the newer smart-cards, but they were always just a little slow with magnetic cards. Ticket barriers are a fairly simple thing - they shouldn't need instructions. If you're explaining you losing.

I notice a poster that has gone up in Connolly explaining that it is very dangerous to tailgate through the barriers and could result in injury. Perhaps they shouldn't be install equipment that could potentially injure customers. You can legitimately have up to 6 people travelling on a single family ticket.

Commuters in London are very well drilled bunch that's the reason the system actually works as well as it does.

Main reasons for delay
1. Passengers digging in pockets/handbag for tickets
2. Passengers pushing up against the gate, safety feature will prevent the gate opening
3. People tailgating

Its very simple, insert ticket, collect ticket, move forward

Works perfectly fine; there's a rhythm to it. As soon as the gate has opened for the person ahead of you, or as soon as they've taken their ticket if the gate was already open, you put your ticket in. The main issue I've seen is people who feel they should wait for the gate to close ahead of them before they put in their own ticket. This is perhaps inherited from car park barriers.
Family ticket holders should be using the manual gate.

Someone standing too close to the gate will prevent it from opening this is because it can be used for reverse tailgaiting i.e. the person too close and the next person both try to go through on the one ticket.

Over here in London the biggest problem is person A touches their invalid card or puts in an invalid ticket, gate doesn't open, person B automatically touches their card or puts in a valid ticket, person A goes through and person B gets stuck behind the gate.

I was trying to say that the poster is a typical example of treating their customers like mugs.

Either the barriers are dangerous or they are not. If they are dangerous, they shouldn't be installed in a public area. If they aren't then Irish Rail are basically lying to their customers with the announcement.

The point with a family ticket illustrates that there are situations that the barriers are not able to cope with yet there is nothing to tell you to avoid the allegedly dangerous ticket machines. Note that the only copy of the notice I have seen is after the barriers in Connolly and so doesn't count as instructions even if it did tell you to use the manual barrier if you have more than one person on a ticket.

Finally, I have seen people passing children over the barriers so it is not obvious to infrequent users that they should be using the manual exit. People on this forum use the rail system every day so know a lot more about how to get around it than the person who takes his kids to Dublin once a year for the spin.

It seems to me that the gates are slow to open, whether there is a person in front of me or not. A second delay. But also, when they do open, they open slowly, so that I find myself pushing through them while they open. It just feels sluggish.

I can also see how people are not used to the new process, that will improve with time I'm sure.

Glad to hear that revenue has increased, the system was way too open.

And good to hear Cork will get the LEAP card!

Anybody have any ideas when the changes to Kent will take place so that the entrance will be on the quay?

I always thought that the Glanmire Road entrance introduced the visitor to not the prettiest side of Cork. Should save the commuters some walking time too.

I was thinking the same about those posters that I saw, it seems bit ingenious to me, the barriers' safety should not depend on customer behaviour!

As regards my comments on sluggishness of the barriers, I am using the magnetic strip cards that the machines dispense as weekly tickets. Maybe that explains my experience, as you suggest.

RPU teams are also out in force down South much more, first time in weeks I was asked to produce a ticket for RUP teams and they were much more friendly that some of the Dublin teams. They could teach some other employees customer service skills.

They are out as the TVM's are live so they can actually catch some people

Some of the most horrific cases we are aware of with respect to the RPU are from the Cork area, so it remains to be seen.

When I came off the Dublin Cork train on Tuesday there was a big queue to exit the barriers, I think it would be good if they could switch direction for the majority of the barriers to cope with the surge of people leaving the train.

My magnetic ticket only worked once during the journey when leaving Cork in the morning, all the other times it just kept going in and out of the machine and was un-readable.

They can be changed using a control panel that the ticket checker has - in Connolly its next to the wide gate, not sure about Cork.
Possibly wasn't a proper magnetic ticket, i.e. printed only. Are you happy you were putting it in the right way? :)

Isn't normal practice to have more exit gates than entry gates?

People arrive off a train en masse, but gradually arrive for one.

Are they not bidirectional?

They are, but tend to be set one way or the other.