Heuston: Separate smartcard/ticket validation
 

Noticed this in Heuston recently. Some of the validation machines display 'Ticket only' and others 'Smartcard Only'.

The only problem is that this is not obvious until you reach a validator and look at the dimly lit display.

Good idea though to have smartcard only channels as smartcards are more efficient and give less problems than tickets.

Thats down to a problem with the turnstile

If the smartcard reader is bust it will read mag stripe and so on

We have raised the issue of the readability of the screen with IE

I've noticed in the last week or two quite a few turnstiles in Heuston - and one or two in Connolly - are silently broken for smartcards. Displaying 'READY' but not reading my card. I've seen the machines automatically flip over to 'SMARTCARD ONLY' if a paper ticket jams in the mechanism, or I guess if it feeds through X number of tickets and can't read the magstripe on any, but I can't imagine how the RFID reader with no moving parts could break, or how that could be automatically detected. Dodgy firmware update maybe?

"Ready" indicates the smartcard system has crashed.

Its a bug introduced when Leap was enabled on Irish Rail and neither Irish Rail, the NTA or their suppliers seem in any hurry to sort it out

I've been through a few turnstiles this week, carefully watching each of them. Every last one of them showed "Ready". Most of them worked. Aside from two occasions in Heuston and one in Tara where a reader quietly ignored my smartcard, but the next reader along worked fine. No difference in the display.

I'd like to see separate "express" lanes for Smartcard users at Pearse - the failure rate for the paper tickets is ridiculous and every single turnstile gets blocked in the morning by paper-ticket errors.