City Rail barriers often wide-open

[G.Lambert@unsw.edu.au (Geoff Lambert)]

At CityRail stations, periodically and sometimes chronically, the
passenger barriers are out of service, allowing unchecked ingress and
egress.

Why is this so?

In the 2 to 3 weeks after Christmas, for instance, using stations at
Circular Quay, St James, Redfern and Town Hall, I believe I did not
once encounter a functioning passenger barrier (this might have been
what statisticians call a sampling error).  The problem has occurred
intermittently since then-  I would estimate that only on about
two-thirds of my trips do I encounter working barriers.  Last night
(16 Mar), for instance, the barriers were open at the Devonshire St
entry to Central, but functioning where I got off at the Quay (except
that only one was set for exit, so the barrier attendant was waving
people through his open gate).  Sometimes one notices a change in
operations a few minutes apart: recently Redfern was functioning when
I went out to the ARHS shop, but fully open when I returned a little
later.  There seems to be a tendency for the practice to infect more
than one station at any one moment, but since the practice is so
common across the board, it is difficult to be sure of this.

Whether barriers are open or not appears to have little to do with the
level of barrier-staffing: all combinations of staffed/unstaffed vs
open/functioning seem possible.  There is also no particular time of
day or traffic level that appears to be related- just as likely to
happen in the middle of peak hour as it is at a quiet time.

Are these practices:

· Industrial-dispute related?
· Technical failures?
· Mere whim?
· The phase of the moon?

Also, is there any way of assessing what impact this has on fare
revenue?  In early January, for instance, it seemed to me that all of
Sydney could have travelled for a fortnight and not have had to
produce a ticket.  Since I have never, ever in the last 5 years, been
asked to present a ticket (to a person or a machine) outside the City
Circle, it seems that a commuter to the city could travel in each day
and almost always find a City Circle station where the barriers were
open, and thus travel completely free.  At the very least, the two
weeks in January must have had a temendous effect on fare-box revenue-
a substantial proportion of the loss attributed to fare evasion for
the whole year.  What happens with single- or multi-trip tickets under
these cicumstances (I always use a TravelPass)?  Do you get an extra
trip because your ticket didn't pass through a check?


Geoff Lambert