Flinders St. Metcard barriers

["Mike Alexander" <malex@bigfoot.com>]

As the busiest station in Melbourne, I think it is fairly safe to assume
that the Metcard barriers at Flinders St. get the highest use of any in
Melbourne. After watching the confusion there a few times I have a few
quaetions:

1) It seems that the six barriers at the Flinders St. end of the concourse
switch from bi-directional mode to 3 x In and 3 x Out at around 4:00pm.
Immediately, the confusion seems to lessen. Does anyone know why they don't
keep them in the single-direction mode for the whole day?

2) At the other end of the line of barriers from the operating gates (near
the Police booth), there are a further 4 electronic gates installed, which
are permanently open, and marked "All other tickets". In the middle of the
line of gates are 4 dummy gates, which have not been replaced with real
gates. The dummy gates are always closed. Does anyone know why the dummy
gates are not used for the "All other tickets", leaving the four real gates
near the Police booth to actually check Metcards? This would then allow the
real gates to be set for 6 x Peak flow direction and 4 x anti-peak flow
direction at all times.

3) _Many_ passengers have trouble getting out through the gates. Mainly
this is caused by them not having validated at the start of their journey.
The person staffing the gates then has to:

a) Lean over the gate, and stretch to put the ticket into the "Inbound "
slot, which then validates it (and opens the gate).

b) Wave their hand across the light beams to cause the gate to close.

c) Hand the ticket back to the passenger, who can then exit normally.

All of this is very disruptive to people actually trying to use the gates,
and confusing to the passenger who hadn't validated. The staff often do not
seem to explain why this piece of acrobatics is necessary, and I have seen
passengers also performing the same ritual, probably having been shown it
once, and wondering why the system enforces such stupid behaviour on them.
A few weeks ago, a green "tram style" validator appeared on the wall near
the "toilet end" of the gates. I assumed this was to allow the staff to
validate tickets for "naughty passengers" without having to jump through
the hoops described above, and hopefully make the process a bit clearer for
the passengers to understand. But then, the next day it was gone again, and
hasn't been seen since. Does anyone know why?

4) Just in the last week, I have seen the acrobatics described in (3) being
used for people who can't get IN with their ticket. i.e. the inbound gate
rejects their ticket, the staff member leans across and puts it in the
OUTBOUND slot, and then hands it back to the passenger who then enters
successfully. Since the gate also acts as a validator, the only time I can
see this being necessary is to cancel the "Passback" detection. But many of
these people seemed to have just walked in off the street, which sort of
makes me wonder. Does anyone know what is going on there?


Regards,

Mike Alexander
(malex@bigfoot.com)