Re: Flinders St. Metcard barriers

["Johann Fan" <yags@geocities.com>]

Mike Alexander wrote in message <01bd5928$b48fd190$01010101@mikeya>...
>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.

Also, why did they install 2 sets of 1 x wide gates + 2 x narrow gates and
not just
4 x narrow gates and 2 wide gates. Makes it kind of strange to have these
gates in bi-directional

>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.

Same happens at Melb. Central... especially during the morning peak...

>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?

They probably thought that the people would validate their ticket there and
not have to validate until then... then they could save an hour or two on
their ticket...


>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)