Great Western Coffee Shop

No - not a post about behaviour of people at ticket gates (except mine?) but of the gates themselves.

There's a bit of an oddity affecting one of the gates through which I regularly commute. A very minor thing really, but it leaves me curious as to whether it's happened to anyone else, and why it might be happening with this machine!

There are two gates at the entrance - one standard and one wide. Usually one is set up for each direction, so the wide one is used as the entrance and the standard one as the exit. There's a bit of a recurring theme with the wide gate, i.e. the only one I can use to enter the station under the normal setup - when I put my ticket in, it seems to 'stick' a bit, so I have to push it in more, but the machine doesn't react. So it needs to be jabbed in further, until it's almost entirely in the slot - then a final push makes it react, but it's not able to read the ticket and it's rejected.

The first few times it happened, I think it was after someone had been allowed through, so I thought maybe I was just using it too soon and tried again. It's always this one wide gate. In various periods of commuting and other journeys using ticket gates over 15 years or so, I've not had similar problems at other stations. To a lesser extent it happens wit ht eh wide gate on the other entrance at the same station, but in that case it usually reacts eventually, and I assumed it was just after someone had been allowed through the other way and it was slow to allow me through again. I assumed the same was the issue at the one where it keeps happeneing, but after a few times it seemed it was happening regularly when the green arrow was there and it wasn't immediately after smeone else used it.

I think I was becoming a bit familiar to the 'gate-keeper'... and he said I was pushing the ticket too far so it had gone past the reader. As it's the end of the working day I'm not really inclined to enter any sort of discussion or debate about it! I can't really say it was a fault with the machine, as other people seemed to have no problems (at least not as consistently), so it must be some sort of combination of the nuance of my hand and this gate, and maybe I had to learn how to use a ticket gate as he suggested! But what is odd is that:
- I've been a regular user of ticket gates for many years and had no problems elsewhere.
- Not only that, but I've been a regular user of this station and it's only become a regular occurrence in the last few months. (I think maybe occasionally before at this particular gate, but then it became very frequent recently).
- ....and then the last couple of times it's been fine!

Maybe being a wide gate it's calibrated a bit differently - perhaps so easier to use from a wheelchair - which is perhaps exaggerating whatever it is that's wrong about the way I use it. But again why just this particular one? I also wondered if my season ticket one time was a bit dodgy, but I usually use weeklies and this wasn't just one particular week. (Odd batch... Far-fetched!)

Not the end of the world, but I find it very strange that I'm using this one machine wrong, and for a particular period of time! I'm a bit clumsy at times (some suggest slightly dyspraxic, but we're talking very mild if so) but it's strange that this oddity came up.

When I went through today, on this occasion back to being fine, it sounded like the staff had some comments to make when I'd gone through (it's working now... he's learning...). Not a major issue (benefit of doubt says maybe they were in the middle of dealing with a computer fault and just happened to stop dealing with it while I was going through!) - at the end of the day jsut a bit of 'office banter' - but could be off-putting to a sensitive customer.

Seen a few ticket gates behave like this.

The trick is to begin to insert the ticket until you get a bit of resistence. Then let go. The Gate Reader will take the ticket and make its decision.

No idea why it does it this way. Maybe it's a subtle hint for passengers to be more patient :P

There's a similar setup at Bridgend, with the wide gate providing access in both directions, where the barrier is always a bit sluggish to accept tickets and spits a fair few out. It often ends up held open by the gatekeeper with a manual check being performed instead in order to prevent a queue building up.

The remarks about you 'learning' seem a bit unnecessary to me - the fault is clearly with the barrier, not the user.

Happens at Swindon (upstairs) too. Seems to only be a gate set to be bi-directional that takes a moment to figure out which way to open and then pull the ticket in/through.  ::)

I always avoid gate 55 in the up direction at Paddington. It is somewhat more hesitant than the rest.

Glad I'm not the only one!

The next time I went through I think they exchanged glances but maybe that's just me being paranoid! I felt a bit of resistance when I put the ticket in but pulling it out a bit as soon as it meets the resistance is perhaps part of the knack - like with some locks...

I suppose if everyone else manages fine he is justified in thinking I'm diong something wrong. But if he knows what I'm doing wrong that suggests he has experience of other people doing it! One could also argue that the whole purpose of a wide gate is to avoid singling out indidivuals who can't use the standard gate for whatever reason, even though that's a relatively small minority of people. I think what is a bit annoying is not having to 'learn' a knack, but that the simple method I have used successfully for a long time shouldn't be acceptable for a small number of machines, and why would I have suddenly lost the 'knack' for a period?

As it went through a phase of being worse, I thought maybe I wasn't being cynical in thinking it was dodgy ticket stock. The ticket from a couple of weeks ago looks a bit dog-eared in the corner, but I'm not sure it's significant enough for a decent machine to detect it in 2015. And that's just weeklies; IIRC the green stock used for longer durations is more durable but I should imagine annuals become very worn over time, so I'm not sure a slightly worn weekly would be a problem really.  Another thought is that with the wide gate the angle might be a bit different as the arm is being stretched further.

Less trouble this week (apart from knowing that I'm recognised!) so we'll see how things pan out...!

This is a feature of Wide Gates when they are set to be bi-directional. Although they will accept tickets from both directions, they are only looking to accept tickets in one direction at any given moment. They swap which side they are taking from every 5 seconds or so. This means they will never take one ticket from each side simultaneously, which would no doubt cause the gate to crash. If you are using a Wide Gate don't push your ticket in against any resistance, this won't make it accept it any faster but often will lead to the ticket becoming creased/damaged. If you push it too far the ticket will go through, but the gate won't read it and will just spit it back out. It can cause the ticket reader to go out of service too, requiring the gate to be reset. The trick is to just put the ticket in as far as any resistance and wait for the gate to take the ticket and open. It will take it within a couple of seconds.

That info needs advertising far more widely

But (a much more general question) how do you decide what information to advertise much more widely, and how do you do so without giving information overload to people? There are some things that need telling to people, and others that need system tweaking so that you don't need to tell people and they just work naturally.

Seeing as how the latter wouldn't physically be possible in this case, definitely the former, possibly with signage at the gate(s) in question

As one solution, could the delay be moved to the 'logic' rather than 'physical' detection of the ticket? Of course making things work for humans in every situation doesn't always work out! But as a thought, could it be done by having a slight delay between reading & spitting the ticket out and opening the gate. That split second could be used to check for the race condition and reject in the normal way if two try to use the gate at once. In reality if that happens it's obvious that there's someone on the other side, rather than just not working seemingly at random.