On 30 Jan, 20:30, Mizter T wrote:
[x-posted to uk.railway]
[original thread on uk.transport.london]

On Jan 30, 7:39*pm, Paul Corfield wrote:



On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:42:56 +0000, Clive Page wrote:
Today I travelled to London on a super off-peak London One-day
Travelcard purchased from FCC at Luton Airport Parkway. *I know from
past experiences that these tickets operate the gates at all TfL
stations that I've used, but consistently fail at those of South Eastern
Trains (e.g. Charing Cross and London Bridge). *Today I also found both
of our tickets were rejected at London St.Pancras (upper level), which
surprised me because EMT operate direct trains to Luton Airport Parkway
and ought to have their barriers programmed correctly. *I have no idea
whether the fault is with FCC for not encoding the tickets correctly (as
the EMT barrier man said) or with the other train companies failing to
recognise this fairly new type of ticket. *The rejection code, I think,
is 105.

It is really annoying to have to spend extra minutes searching out the
manned barrier at these stations, where there is often a small queue of
people with problems, and then explaining why my ticket fails. *At some
time I shall miss a train because of the extra delay.

Has anyone else experienced the same problem? *It would be useful to
know before I try complaining to the various companies involved.

I have not had the same problem but I have not purchased any tickets
that might be problematic other than All Line Rovers. I never put the
All Line Rover in a NR Ticket gate during any journeys. I always went to
the manual gate as I was not prepared to risk having my ticket
confiscated or missing a train due to a ticket reject.

If you do decide to complain I think you should ask a pointed question
about the basis of NR ticket gating and ensuring there is a properly
controlled and integrated system of ticket issuing, ticket coding,
ticket reading, ticket interpretation and finally ticket rewriting and
final validation. *I am not up to date so I may be wrong but I am not
aware of any NR funded improvement to the ticket stripe so that the NR
portion of it is used for NR journey checking. *I believe the TOCs
"botch" their checking around what is encoded on the LUL portion of the
stripe. *When you "botch" something that is not yours to "botch" it is
no wonder there are problems. The LU system is obviously not designed to
cater for the scale of the NR network. Ask them what their policy is,
what they have done to avoid or remove passenger inconvenience and how
they have ensured that what FCC does is compatible with LUL, DLR and
every other TOC? * The problems you quote give you examples to hang off
these questions.

I would be astonished if you get a coherent and plausible response from
any TOC. I would also suggest you ask the same questions of ATOC and
Rail Settlement Plan - they are supposed to "control" these sorts of
industry wide issues. *If you do get a response then I would love to
read it on here - assuming you are willing to share it.

With regards to the magnetic stripe being divided between having an
LUL portion and an as yet unused BR (now NR) portion - this is
something you've mentioned in a good number of past posts, but I'm
just wondering if you could possibly flesh it out a little bit - some
example questions (which I now realise, having typed them out, sound
more like an inquisition as opposed to an opener to a casual
discussion!)...

(1) what kind of data is held on the LUL portion?
(2) what data did the system architects anticipate the BR portion
would hold?
(3) is the BR portion just a 'blank canvas', or is there some storage
structure that any data stored thereon would have to fall into line
with?
(4) did BR/ does NR do any ticket rewriting at all, or is that
basically off-limits as it would otherwise infringe on the LUL
portion?
(5) to what extent does LUL make use of the capacity for rewriting?
(6) pre-privatisation, did BR make any moves towards utilising their
portion of the stripe? Of course, they didn't have any gates (did
they?).

I'm tempted to ask one more... how many people in DfT Rail do you
think actually even comprehend this issue?! Given the funding they
allocate for gating, perhaps they should!

Lastly, how many funny looks do you get from rail staff if you show
them an all-lines rail rover? I'm just wondering for how many wouldn't
have seen one before.

(I hope you don't mind but I've taken the raw liberty of crossposting
this to the bear pit that is uk.railway!)

A search for Atoc sp0035 brings up a document about RJIS that has some
information on magnetic stripe encoding.