David Walters wrote on 24 August 2010 15:02:41 ...
On Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:27:51 +0100, Richard
wrote:
David wrote on 24 August 2010 13:56:38 ...
On Tue, 24 Aug 2010 05:29:28 -0700 (PDT), wrote:
Secondly, if
staff are not working in the ticket office, they will be available in
the station to "..help disabled and vulnerable customers,,,,"

In theory but it isn't my experience. I'm told that my local station,
Woodside Park, is always staffed even when the ticket office is shut
but on occasion I've been unable to find a member of staff to unlock the
ticket barrier gate and so had to lift a buggy over the barriers. I can
do that but someone in a wheelchair might have more difficulty.

If staff are not on duty in the ticket hall, the manual gate should be
left unlocked. Did you check that it wouldn't open with a firm push or
pull?

Yup, it was firmly locked.

If so, that should be reported as a potentially serious lack of
an emergency exit route.

To who?

I did email customer services with a bit of a rant and asking if I should
push the emergency all gate open button thingy. I can't find their reply
at the moment but they claimed that just because I couldn't see or find
any staff that doesn't mean there weren't any watching the barrier line
and they would be monitoring it via CCTV.

So why didn't this person see your problem and come out and help? In
practice there would not be anyone *dedicated* to watching the gate line
on CCTV. There might be someone with a whole bank of screens to monitor,
and he'll probably pay more attention to those showing the platform when
there's a train there.

I believe there used to be a rule that gates were all to be closed if
the ticket office was manned (because it has remote gate release
buttons), but nowadays the staff on duty are likely to be in a control
room or supervisor's office somewhere else. Are there any LU staff here
who can say what the current rule is about unlocking the manual gate
when the gate line and ticket office are not staffed?
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)