Hello Tony...I can see this winds you up a bit.....and fair enough.
I can only help with a couple of things.
Its been mentioned before, tickets can be checked for traveling accross zone
1 with only Z2 validity. Its the coloured triangles on the bottom. Turn up
in Z2 in the east with a west coloured triangle and its easy to spot. Hence
the inspection before you leave the barrier.
Remember the man/woman in the box is not a ticket inspector. They are
"Customer Service Assistants". They are there to provide assistance at the
gates as someone has to be within 5 seconds of an emergency release incase
anyone gets stuck. They have other things to do also, but inspecting tickets
is well down the list. Lots of them do this though and they can resrtict
access through the gates by rejecting certain codes such as child tickets to
confirm age of person.
But this puts them in places of risk and I'm sure there are some unsavoury
characters around and if it was you would you want to put yourself into
conflict with these people. Alone. Late at night. So it seems they leave the
gates open. It solves nothing but gives them and easy, safe life.
Like i said.....the local managers will know and perhaps they have a local
dispute over manning levels...but its not something that generally LUL
tolerate. So there must be a reason somewhere.

"Tony Wilson" wrote in message
...
I commuted from Becontree for several years until a few months ago. The
gate
there was similarly rarely locked. For about the first 18 months of the
barriers being in operation, the gates themselves - although operational
during the off-peak- were never used when I came through at about 8am and
6.30pm and no staff were on duty in the public area. The gate then became
manned until later with the bariers operational, but the manual gate was
permamently open so everyone went through there, despite a sole ticket
inspector always sitting in the box. No wonder our service was so poor,
according to their ticketing figures the loadings east of Barking must
have
been negligible. Incidentally, sometimes (in the evening peak when going
home from work) everyone would have to go through the gate as kids would
sit
on top of the barriers chatting and basically daring anyone to challenge
them while the ticket inspector sits in the box.

I once- only once- saw a large scale ticket check going on (at least a
dozen
staff/police) and they could not cope with the number of people without
tickets and most just went past as they were all occupied (I didn't have
to
show my pass). On other rare occasions I got off the train in the peak
and
the gate was locked. Without fail, of the first alighters to reach the
ticket hall several would have no ticket so would vault the barriers/gate
until someone forced the manual gate, and the queue of the ticketless
would
follow. This is at 6.30 pm in full view of staff and cameras.

I just cannot understand why along this whole stretch of District line you
have lone people sitting there bored out of their minds afraid to
challenge
anyone when they could travel as a group of 6 or 8 people and properly
check
just one of these stations at a time at random.

What is ridiculous is that at the other end of my journey (Notting Hill
Gate) there are regularly large groups of ticket inspectors between the
central line escalator and the barrier checking tickets (I'd say I have
had
to show my ticket - well, lump of plastic - here about 4 times this year
already. Why? 10m further on we have to go through the gates and it isn't
even possible to tell whether someone has come through zone 1 or not (as
plenty of people cross zone 1 on a zones 2+ ticket) from the central line
as
eastbound passengers would arrive in the ticket hall from the same
escalator. Have commuted through Notting Hill Gate virtually every day
since
1998 and have only twice seen people push through the barrier without
paying, but see this regularly elsewhere, and that's without considering
the
total lack of enforcement on sections like the suburban district line.

As you can tell, this subject gets me going! Cannot abide the thought that
I
subsidise fare dodgers who are getting away with it with the complete
knowledge and acceptance of LU.

PS Does this remind anyone of bendy buses?



"Malcolm & Nika" wrote in message
...
The gates are monitored from the booking office. This is normal practice
on
smaller stations.
The manual gate should be kept locked. It will be appearing on a report
to
local managers. Time left open is reported in milliseconds (!), and its a
performance target to get this within limits. Its upto local managers to
enforce this but somewhere someone is getting a headache from higher up
to
fix it.
Also NCC can see what is happening regarding the gates and they also will
contact stations to point out any irregularities.
Someone somewhere knows.......


"Chris Read" wrote in message
...

My nearest LU station is Upney on the District.

Sometimes the gates are left open.

Sometimes the gates are operational.

The gateline is never directly supervised, though there is always
someone
in
the ticket office, from where there is a good view of the gateline -
and
of
course the whole place is covered by CCTV.

Here is my point. The *side* gate for those with luggage/the
disabled/cyclists is *always* left unlocked, whatever the time of day
or
day
of the week. As a result, everyone has got to know of this, and uses
this
gate to save retrieving their ticket from their pocket/handbag. No
doubt
those who wish to travel fraudulently know about this too.

I had always assumed that if the automatic gates were in operation, the
side
gate should default to the locked position to 'complete the set' - and
vice
versa. If it is the policy of LU to leave the side gates unlocked
around
the
clock, what on earth was the business case for investing in gates at
outlying stations? If, however, there are rogue staff members who leave
the
side gate open for the sake of an easy life (and I do sympathise with
them,
given the levels of aggression in society today), why haven't LU
discovered
this yet?

Chris