London Banter - View Single Post

rosenstiel@cix.compulink.co.uk · August 10th 14, 06:36 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at
02:33:01 on Sun, 10 Aug 2014, remarked:

http://issuu.com/abelliogroup/docs/o...july___for_int

- take a look at page 5 to get a tiny glimpse of what is being planned
by Abellio Greater Anglia for SEFT / ITSO.

The Bluetooth ticketing option is a new one on me.

Apparently this allows an App on a smartphone to buy e-tickets
wirelessly in a suitably equipped station.

Just what we need, another balkanised technology to add to Oyster,
ITSO, Contactless, barcodes, NFC-on-phone and of course GSM and Wifi
already contacting booking sites from smartphones.

But it has attractions for a station operator because it means people
travelling from there can be constrained to using that TOC's booking
engine and not the one they normally use (unless these facilities are
ruled to be something akin to an "Impartial Point of Sale" allowing
access to all booking engines, which seems unlikely).

Of course, that begs the question of whether these "Bluetooth
tickets" from your friendly local GA station will be available for
routes off-GA, which could be as popularly mundane as Cambridge-King
Cross. (ie Kings Cross, and quite soon all of Thameslink, would have
to be fitted out to accept them).

In the mean time, it's a welcome addition to my V*p**rw*r* list.

Interesting. Roland will also be pleased to see the plans for gates at
Ely on page 7. /-)

The station is so shallow that I struggle to see how they could put
barriers inside, even if they widen the ticket office area. Currently
there are significant people-jams when trains arrive from the south
in the late afternoon, which take ages to clear because of the narrow
doors from the platform and outdoors. (Not helped by the extra
footprint used by passengers with bikes, many of which are retrieved
from racks on the platform and are therefore doomed to make two trips
a day through the barriers).

The commonplace queues inside the ticket office also serve to
obstruct people-flows like that.

From a purely engineering perspective the best place to put the
barriers would be in a little compound on the platform, like they
have at Grantham:

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/SME/html/NRE_GRA/plan.html?rtnloc=GRA

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/SME/ht...64-0030025.htm
l

Although the peak flow capacity at Ely would still be questionable.

The effect on trainspotters, and people accessing the shop/cafe on
the platform, while not actually travelling, is simply something
that's been caught in the crossfire all over the network

I share your concerns.

--
Colin Rosenstiel