On 6 June, 21:41, Paul Corfield wrote:
Gates are
different because they are set unidirectionally and depending on which
target is tapped it is fair to assume someone is either entering or
exiting the system.

This is the nub of the problem at Tottenham Hale. The gateline is
located between PAYG services *within* the station. It's simply wrong
for it to assume everyone arriving at it is coming from outside the
system. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect each gateline to be
programmed for its particular circumstances to ensure the customer is
treated fairly (as standalone validators are, and as the JLE gateline
at Stratford is).

Yes you did. There is an opportunity to exit to the street at Tottenham
Hale therefore it is an OSI. *There is no other way this set up can
function because to not require exit from the NR platforms would create
a hole in the system.

Can you expand on this? I don't see what problem having the gateline
realise I was already touched in would create.

I am not making excuses and I am disappointed you think that I am. I am
providing an explanation - you might not like it but don't try and make
it personal please. I post here to try to help people understand and to
learn from others who know more about other subjects than I do.

And we very much appreciate your input. But that's why it's especially
frustrating when you take the position of "the system is perfect". It
would be much more interesting to hear some insight into why the
system couldn't be set up to behave as I had expected it to, and also
wouldn't put you in the position of fall guy.

U

On Sun, 07 Jun 2009 11:36:31 +0100, Commuter
wrote:

At the end of the day we both checked out statements on the ticket
machines and for both of us it said said something like:
"Baker Street - Unfinished
Unstarted - Westferry"

Thanks for this, I will start checking my statements more often. I
suspect I've been hit with something similar on occasion (if I use the
tube or DLR then Canary Wharf is the endpoint, but I suspect it will
be more widespread anyway).

Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

Though when was this? I didn't think LU ticket offices have been able
to do such refunds for a long time.


This is inconsistant and seems to depend on the person in the ticket office

I got a £5.00 at Marylebone reduced to the correct £2.20 only about a
month ago at the LUL ticket office BUT only a few days later a notice
appeared informing pax that they were not ablle to cancel Chiltern max
fares

I was told at one particular station ( not Marylebone) that they will
always do this if they can because quite often when they ring up the
help line they are told "just do it anyway"

My reading of the situation is that the ticket offices can do more
than they pretend as it is easier to say can't than won't but that it
is always worth trying

HTH Phil

I am not making excuses and I am disappointed you think that I am. I am
providing an explanation - you might not like it but don't try and make
it personal please. I post here to try to help people understand and to
learn from others who know more about other subjects than I do. *If I am
going to be made some sort of scapegoat then I can easily stop providing
an explanation and just go into read mode. *Sorry if that sounds like a
whinge but I am not TfL's fall guy on here!

--
Paul C

Paul

please dont go into read mode

I hope that I speak for many on here who think that it is really
beneficial on such a group to have an "insider" and I for one much
appreciate the trouble that you go to to tell us what is fact and not
speculation.

On Jun 7, 11:50*am, Mr Thant
wrote:
This is the nub of the problem at Tottenham Hale. The gateline is
located between PAYG services *within* the station. It's simply wrong
for it to assume everyone arriving at it is coming from outside the
system. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect each gateline to be
programmed for its particular circumstances to ensure the customer is
treated fairly (as standalone validators are, and as the JLE gateline
at Stratford is).

As I recall, it is not immediately obvious when you pass the NR
validator that there will be a gateline for LUL, or that there is no
gateline for access to the street. As far as the person arriving
there for the first time knows, they could be within a shared paid
area, and the validator by the NR platforms may be for people having
arrived on paper tickets and wanting to switch to PAYG, similarly to a
couple of stations along at Highbury and Islington, where there are
Oyster validators inside the paid area.

Meanwhile, at Finsbury Park, transferring between the suburban
services and the Victoria Line, a friend of mine recently used one of
those intermediate readers, and ended up being charged for an
unresolved journey at Walthamstow Central, because it assumed she'd
touched out at Finsbury Park. So to get it right, you almost need to
know if there's going to be a LUL gateline before you get to it.

--
Abi

On Jun 8, 12:36*pm, Abigail Brady wrote:

On Jun 7, 11:50*am, Mr Thant
wrote:

This is the nub of the problem at Tottenham Hale. The gateline is
located between PAYG services *within* the station. It's simply wrong
for it to assume everyone arriving at it is coming from outside the
system. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect each gateline to be
programmed for its particular circumstances to ensure the customer is
treated fairly (as standalone validators are, and as the JLE gateline
at Stratford is).

As I recall, it is not immediately obvious when you pass the NR
validator that there will be a gateline for LUL, or that there is no
gateline for access to the street. *As far as the person arriving
there for the first time knows, they could be within a shared paid
area, and the validator by the NR platforms may be for people having
arrived on paper tickets and wanting to switch to PAYG, similarly to a
couple of stations along at Highbury and Islington, where there are
Oyster validators inside the paid area.

Indeed.

(Though it's worth noting that at stations such as H&I, if you touch
on one of the 'interchange validators' before then exiting through the
gates, there are no ill effects - nor indeed are there if you enter
the gates then again touch on one of the standalone validators.)


Meanwhile, at Finsbury Park, transferring between the suburban
services and the Victoria Line, a friend of mine recently used one of
those intermediate readers, and ended up being charged for an
unresolved journey at Walthamstow Central, because it assumed she'd
touched out at Finsbury Park. [...]

That particular scenario doesn't make a lot of sense to me - I'm
pretty certain that the standalone validators at Finsbury Park are set
up as 'interchange validators', in other words they do not
definitively finish a journey but allow it to be continued [1]. Also
at FP, there's no explicit OSI shown on the official list of OSIs
obtained from TfL - so there's no need to touch-out and then touch-in
again.

I'll have to put this to the test next time I'm going through or near
Finsbury Park.

So I don't quite know what's gone on there - was she perhaps making a
very long journey that had 'timed out' by the time she reached
Walthamstow? Any idea what the origin station was?


[...] So to get it right, you almost need to
know if there's going to be a LUL gateline before you get to it.

My experience is that you *do not* need to know if there's going to be
a gateline at any station that you arrive at - if you touch-out on a
standalone validator and then reach a gateline, this does not cause a
problem.


-----
[1] *If* I've got this right, then it does demonstrate some of the
potential difficulties in rolling out Oyster on NR where there are far
fewer gated stations. Presumably a limit of say 20 minutes or whatever
could be set after which someone touching with the same Oyster card at
Finsbury Park would be assumed to be starting a new journey, rather
than continuing the old one (in other words they left FP station, had
lunch then came back to FP to travel elsewhere).

However things get a bit more complicated if they leave FP, go and
have lunch somewhere and then walk to Drayton Park station, which is
ungated, and touch-in there - if it's within the time limit the system
would presumably think they are finishing their journey at Drayton
Park having interchanged at FP, then when they eventually touched out
- say at Old Street - they'd get an unresolved journey and the £4
charge.

(Even if you were to propose 'fixing' this by configuring the
standalone Oyster validators at Drayton Park was set up to allow
journeys to continue - which wouldn't make a lot of sense as there's
no interchange at Drayton Park with any other lines, either in-station
or out-of-station - then the next hazard would be that of journeys
timing out.)

Just to be clear, all the above comments are predicated on my belief
that the validators at FP are set to allow existing journeys to
continue if touched on, which is in contrast to Abigail's comments
above. Regardless of that, they're an illustration of some of the
issues that surround actually implementing Oyster - the basic problem
is that no matter how smart the system may be, it can't mind read!
Therefore it has to be built around a number of assumptions.

On Jun 8, 3:51*pm, Mizter T wrote:
That particular scenario doesn't make a lot of sense to me - I'm
pretty certain that the standalone validators at Finsbury Park are set
up as 'interchange validators', in other words they do not
definitively finish a journey but allow it to be continued [1]. Also
at FP, there's no explicit OSI shown on the official list of OSIs
obtained from TfL - so there's no need to touch-out and then touch-in
again.

It was one of the validators in the NR interchange tunnel, I believe.

So I don't quite know what's gone on there - was she perhaps making a
very long journey that had 'timed out' by the time she reached
Walthamstow? Any idea what the origin station was?

Origin station was King's Cross Suburban, there is no chance at all of
a time-out.

--
Abi

On 8 June, 17:03, Abigail Brady wrote:
It was one of the validators in the NR interchange tunnel, I believe.

It sounds like they've been programmed as ungated station entry/exit
validators rather than intermediate validators (as found at Highbury
etc). I doubt there's a high volume of PAYG-PAYG interchange, so it's
not a completely unreasonable decision.

U

On Jun 8, 5:03*pm, Abigail Brady wrote:

On Jun 8, 3:51*pm, Mizter T wrote:

That particular scenario doesn't make a lot of sense to me - I'm
pretty certain that the standalone validators at Finsbury Park are set
up as 'interchange validators', in other words they do not
definitively finish a journey but allow it to be continued [1]. Also
at FP, there's no explicit OSI shown on the official list of OSIs
obtained from TfL - so there's no need to touch-out and then touch-in
again.

It was one of the validators in the NR interchange tunnel, I believe.

FWIW, my experience at FP is that all the validators are configured
the same, which makes sense I think.

I'll endeavour to revisit FP and test out what happens when
interchanging and touching on a validator sometime soon.


So I don't quite know what's gone on there - was she perhaps making a
very long journey that had 'timed out' by the time she reached
Walthamstow? Any idea what the origin station was?

Origin station was King's Cross Suburban, there is no chance at all of
a time-out.

Where had she come from before that? It's just that there's an OSI at
King's Cross between the LU station and the NR mainline station, and
indeed between St Pancras Thameslink and KX mainline station - so if
she'd arrived at KXSP on the Tube, or indeed on Thameslink, then spent
a bit of time around the area - having a coffee, meeting someone,
whatever - before re-entering the system within the time limit for
OSI, then there'd be the possibility of a time-out.

On Jun 8, 5:38*pm, Mr Thant
wrote:

On 8 June, 17:03, Abigail Brady wrote:

It was one of the validators in the NR interchange tunnel, I believe.

It sounds like they've been programmed as ungated station entry/exit
validators rather than intermediate validators (as found at Highbury
etc). I doubt there's a high volume of PAYG-PAYG interchange, so it's
not a completely unreasonable decision.


There is that, and it wouldn't be completely unreasonable under the
present arrangements (what with GN Electrics to Vic line interchanging
being rather more likely at H&I) - however it would definitely be
unreasonable when PAYG gains universal acceptance on NR.

I know I did a journey travelling north where I was on the Victoria
line and suddenly realised I'd forgotten to make a crucial phone call,
so I came up for air between KX and FP before diving down and going
subterranean again to Manor House. But maybe I didn't touch on a
validator when interchanging at FP... I was possibly even using a
Travelcard, I forget.