@quixoticgeek It was a pleasure reading this rant. Can't wait to use those ticket gates onf Friday. And Saturday. And Sunday. And then having to deal with Eurostar and SNCF. #BiberScratch
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@quixoticgeek Beware the (The!) alternative! https://aus.social/@augustusbrown/116056539132449510
@quixoticgeek We almost got stuck with something like this in Oslo too. Fortunately the project was a total failure and now we just use an app for tickets. No gates. Just random ticket inspections with fairly high fines.
@quixoticgeek great rant, tnx for this one!
@quixoticgeek After having read this thread, I now understand why Belgium wants to install these in train stations. They're the perfect amount of awful to make Belgian public transport even worse. And that certainly isn't an easy thing to do. Well done for building something SO FUCKING AWFUL that it can actually make Belgium worse.
@quixoticgeek oh we were stuck by these in Amsterdam, couldn’t figure out how to get in/out
@quixoticgeek If you will permit, I will take this opportunity to compare/contrast with the BART fare gates in SF that have also caused me considerable frustration (although it seems these are much worse).
@iris @quixoticgeek all of these wouldn't be a problem if transit was free.
@quixoticgeek because we are attempting to solve a sociopolitical issue with a technical implementation.
If fare evasion is such a big deal and ridership is high, simply tax everyone and make rides free.
If fare evasion is such a big deal and ridership is high, simply tax everyone and make rides free.
@Nimbius666 Yep. tho fare evasion is seen as a precursor to other crimes and antisocial behaviour, which is why they try to control it. Free public transport is of course the solution
@quixoticgeek omg I was so baffled by these gates as a tourist and felt lousy about it. Sounds like it was not entirely my fault.
@stylus not your fault. It's just bad design.
@quixoticgeek @stylus nah it's super tourist unfriendly.
@quixoticgeek so many parallels to some of the UK barriers too. Also one of the bus ticket machine manufacturers has put the NFC reader right below the barcode reader, which causes all sorts of issues with scanning mobile tickets if the app doesn't turn off the NFC.
I see the same issue with wide gates here too. At least places like Glasgow Queen Street have two wide gates so you can have one way operation. Though still not enough of them.
Why fares should just be eliminated.
If you look really closely on the inside panel of the gate dividers, you'll see some little red dots. These are part of a presence detector. If you trip one of these the gate stops responding. So, say you are traveling with a child and you have them ahead of you as you try to check them through the gate. They trip the sensor and the gate doesnt work. The same often happens when people put their suitcase in front of them. I often find passengers stuck trying to get through the gate like this
2/n
@quixoticgeek As someone who travels with a kid often by train this is simply not true.
@MisterMaker you're incredibly lucky. I see this happen almost weekly.
@quixoticgeek this is the most evil anti-feature I have ever heard of. I always put my luggage in front of me because if I don't, the gates will close on it and separate me from it.
You'll notice that one of the gates is wider than the other. For every platform (but not every gateline), one gate is wider than the others. This is so wheelchair users, larger passengers, people with bikes or lots of luggage can get through. This one wide gate is set up bidirectionally. What often happens is someone who could use any gate, tries to come through the wide gate, when a user who can only use the wide gate is trying to get through the other way. This causes tension among users.
3/n
@quixoticgeek And this. Similar setup in SF. When I am traveling with a bike (my default), I usually have to wait for people completely capable of using any of the other gates to go through the one gate I fit through with my bike. I get very frustrated about it.
And when I do get through, the gate usually closes on the back half of my bike no matter how quickly I try to move through. Sometimes I have to wrestle it free, and I may or may not do as much damage to the gate as possible when that happens.
@quixoticgeek usually, the wide gate is where the guiding line will lead blind NS customers. For me, the bi-directional gates are almost impossible to get through during rush hour. I memorize the location and direction of the ordinary gates for the stations that I often use. But even those arrangements can be changed. But there is a braille/tactile thingy on the check in surface, so I know I'm in Sighted People's thoughts.
@anantagd except I've also seen passengers who use a cane trip the sensors with their cane, so the gate locks up on them, with no audible information for what's happened. It's truly awful design.
@quixoticgeek proper procedure: first do the check in, then the cane. My instinct always is "cane first¨, so it takes so unlearning. The haphazard accessibility of NS is a good example of how they do design.
@anantagd i was on a GVB metro a couple of years ago when their storm troopers were doing a ticket check. I asked to see ID. Which they really objected to. They held the card such that with the rocking of the train I could focus on it. So I tried to hold it, thinking I can at least check the braille (I'm a sighted person, but I tried to learn braille out of curiosity). Wow did the ticket storm trooper not like that. Even when I explained why I needed to touch it... 1/2
@anantagd accessibility in this count is such a mixed bag. It's so upsetting. When they refurbed Lelylaan metro station they forgot the tactile paving until I reported it. As for the reliability of the lifts and escalators... Yikes. 2/2
@quixoticgeek It just takes so much energy and forethought, planning and even then things will go wrong. I have an appointment in Nijmegen with a sighted person, mid march. This together with another blind person. We need to coordinate our travel. We wanted a call in advance, mainly to find out whether traveling to Nimma and back will be worth the trouble. I had to explain, at length, how problematic train travel is for us. We have to arrange travel assistance, plan the whole thing, travel there, get back. 3 changes involved for either of us, so a lot of worry and investment of energy. Didn't land. People have no idea. Yes, the state of elevators is a crying shame. I need to be at Dordrecht Zuid every 2 weeks, and every time I re- report the broken elevators at that station.
When people have annoyed me doing this when travelling with my bike, I've sometimes pushed my wheel forward slightly to trip the sensor to block the gate from working in the hope the other traveller will bugger off. This issue could be resolved by installing a second wide gate per line, and making them unidirectional. But that would in theory reduce gateline capacity. Which is already pretty awful.
Why so? Well you see that round circle on the top? That's a nfc, and qr reader. And it sucks
4/n
@quixoticgeek further visual indicators that the wide gate is ONLY for people who need it is also an option. As is having two bidirectional wide gates. Or all wide gates.
@quixoticgeek the BART gates are impassable in BOTH directions for a brief interval after somebody uses them in either direction, as far as I can tell. So if you have to wait for a foot passenger to exit through the single wide gate (which you probably needed to circumnavigate the platform to reach in the first place), you then also have to wait for the gate to reset to bidirectional-standby mode.
@quixoticgeek Also the scanning thingy is located in a different place for the wide gates than for the narrow ones. People will put their card where the thingy usually is, which still exists but doesn't work, and not where the thingy actually is. Which may be to their left or to their right depending on the gate, also.
Passengers will try to scan an object to gain permission to pass the gate. Originally this was just an OV chipkaart. A simple NFC card based on MyFare classic. But, cos the people who design and implement these design abominations aren't the people who use them. They decided that you should be able to scan a QR code from your ticket to use the barrier. Which is slow, requires almost perfect alignment, and requires you scan the right qr code. Which is a pain as some ticket types have >1 qr.
5/n
@quixoticgeek This is an affront to all sentient beings.
Then you run into the problem that some phones when they get near the scanner realise it's an NFC reader, and switch from the PDF ticket you had open to try and use your phone wallet thingy. This then results in a passenger, usually with lots of baggage, stood blocking a gate faffing with their phone trying to get the gate to recognise a ticket to let them out. Or, in the worst case, cos they have now allowed people to travel with any card that works for contactless payments...
6/n
@quixoticgeek Yeah, last time I took an international train it triggered this. I had exit again with contactless payment and then retry scanning the qr code with the phone as far away from the thing as I could manage to avoid triggering nfc.
@quixoticgeek Also interesting difference with Japan: here gates are default-closed and they have to open for everyone. In Japan they are default-open but close very quickly if you try to go through without checking in. It makes the common case faster since you don't need to wait for the gate to open.
@quixoticgeek Oh, this happened to me just last week. My phone would not keep the QR code on the screen. I was only able to resolve this by sending the PDF to a fellow traveler's phone asking them to hand me their phone back over the gate. I was likely blocking the gate for 3 minutes until we had resolved this mess. I am not from the Netherlands, so I don't know how often this happens, but I was wondering what the "proper solution" for this issue is.
@jmaibaum @quixoticgeek I've had to disable NFC on my phone before to be able to scan a QR code on a ticket.
@jmaibaum how often this happens? At Amsterdam Centraal? Every few minutes
@quixoticgeek We were there to catch a night train past 23:30 so it was not so crowded anymore. But I can imagine the chaos during rush hour.
@quixoticgeek
Had this problem twice last Friday when using this gate for the first time with a QR code from the NS @ns_online app.
It's such a broken design, amazing.
Then, in a totally unrelated note, finding the ticket in the NS app for your current journey is also ridiculous. It's not even reachable from the main screen, there's a menu item AT THE BOTTOM of the app called "more" and then another menu called "tickets".
Then, from the ticket you cannot view your journey details. Again, amazingly broken.
@quixoticgeek I first complained about the NFC triggering phone payments back in 2017 (when we came back from CCC with a DB QR code in my email). they still have NS employees opening the turnstiles for people eight years later.
... When the phone switches from your pdf qr code to the phone wallet, it scans your card, charges you €20 for a checkout without a check-in, and let's you through. Bravo, great design. FFS
Then you get users who intend to use the phone as a payment device. These passengers tend to present as someone who's queued to get to the gate, then act totally surprised they now need to scan their device. They then stand there, faffing with their phone trying to bring up the wallet with the right card
7/n
@quixoticgeek the fallback to scanning a card instead of a ticket is just plain evil.
@quixoticgeek My only related complaint from SF is that the different transit systems, which interconnect, expect different things as far as tagging on and off.
BART: you must tag on and off, through a gate.
MUNI: you must tag on, but not off. If you board muni at a subway station, you must tag on by passing through a gate. If you board at street level, just tag on at the door. If you try to tag off at one of the fare gates when exiting a muni subway station, the gate will not respond, and you will stand there blocking traffic while you wait for confirmation of an ignored transaction.
CalTrain: if you tag on but not off, you will be charged the maximum possible fare for a trip starting from your point of embarkation. There are no gates, so please just remember to find a post. (I usually remember once I've exited the platform and have to go back, up and down some stairs or escalators or elevators with my cargo bike.)
At rush hour this is particularly infuriating.
But even if you're a regular traveller who knows how these things work, there's design "features" in the gate that are there to really piss off the user.
Now I have my OV Chipkaart on the outside of my wallet, I just pull the whole wallet out, place it on the scanner, and walk through. Absolute minimal faff. Except.
You remember those red dot sensor thingies? They bring a whole new way to piss you of once you've scanner your card.
8/n
If you scan your card and walk too fast, the sensor trips and then the gate refuses to open. You have to take a step back. Wait a second or two for the system to think about it. Then it opens. Except at rush hour you can't step back cos theres 400 people behind you who just want to get out the station or catch their train. Why is this feature there? I'm guessing cos the designers are sadists who have never used a train. But I can't be sure.
They could also be incompetent.
9/n
@quixoticgeek The designer of these gates is a weapons manufacturer, so…
@Soundtrackcity @quixoticgeek and the people managing these often don't care about the cost. In Vancouver, when they put the fare gates on the SkyTrain, the cost of building and operating it was way higher than the estimated fare evasion. And IBM was pocketing most of that money.
@quixoticgeek the BART gates occasionally fail to open (at all) (probably because they keep closing on people and damaging their mechanical parts) in which event you either force through and try not to get in trouble or go track down a BART employee to validate that you DID scan your card and the gate just refused to hold up its end of the bargain. I once tried hopping a gate after the gate just refused to open, and the employee treated me like a criminal, even after he validated that I had scanned my card.
Now if you scan your card, and walk through at just the right speed, but someone decides to try and tailgate you, an alarm goes off. Except the sensors have no way to tell if you're being tailgated by a human... Or your luggage... Or your bike... I like to think of this alarm on the wide gate as an awesome bike alert...
But it gets worse. That scanner, if the passenger behind you scans their card quick enough the gate stays open. Win. This maximises throughput. Except. They fuck this up
10/n
@quixoticgeek I think also, if you've one ticket for 2 people (which e.g. DB will happily sell you for Rotterdam -> Köln), you have to tailgate each other through the gate, as it'll only open once per barcode.
When you scan an OV Chipkaart (or if you're a barbarian, some other device), the screen flashes up and says something like "In, Reis op saldo" (checked in, travelling with credit on the card). All well and good. Except. If the person behind you is travelling on the same type of device, say lots of people with an NS business card... At say... Rush hour. The display will say the same thing for each passenger. In the same position on the screen. With no real blanking between passengers.
11/n
@quixoticgeek This is also a problem on BART, especially as the chip readers are unreliable and frequently require a few attempts to scan your card. I always wait for the previous message to disappear before I scan my card, because if I fuck it up, it won't just charge me more at the other end of my journey, it WON'T LET ME THROUGH. I will have to go find an agent and explain the situation, and again, they will treat me like a criminal.
What does this mean? Well if the second passengers card isn't read properly and they are walking fast enough, there's no difference visible to them between a successful scan and an unsuccessful one. In the noise of a busy station they may not notice the tailgate alert, and instead only find out when they get charged €20 for a invalid check out or checking out without checking in. Or get fined by a train conductor...
Such great design.
It makes me want to scream every time I use one.
12/n
How did something this shit get through validation testing? How do the designers feel knowing they spent all that time at uni, to make such a shit device. It's up there with cats arsehole toilet roll dispenser in the pantheon of mind bogglingly awful designs.
And what's most annoying of all, is that it didn't need to be this awful. TFL for all their innumerable faults, had a great design of gate. I'm talking the pneumatic ones, not the shitter new ones.
But we don't even need gates at all
13/n
@quixoticgeek Not only do we not need gates, we don't fucking need fares. We could subsidize all of public transportation and it would be better for the community. Better financially, even, to not have to maintain crap hardware and post station attendants to untangle the messes it makes and hire repairpeople to come fix the gates that keep breaking because people have no choice but to force them open if they slam shut on their bodies or belongings.
Also, some of them really hurt. I don't think that should be legal.
@quixoticgeek I remember reading that one of the main constraints for MTA turn styles in NYC were that they had to process tickets at NooYawk walking pace, without any need to break stride
@quixoticgeek this sounds terrible. It makes me feel better as an infrequent metro or subway traveler though. I used to be a frequent air traveler for work, and feel competent to navigate that system and rental cars. And I feel so incompetent every time I use the subway or train; I do it wrong, I delay things, need help. And I hate it because usually I know what I’m doing. This all makes me realize it’s not just me not knowing what I’m doing.
@3janeTA I am a regular train traveler. I've often clocked up hundreds of km of rail travel within the Netherlands on a single weekend. And even I get tripped up by the shit design of these gates.
Some stations where the layout or traffic pattern doesn't allow for or justify the expense of the gates (i.e. Maastricht, or Schiphol), they just have a card reader on a post you can use to check-in/out. Sure this reader has all the same issues as the one on the gates. But the faults due to the mechanics & sensors of the gates are at least avoided
In case it wasn't evident earlier. I really fucking hate these ticket gates. It's such inexcusably bad design
Thank you for letting me rant.
14/14
@quixoticgeek Exactly that 20€ thing happened to me. Because I tried to use Interrail and it failed to read the ticket, no idea why. So the credit card is the next best thing to read.
@quixoticgeek Excellent analysis of what's wrong with these gates if the public transit passenger was the customer. But they're not. These gates exist for only one purpose, and that is keeping poor people off the trains. Given that, we can see things like the sliding doors as an "improvement" over turnstiles because they are harder to bypass. We can see that the lack of cash or token payment enforces the use of a bank card and phone. I could go on...
@wcbdata you can still buy an OV chipkaart for cash. You can still top up an OV chipkaart with cash. It's not as easy. But it is still doable.
@quixoticgeek Yep - it's that."not easy" they're going for. No-fare public transportation is the way... Commercial real estate taxes are the way to pay for it. That way it's progressive against the entities most benefitting from the commuting workforce & visitors. 🙂
@quixoticgeek just get rid of tickets for public transport once and for all.
the roads are also paid for by all so why not trains and busses.
@quixoticgeek
And the MyFare is a stupid design. As is using NFC for anything outside a warehouse (which it was designed for).
QR codes for tickets/security or stamps (UK post) is also stupid. They are simple text encoded as a 2D pattern.
Lazy in the first place using either for consumer payment or keys or tickets.
@quixoticgeek I once had a great time with a Dutch gate too. I had a valid German paper ticket and couldn't get out because there was nothing to scan. The station had no staff to let you out.
If I hadn't run into a train conductor who kindly let me out, spend the night on the platform I guess?
@gunchleoc there should be a call point. Near the barriers to call a central command location who can open the barriers. I've had to do this in the past.
@quixoticgeek On the Tyne and Wear Metro mostly at smaller stations we have readers on posts (which of course we call lollipops) rather than gatelines. Definitely makes things easier. If someone has already bought a paper ticket at the ticket machine it's very annoying for them to have to potentially queue up again to go through a gate.
And the gatelines at the big stations usually need to be staffed, to deal with all the ways they manage to not work properly. 
@quixoticgeek As a fellow hater of these f*cking atrociously shitty gates THAT ALWAYS OPEN TOO GODDAMN SLOW, I appreciate the rant. 🫶
Bonus points for showing the worst train station in #TheNetherlands, mf Station Sloterdijk. May we someday demolish that entire station with their eternally broken escalators, broken elevators, broken automatic doors, slippery floors and stairs, and bs layout. Esp death to track 10 in that shitty separate building a billion lightyears away from the main tracks. 😤
@Gina @quixoticgeek I think I've last used Sloterdijk 20 years ago and I still bear the scars.
@aerique @quixoticgeek I have to go there twice a week and I'd need therapy twice as long to deal.
Exactly… which begs the question: Do the traffic patterns etc at busy stations really justify the expense and hassle of gates? Or could all the stations be this way?
…Or - like the roads - could the train simply be free to use?
@DavidM_yeg @quixoticgeek or, as a middle thing, drop those stupid gates. We don’t do that in .de, and Cymru was also mostly free of them, but England insisted on them and they failed to recognise Interrail…
@DavidM_yeg roads aren't free to use. Unless you are a pedestrian or a cyclist, access to the roads is under license, and in most countries you pay some form of charge for road access. In the UK this is Vehicle Excuse Duty, which is wrongly often called "road tax". Etc...
@quixoticgeek @DavidM_yeg To be fair, VED is levied if a vehicle is used on public roads. Keep your car on your own property and it's not liable
I think where the government doesn't like the term 'road tax' is the implication that the tax pays for the roads. It doesn't, any more than alcohol taxes subsidise the beers
Yes, I pay vehicle registration fees, and very significant tax on fuels, and income taxes because nothing is truly free at this point in history and the money needs to come from somewhere. BUT, *who* pays, *when* and *how* are very important matters, and for roads we decided to allow drivers autonomy and general freedom of access, but for efficient mass transport decided to go the route of security and control. 🤷♂️
@DavidM_yeg aye. This we need to fix it society is to have any hope of a future. It's a big if.
@quixoticgeek @DavidM_yeg In the US (not sure about Canada) the license and registration are tiny fees compared to what the roads cost to maintain, so it's effectively publicly subsidized car transportation (only).
@iris @DavidM_yeg Yeah, the costs are largely externalised. In Europe we have high taxes on fuels too.
@quixoticgeek And because not all stations have them (Naarden-Bussum is another example) you end up having ticket inspectors on the trains sometimes anyway, making the whole thing even sillier.
@quixoticgeek It was a pleasure reading this rant. Can't wait to use those ticket gates onf Friday. And Saturday. And Sunday. And then having to deal with Eurostar and SNCF. #BiberScratch
