Scotfail

[psychochicken]

Picture the scene. It's Glasgow Central, it's busy, and the train's in 5 minutes. There are queues a mile long at both the ticket office manned by one semi literate YTS reject, and the world's clunkiest ticket machine. There's always a barrier check so no chance of buying a ticket on the train

Comments

[f4f3]

You really think the union sets ticket issuing policy?
Welcome to the streamlined world of privatised transport, comrade.
(actually, to avoid making it just about politics, I find the more modern and understaffed the organisation, the worse the service - the eye-wateringly expensive Heathrow Express, and "everybody hates us but we don't care" Ryanair come to mind?

[psychochicken]

What - exactly - about that is streamlined?

And no, the union probably doesn't set ticket issuing policy - but their members are making it awfully fecking hard for us to support them when they're being as innefective, inneficient and utterly without gumption as this.

Absolutely no sign of understaffing here - in fact if anything the opposite is true. There were eight people on that barrier check. Six of them were doing fuck all, and the other two were doing as little as possible as badly as possible. The point here is the "we've been told this and we're doing it no matter how stupid it is" attitude.

[a_pawson]

Personally I don't use public transport because it's ridiculously expensive. A return train from here to London will set you back £201. If we both go, it's twice that.

[deililly]

I have had a few maddening ones in Motherwell. Once when I was trying to buy a ticket for edinburgh. Had got to the station an hour before the train went so thought I would get a ticket (while there was no queue for a change) and then amble off to find a cup of tea. Guy tried to refuse to sell me a ticket as I was too early and I 'might change my mind'. Wtf? I was standing with my weekend wheely suitcase utterly baffled. It was only an hour. I am not sure what he thought was going to happen in the meantime.

Scotfail

[jobob_80]

He's only there to catch stragglers coming off the train. You'll notice that central have /manual/ barrier checks, unlike Queen St. That's because they were instigated /before/ ensuring that every train station has ticket facilities at all. So if the conductor can't get round the train, passengers can't buy tickets and hence can't be penalised for arriving at their destination without one. It's nuts.
Other things that annoys me: Paisley only shows screens that scroll despite having only four platforms, so you often have to stand for several minutes until you know what train is leaving from where; the difference in cost between a monthly train ticket and a monthly zonecard is pretty minuscule; and if trains are going to be late they don't tell you until they already are. Amongst other things...

[friedegg_ntl]

You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.