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Ticket barriers at Stockport

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Altfish

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The station is locked up after the last train departs, literally. I was onboard said train once and was thrown out to wait for the Replacement bus to Levenshulme at the bus stop, at midnight, completely by myself. Fun times in Stockport!

I don't think it can be a right of way then.
 
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lejog

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Where will be the best place to approach in order to determine the current OFFICIALLY-ACCEPTED right of way status in the said location?

Rights of Way are by law are shown on the "Definitive Map" maintained by the responsible council. Most Definitive Maps are on-line nowadays, unfortunately Stockport Council are not so technologically advanced and a visit to their offices is required. Booked in advance but free of charge.

If the tunnel has been locked at night:
- it is highly unlikely to be a RoW
- the owners while allowing access are signifying that it do not intend it to become a RoW under the 20 year rule.
 
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scrapy

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Barriers are now in place (not powered and still covered in card/plastic). There are 3 narrow and 1 wide gate at each end of subway. Staff Control unit at ticket office end. No barriers on platform 0 as expected. Three new tvms at Edgeley end.
 

rick9525

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I am sure in the late 80's/early 90's the tunnel was split so you went through a ticket check on left side and you could walk through the tunnel on the right which had a barrier down the middle. Assume still all shut at night though.
The alternative routes as already mentioned add quite a time penalty.
 

northwichcat

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Barriers are now in place (not powered and still covered in card/plastic). There are 3 narrow and 1 wide gate at each end of subway. Staff Control unit at ticket office end. No barriers on platform 0 as expected. Three new tvms at Edgeley end.

Yep. I expect there to be congestion at the barriers at peak times, given that it's not just passengers entering and leaving the station who will go through them but also passengers changing between services which use platform 0 (towards Hazel Grove and Sheffield) and other platforms.
 

edwin_m

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Are barriers clever enough to distinguish tickets for which a change at Stockport is a valid route? I'm thinking platform 0 could have its own barriers (should be room on the upper level without affecting the car park access) with passengers interchanging having to use two sets.
 

northwichcat

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Are barriers clever enough to distinguish tickets for which a change at Stockport is a valid route? I'm thinking platform 0 could have its own barriers (should be room on the upper level without affecting the car park access) with passengers interchanging having to use two sets.

I would imagine if you wanted to set the barriers to accept tickets people may use on a daily basis such as "Knutsford to Manchester CTLZ Route:stockport" and reject "Knutsford to Metrolink City Route:Altrincham Metrolink" it should be easy enough to include.

However, if you want the barriers to determine whether tickets such as Poulton-le-Fylde to Leighton Buzzard are valid via Stockport, I'm not sure the barriers will be programmed to do that.
 

Ash Bridge

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Had reason to visit Stockport Station today to collect some tickets, several extra staff were present to assist people, although the barriers do not seem fully operational as yet and remained in the open position.
 

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Greybeard33

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Yep. I expect there to be congestion at the barriers at peak times, given that it's not just passengers entering and leaving the station who will go through them but also passengers changing between services which use platform 0 (towards Hazel Grove and Sheffield) and other platforms.
It is not unusual for the signallers to switch an evening peak Sheffield - bound train from Platform 0 to Platform 2 at short notice, so it can have a Fast line route from Slade Lane to overtake a stopper. This causes a panic rush through the subway when the platform change is announced. Hopefully all the barriers will be opened in such cases.
 

Altfish

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I had the 'pleasure' of crossing from Platform 3 to 0 this morning with the barriers in operation. There are 3 normal and one disabled/wideload barrier. At about 0720 this morning they had 2 open to enter the station and one to leave the station, the wide one was open and manned.
It was chaos, the exiting barrier is of course needed to be used to get to Platform 0; I'm glad I wasn't in a rush, about 70% of the tickets failed to open the barrier. There were staff on hand to manually operated the gates.

Allow an extra 5-minutes if you have a connection from Platform 0!!
 

xfield

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Why do the gates have to have a direction? In New York the gates on the subway are bi-directional, so it works with the flows as a train having just arrived will flood the gates as people exit.

Four gates seems nowhere near sufficient - I guess on paper they thought there's four at either end, so eight gates total - ...plenty!
 

causton

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Why do the gates have to have a direction? In New York the gates on the subway are bi-directional, so it works with the flows as a train having just arrived will flood the gates as people exit.

Because otherwise people will put tickets in at both ends at the same time and walk straight through into each other! The closest we get is first-come-first-served on the wide gates, where it is "in" for 5 seconds then "out" for 5 seconds (the time can vary a lot, some have been 1 second sometimes I have seen 60 seconds!) so you have to race someone going the other way while the arrow is still showing!
 

TEW

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I had the 'pleasure' of crossing from Platform 3 to 0 this morning with the barriers in operation. There are 3 normal and one disabled/wideload barrier. At about 0720 this morning they had 2 open to enter the station and one to leave the station, the wide one was open and manned.
It was chaos, the exiting barrier is of course needed to be used to get to Platform 0; I'm glad I wasn't in a rush, about 70% of the tickets failed to open the barrier. There were staff on hand to manually operated the gates.

Allow an extra 5-minutes if you have a connection from Platform 0!!

I'm surprised the gates haven't been to accept all tickets for now. That seems to be standard practice when gates are first installed, whilst people get used to them. 3 standard gates isn't enough, accept for very quiet locations. They will quickly get overwhelmed at busy periods.
 

Starmill

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They seem to have approached this by looking at the subway and saying "We can fit 4 gates in there. So that's how many we need." And thought about it not more than that...
 

Bletchleyite

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They seem to have approached this by looking at the subway and saying "We can fit 4 gates in there. So that's how many we need." And thought about it not more than that...

It does seem so. As the building isn't small, I'm surprised they weren't moved back into the ticket office so more could fit.
 

Clip

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Looking at the picture though it looks far better for crowd control to funnel them down into it.

Im just laughing at the banners saying meet our new welcome hosts with not one in sight.
 

Ash Bridge

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Looking at the picture though it looks far better for crowd control to funnel them down into it.

Im just laughing at the banners saying meet our new welcome hosts with not one in sight.

Yes it does look that way on the picture, although in fairness and off shot behind the camera there were three or four staff assisting passengers.
 

TEW

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Looking at the picture though it looks far better for crowd control to funnel them down into it.
Maybe for entering the station. But the last thing you want to be doing is funnelling people down and holding them up as they are trying to exit. You want the crowds of people coming off trains to disperse as quickly as possible, it just looks like they'll pile up in the subway now.
 

Starmill

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Not to worry. I'm sure everyone waiting in the queue to get out of just two gates in the evening peak will certainly feel as though they have arrived awesome(ly)...
 

6Gman

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They seem to have approached this by looking at the subway and saying "We can fit 4 gates in there. So that's how many we need." And thought about it not more than that...

A complaint on the Virgin twitter feed from someone claiming they missed their train because of delays at the barriers.

So now you must leave x minutes for queueing for a ticket and y minutes for queueing at the barriers!

:D
 

northwichcat

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A complaint on the Virgin twitter feed from someone claiming they missed their train because of delays at the barriers.

So now you must leave x minutes for queueing for a ticket and y minutes for queueing at the barriers!

:D

Are you sure they were starting their journey at Stockport? If they were doing a journey like Macclesfield to Sheffield then they would have to go through the barriers to get to platform 0 for a Sheffield train and the official connection time is 5 minutes, which without the barriers would be very generous in most cases.
 

crehld

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Are you sure they were starting their journey at Stockport? If they were doing a journey like Macclesfield to Sheffield then they would have to go through the barriers to get to platform 0 for a Sheffield train and the official connection time is 5 minutes, which without the barriers would be very generous in most cases.
Looking forward to my +5 in a couple of weeks!
 

steve a

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A complaint on the Virgin twitter feed from someone claiming they missed their train because of delays at the barriers.

So now you must leave x minutes for queueing for a ticket and y minutes for queueing at the barriers!

:D

The woman in front of me took 2 minutes this morning. First, she had to take her ticket out. She then tried to put the ticket and reservation through together. Next, she tried the reservation on its own. Finally, she tried the ticket itself and it worked! She then went half way through the barrier then moved back to pick up her ticket and then put it through again..
 

Bletchleyite

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The woman in front of me took 2 minutes this morning. First, she had to take her ticket out. She then tried to put the ticket and reservation through together.

Wasn't Japanese, was she? Their barriers can handle two tickets inserted at once, indeed that's how you do it at an interchange station between two operators. (Yes, indeed, no integrated ticketing!)
 

Clip

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Maybe for entering the station. But the last thing you want to be doing is funnelling people down and holding them up as they are trying to exit. You want the crowds of people coming off trains to disperse as quickly as possible, it just looks like they'll pile up in the subway now.

Do they? Wow amazing info thanks for that.

However - I can pretty much guess that the issues at the moment are getting the pax used to using barriers s Im guessing its all brand new.

Oddly enough - people ehave been queuing to get in and out of barrier for many many years all over the network without too much real both and in places where they don't have many gates - im sure the good folk of Stockport will figure it out sometime soon and catch up with the rest of us.
 

northwichcat

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Oddly enough - people ehave been queuing to get in and out of barrier for many many years all over the network without too much real both and in places where they don't have many gates - im sure the good folk of Stockport will figure it out sometime soon and catch up with the rest of us.

Do many stations have so few barriers where passengers have to go through the barriers to get between platforms? Liverpool Lime Street and South Parkway both require passengers to go through barriers to get between platforms but they both have a lot more barriers in relation to the number of passengers.

Given Bletchley has a third of the number of passengers Stockport has, with interchange passengers not needing to go through the barriers, how do you think it would work if it had just one entry and one exit barrier?
 

WelshBluebird

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Do many stations have so few barriers where passengers have to go through the barriers to get between platforms? Liverpool Lime Street and South Parkway both require passengers to go through barriers to get between platforms but they both have a lot more barriers in relation to the number of passengers.

Given Bletchley has a third of the number of passengers Stockport has, with interchange passengers not needing to go through the barriers, how do you think it would work if it had just one entry and one exit barrier?

The main subway at Cardiff Central has 5 barriers I believe (four normal and one wide) that you have to exit before making your way to platform 0 and I am guessing is busier than Stockport is. Although I guess platform zero isn't intensivly used at Cardiff (last time I was there for any decent length of time it wasn't anyway) and there is also the secondary subway where the lifts are located that has two extra barriers, although access to this is from different stairwells on the main platforms.

Pontypridd station has barriers that you have to pass through to get from the northbound platforms to the southbound platform (from memory I think there are 3 barriers on both platforms)
 
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steve a

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Wasn't Japanese, was she? Their barriers can handle two tickets inserted at once, indeed that's how you do it at an interchange station between two operators. (Yes, indeed, no integrated ticketing!)

No, she was probably somebody who rarely travelled by train. I expect she'd shown her tickets to the guard on the train she'd travelled on and then put them away, not expecting to need them again.

The other problem was that my ticket wouldn't even work! I had to hand it to a staff member to let me through. It worked OK on Tuesday and Wednesday!
 
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