*Opal Card INFRASTRUCTURE roll-out progress ONLY*

[matthewg]

County? Could that be Cumberland County?

I was having an extra bad spelling day. I spelt the filename wrong too.

[crimsontide]

Noticed all three old ticket machines removed at Kings Cross this afternoon and sitting near the escalators.
Assume this will be repeated at most stations

Seems to be the exception rather than the rule atm.

[Frosty]

Noticed a new set of Opal waist height barriers (LU style) recently installed at Town Hall east side near the station manager office. They were fully uncovered but were not powered on. Might get a photo of them next time I pass by.

[crimsontide]

Finally the TVMs have been removed for Hornsby, now the space covered by a plywood board , and the other by metal plates.

[Tonymercury]

Noticed a new set of Opal waist height barriers (LU style) r

I suspect that these should be more correctly described as 'TfL style' as they are starting to appear on some London Overground stations.

[Jurassic_Joke]

Noticed a new set of Opal waist height barriers (LU style) r

'TfL style' as they are starting to appear on some LOL stations.

?

[Tonymercury]

?

London Overground

[iamthouth]

Propose to unsticky this topic, last post was Sept 2016.

[marcnut1996]

2758 ST still has one green paper ticket reader (the other one next to driver has been removed). I thought all the readers have been removed.


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[matthewg]

Rather oddly, the Gibbons Street entrance to Redfern Railway Station gained two grey 'opal foundation poles' on Monday.

Looks like the 4 gates (open bypass gate) are going to be removed and just have 3 poles at that station entrance instead of gates.
Many people already just walk through the gates and use the poles.

Any other stations had gates removed?

[matthewg]

Over the weekend the gates at the Gibbon Street exit to Redfern station were removed, along with the little hut for the gate controller and replaced with 4 (more) opal poles.

New Opal poles at Redfern

[quaidy]

Is it fair to say that everyone should be tapping out now on exit from stations? My observation at a moderate sized suburban station was maybe 1/3 not doing so. Obvious fare evasion?


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[andy_centralcoast]

Perhaps they hit the daily/weekly cap so didn't bother, or simply tapped off at another pole somewhere else at the station?

[boronia]

Is it fair to say that everyone should be tapping out now on exit from stations? My observation at a moderate sized suburban station was maybe 1/3 not doing so. Obvious fare evasion?


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My observation is that about 1/3 don't tap on a my local station, so presumably they have nothing to tap off when they get to their destination.

[matthewg]

Is it fair to say that everyone should be tapping out now on exit from stations? My observation at a moderate sized suburban station was maybe 1/3 not doing so. Obvious fare evasion?

This probably varies wildly by time and location. Pretty well EVERYONE taps on/off at my station. I might see the occasional person walk past the poles.

However, most of my travel is in the peak and most people using my station are travelling to/from the CBD which is gated.

Not tapping on/off would result in a 'penalty fare' charged, so there is an incentive to do it correctly.

Back when the travel reward was free trips people tended to no bother tapping on Fridays until the RPOs paid a couple of visits to the station. I haven't seen them at my station for over a year now.

[moa999]

Possible evasion trick taking advantage of the 5hr journey times.
Come back a few hrs later, tap off, wait 30 secs then tap on again creating a transfer.

Hard one to crack down on given the size of the system

[GazzaOak]

Why would redfern have its fairgates removed?? that a odd station to pick to remove fairgates

[Stu]

^ Matbe the gates were removed to reduce pedestrian congestion as the gates were next to the entrance to the very busy esr platforms. With regards to the entry/exit at Redfern esr platforms, I've often wondered why there is a large obstacle (wall/room?) towards the left at the top of the entry/exit - it is not visible in the photo above. The pedestrian traffic can become very busy with people almost bumping into each other around the blind spot corners. The top of the entrance/exit for the esr at Redfern is now much less like a funnel, the removal of the gate control hut should assist pedestrian flow.

[Jurassic_Joke]

Possible evasion trick taking advantage of the 5hr journey times.
Come back a few hrs later, tap off, wait 30 secs then tap on again creating a transfer.

Hard one to crack down on given the size of the system

Making reference to my trick, thanks for that Moa, just gave me an idea Theres a nice coffee shop right outside Redfern station going towards University of Sydney with wifi et al, ill have to give that a try too ^^

[matthewg]

I've often wondered why there is a large obstacle (wall/room?) towards the left at the top of the entry/exit - it is not visible in the photo above.

It's the fire services control room for the underground platform. Yes, it wasn't a particularly good location for it from a people flow point of view. I assume they wanted it near the actual underground platform and moving a few metres further west would have made it much more expensive as it would be out over the hole.
I assume it was price that resulted in it adding to the people flow choke point and the platform entrance.

Another thing that annoys me about Redfern is the airflow up the escalators. There is a ruddy great big hole next to the up track, but it's blocked off by a wall. If they took a chunk of wall out, the air flow from the trains would escape that way instead of racing up the escalator shaft. Occasionally a door in the wall blows off and for a few weeks there is daylight and an escape route for the air pushed in by the trains - then they get around to repairing it.

[simonl]

^ Matbe the gates were removed to reduce pedestrian congestion as the gates were next to the entrance to the very busy esr platforms. With regards to the entry/exit at Redfern esr platforms, I've often wondered why there is a large obstacle (wall/room?) towards the left at the top of the entry/exit - it is not visible in the photo above. The pedestrian traffic can become very busy with people almost bumping into each other around the blind spot corners. The top of the entrance/exit for the esr at Redfern is now much less like a funnel, the removal of the gate control hut should assist pedestrian flow.

There are similar issues at Blacktown 1/2 (The Richmond branch platforms), which have a ridiculously low number of gates for an arriving train given the number of people getting off it. There needs to be something done here.

[Campbelltown busboy]

There are similar issues at Blacktown 1/2 (The Richmond branch platforms), which have a ridiculously low number of gates for an arriving train given the number of people getting off it. There needs to be something done here.

They have blocked off half the gates and the office that's used by the staff member that is rostered on to look after the gates for platforms 1/2 at Blacktown

[Tonymercury]

^ Matbe the gates were removed to reduce pedestrian congestion as the gates were next to the entrance to the very busy esr platforms.

I've had a look here and the poles have been located further into the station and there are now a lot more readers than there were gates.

I would suggest that there may have been congestion issues, especially in the morning peak when there was a tailback from the pedestrian crossing to the former barriers,

[boronia]

This may have been mentioned before, but I noticed today there is an Opal single ticket dispenser at the outbound LR stop in Hay St outside Capitol Square. Haven't used these stops for a while, may well be others along the line?

[jpp42]

Tram single ticket dispenser machines were placed at most (all?) tram stops prior to the removal of customer service officers and conversion to transport officers, earlier this year.