Transport an' tings, am I correct in thinking it's turning out very well?

[Uwinsc]

And, if you haven't got one, will they let you on to the platform to .. ahem .. "get to the ticket machine"?

True

 

[Uwinsc]

Is that your sister on the Liverpool forum?

Yes

 

[e77]

Nice idea for the home fans, but how will that work for away fans arriving in town with just a paper ticket ?

Don't know! Would (in theory at least) mean a lot less people with paper tickets though.

 

[Pondicherry]

Usea the racecourse park and ride this weekend (having used Mill and Mithras) and was by far the quickest of the 3. Straight onto a bus after the game and in car by 5.25. However traffic was noticeably heavier trying to get back to A23 possibly because of the earlier release of Bennets.

Also - the parking at the racecourse is on the grass - what is the going to happen when this is turned into a muddy swamp in October to April?? Will be be down to two Pand Rs??

 

[West Hoathly Seagull]

One failure is undoubtedly the Travel Voucher scheme. No-one seems to be moaning about it, because no-one is being penalised for not buying a voucher. But it's certainly not working as it was intended to work.

Enforcing the scheme isn't the answer, either - because the reason it's not working is that it's impossible to enforce. It is a fundamentally bad idea to expect some people to pay for a whole year's worth of travel in one go and then let other people travel for nothing, because the transport staff don't have the resources (time or incentive) to intervene and stop free travel happening. It is impossible to check every passenger's ticket on a train journey that takes as little as 6 - 9 minutes when there are 400+ people travelling.

And it really makes no sense to allow people with senior citizens' bus passes to travel free on Park & Ride buses and football specials, apart from removing a group of passengers from an enforcement regime that isn't working anyway. Their travel isn't being paid for by anyone, apart from - presumably - the Club, who I guess are paying the transport operators a fixed sum, irrespective of who is travelling and what sort of ticket they have.

Would it not be better to go back to the old Withdean system of the travel cost being included in the cost of a season ticket and a match ticket? Sure, I suppose the club wanted to give a headline season ticket figure of below £400, but presumably this will be a one-season figure only, so long as we keep our Championship position, but I would not have objected to a North Stand ticket of £420, and presumably WSU people paying that figure wouldn't either. I regularly catch the 28 or 29 from Lewes to Falmer, and I am usually the only one using a travel voucher - most are paying the driver (costing themselves £3.70). Also, they used to collect travel vouchers at Preston Park. When I have come by train, yes I have been asked for the voucher at the first station, but never at Falmer.

Moans? Very few really, apart from not enough Gents toilets in the North Stand, but I think it's the same in WSU. They could also organise the queuing for the kiosks better, perhaps with winding queues rather than straight back to the wall from the kiosk, at the same time as there is a large amount of wasted space between the kiosks and the turnstiles. This makes it hard to get past those queuing. And, I cannot understand why so many people in the North Stand are still using cash, rather than putting credit on their season tickets. These are minor points though really. From the transport point of view, I have had no trouble at all. The 10.02 bus back after the Gillingham game was rather a squeeze, but the 10.32 in the week was no problem at all.

 

[8ace]

Would it not be better to go back to the old Withdean system of the travel cost being included in the cost of a season ticket and a match ticket? Sure, I suppose the club wanted to give a headline season ticket figure of below £400, but presumably this will be a one-season figure only, so long as we keep our Championship position, but I would not have objected to a North Stand ticket of £420, and presumably WSU people paying that figure wouldn't either. I regularly catch the 28 or 29 from Lewes to Falmer, and I am usually the only one using a travel voucher - most are paying the driver (costing themselves £3.70). Also, they used to collect travel vouchers at Preston Park. When I have come by train, yes I have been asked for the voucher at the first station, but never at Falmer.

Moans? Very few really, apart from not enough Gents toilets in the North Stand, but I think it's the same in WSU. They could also organise the queuing for the kiosks better, perhaps with winding queues rather than straight back to the wall from the kiosk, at the same time as there is a large amount of wasted space between the kiosks and the turnstiles. This makes it hard to get past those queuing. And, I cannot understand why so many people in the North Stand are still using cash, rather than putting credit on their season tickets. These are minor points though really. From the transport point of view, I have had no trouble at all. The 10.02 bus back after the Gillingham game was rather a squeeze, but the 10.32 in the week was no problem at all.

They changed it being included in the ticket for VAT reasons. It's annoying that when it was included I didn't need to use and now it's extra I do.

 

[Grendel]

MOST stations inside the Travel Voucher zone have no working barriers. Most importantly, Falmer doesn't.

As a point of fact, Falmer DOES have working barriers. They just don't use them on match days - presumably as you can only get two people at a time through them.

 

[Brovion]

They changed it being included in the ticket for VAT reasons. It's annoying that when it was included I didn't need to use and now it's extra I do.

The VAT/Non-VAT confusion doesn't apply now that they've put a value on the travel voucher. The one-off travel voucher costs £2 (£1 each way), therefore if you were to pay (for the sake of argument and to keep the maths simple) £25 for a ticket with an inbuilt travel voucher that breaks down as:

Match Ticket = £19.16
VAT on match ticket @ 20% = £3.84
Travel voucher = £2.00
VAT on travel voucher @ 0% = £0.00

Total: £25.00

Going back to having the voucher combined with the ticket will mean that everybody, including the away fans, has a voucher. It also answers the 'Bracknell Question' (which I don't think has ever been answered) of what happens if people turn up at a P&R site without a travel voucher?

PS - And like Withdean the match ticket and travel vouchers would be indivisible; you could not purchase just a match ticket only. Like you I never used the inbuilt vouchers and now I want to they've been discontinued!

 

[minnieme]

One failure is undoubtedly the Travel Voucher scheme. No-one seems to be moaning about it, because no-one is being penalised for not buying a voucher. But it's certainly not working as it was intended to work.

Enforcing the scheme isn't the answer, either - because the reason it's not working is that it's impossible to enforce. It is a fundamentally bad idea to expect some people to pay for a whole year's worth of travel in one go and then let other people travel for nothing, because the transport staff don't have the resources (time or incentive) to intervene and stop free travel happening. It is impossible to check every passenger's ticket on a train journey that takes as little as 6 - 9 minutes when there are 400+ people travelling.

And it really makes no sense to allow people with senior citizens' bus passes to travel free on Park & Ride buses and football specials, apart from removing a group of passengers from an enforcement regime that isn't working anyway. Their travel isn't being paid for by anyone, apart from - presumably - the Club, who I guess are paying the transport operators a fixed sum, irrespective of who is travelling and what sort of ticket they have.

I am a bit hacked of about the vouchers, paid for mine on the 3rd of August & still not arrived through the post. People are getting free trave while i have parted with £30.00.

 

[Daddies_Sauce]

I am a bit hacked of about the vouchers, paid for mine on the 3rd of August & still not arrived through the post. People are getting free trave while i have parted with £30.00.

We paid for ours and were sent duplicate booklets that we returned to the club. A bit miffed that we paid our 2 x £30 and not once have we been asked for a voucher, on the few occasions we have managed to catch a ‘football special’ bus service. The ‘Specials’ are usually full by the time they get to us, so they either abort further pickups en route and go direct to the Amex or drive past the waiting supporters.

 

[Gwylan]

Would it not be better to go back to the old Withdean system of the travel cost being included in the cost of a season ticket and a match ticket?

Not very fair on the people who walk or cycle though. The Withdean situation was different as it was one of the conditions for using the stadium. There's no such requirement at Amex.

The club should be encouraging people to walk or cycle to the ground. Adopting measures that seek to discourage walking and cycling is scarcely going to help us get planning permission for an increased capacity from a Green-led council.

 

[Twinkle Toes]

Bus driver on the 25 after Sunderland was refusing people with out vouchers got swore at a couple of times but stood his ground fair play to him

I take it it was the same driver who panicked somewhat & ended up sticking his bus alarm on? I'm not an advocate of mob rule, but I thought his 'stand' was bloody stupid - bearing in mind a load of us had been waiting for half an hour to get on a 25 & were getting royally pissed off with the jobsworthiness of it all. I actually know the guy who was (eventually) arguing with the driver & I'm pretty sure he was looking to use his smartcard(s) to board the bus with his son. Bearing in mind the club have said that this is an valid means of travel on matchdays, it made sod-all sense: especially since a number of us who eventually boarded the bloody thing used our Smartcards anyway!

 

[My Name Is Gully]

One failure is undoubtedly the Travel Voucher scheme. No-one seems to be moaning about it, because no-one is being penalised for not buying a voucher. But it's certainly not working as it was intended to work.

I agree it is not working as intended and it would appear that I am comparatively lighter in my pockets than some other travel users as a result of my adherence to playing by the rules. I bought two books as instructed to do by the club and have handed over tickets as requested by P&R stewards on each visit to stadium. I have attempted to hand over the remaining ticket on the return journey and never been asked to produce one (I realise that the sheer volume of users at this peak time would delay departure from the ground given the resources/staffing currenly at hand, and am ok with not producing a ticket resulting in getting away speedily). But it does grate a bit when I witness lots getting on unchallenged on the inbound journey stating "I am a season ticket holder". I was under the impression that things were to get tighter and can only suggest/hope that it will do eventually! I am still very pleased with every other aspect of my match day travel experience thus far.

 

[Gwylan]

What I find strange about the non-collection of tickets at Falmer is that Southern are generally obsessed with checking tickets. I commute to London and have to go through barriers at the start and end of journey as well as having my tickets checked on the train - sometimes twice. It's so un-Southern like to be lax on this.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

What I find strange about the non-collection of tickets at Falmer is that Southern are generally obsessed with checking tickets. I commute to London and have to go through barriers at the start and end of journey as well as having my tickets checked on the train - sometimes twice. It's so un-Southern like to be lax on this.

Especially on the East Sussex route. I've been working in Eastbourne over the Summer and they're round checking tickets every five minutes.

 

[Brovion]

Not very fair on the people who walk or cycle though. The Withdean situation was different as it was one of the conditions for using the stadium. There's no such requirement at Amex.

The club should be encouraging people to walk or cycle to the ground. Adopting measures that seek to discourage walking and cycling is scarcely going to help us get planning permission for an increased capacity from a Green-led council.

The old system wasn't very fair on people who walked or cycled to the ground. At Withdean the club tried to obfuscate the issue by saying the travel was 'free' and that the vouchers were 'valueless'. Neither was true (the club paid the travel companies and the vouchers, like any paper currency, could be exchanged for a service) but it enabled the whole package to be sold at a single price.

Whilst the planning considerations for Falmer are different the club still have to have a 'sustainable transport' policy in place. I maintain that it would be a really good idea to go back to the system where the ticket and travel were sold as a single entity. Sure there would be losers (as there were at Withdean where as I walked I never once used a voucher) but having a separate, voluntary scheme - or not having one at all - will also not endear us to a Green-led Council. They could argue, with some justification, that the Albion's commitment to reducing car use was not as strong as it used to be and was now little more than pious words.

Certainly from my perspective if there was no travel scheme there is no way I would add £4 to my match ticket by using the standard bus services.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Not very fair on the people who walk or cycle though. The Withdean situation was different as it was one of the conditions for using the stadium. There's no such requirement at Amex.

The club should be encouraging people to walk or cycle to the ground. Adopting measures that seek to discourage walking and cycling is scarcely going to help us get planning permission for an increased capacity from a Green-led council.

Sticking a pound on the price of a ticket to cover the clubs transport cost and enable "free" travel upon showing a smartcard is a 3% increase. Even if a ticket holder does not use public transport will they begrudge the club a £1 to have a slick transport/ticketing system which is used by the vast majority of supporters? At the end of the day as a tax payer we all have to subsidise rail fairs one way or another regardless of whether we use rail. Why not include our fellow Albion fans?

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

That must feel tough, if you do board at Haywards Heath.

I travel to and from Glynde (which is outside the Travel Voucher zone and has no barriers) and I have NEVER had my ticket inspected. MOST stations inside the Travel Voucher zone have no working barriers. Most importantly, Falmer doesn't.

They checked our train tickets at Lewes for the first time on Saturday. I was quite pleased because I've bought a return train ticket every time and was starting to wonder whether I should bother in future. I can imagine how busy Brighton station is though, I'm not sure they can ever do it.

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

With Bennetts Field producing a much better performance this week and the week on week sucess of the SU shuttle, transport now appears to be on-board with the stadium, team, pies, ale and everything else.

My afternoon and evening match routine is now pretty much sorted. In fact, getting to the ground earlier and leaving a little later makes for a far more chilled experience.

Aside from the 1901 man who simply could not wait an "unacceptable" 5 minutes for a spent coffee pot to be refilled, anyone have any remaining issues? Come on, someone must.

To address your original post - the biggest problems happened during the two night games - I don't want to experience the Gillingham train queue situation on a freezing winter evening. When a night game goes to plan, then we can say yes, lets get through our next three home games and have a look then.

the other thing that remains untested is sharing the train queue with fans from Millwall, or West Ham, or Palace, or Leicester, or Pompey, or Cardiff

 

[teaboy]

the other thing that remains untested is sharing the train queue with fans from Millwall, or West Ham, or Palace, or Leicester, or Pompey, or Cardiff

The vast majority of whom are fine.