Cannot buy under-16 tickets at rail stations!?

n97 mini

I brought my son (7) and my nephew and niece (8 & 10) on the train this afternoon. Ticket office was closed, so there was no option but to use the ticket machine. I have a smartcard for myself so I only needed to buy three under-16 tickets.

Lo and behold the machine will not allow you buy an under-16 ticketunless you buy an adult ticket first! So I opted to buy nothing and pay at the other end. Explained the situation in Tara and the guy at the ticket barrier was sharing in my disgust that it wasn't possible to buy an under-16 on its own.

Got home, asked my 15 year-old daughter who uses the train every weekend what does she do... "The ticket offices at the start and destination are always closed so I can't buy a an under-16 ticket. So just I don't bother buying a ticket at all".

WTF sort of genius came up with this system?!?!?!

Cookie_Monster

If office is closed you are under no obligation to use the machine.
The u16 option used to be there I believe but was removed, presumably to prevent abuse of it, after all the machine cannot confirm the age of a customer.

Lapin

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

If office is closed you are under no obligation to use the machine.

But you do have an obligation to have a valid ticket before boarding a train.

Catch 22 no ?

foggy_lad

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

If office is closed you are under no obligation to use the machine.
The u16 option used to be there I believe but was removed, presumably to prevent abuse of it, after all the machine cannot confirm the age of a customer.

The u16 option is available but only if an adult ticket is also purchased in the same transaction so Irish Fail dont want unaccompanied minors on their services!

dublinman1990

foggy_lad wrote: »

The u16 option is available but only if an adult ticket is also purchased in the same transaction so Irish Fail dont want unaccompanied minors on their services!

That is not technically true though, I have seen school children regularly use the DART because they may not have a suitable bus or no bus service at all.

For example, School children from Killieny or Dalkey to Blackrock would have to get an 8 bus if they are extremely lucky. If they miss it, they have no option but to get the DART instead.

Most of these kids during the school term have travel passes during the 5 day week or get a child's ticket from the stationmaster. I'd agree that TVM's are a different story altogether IMO.

Losty Dublin

This came up before here some time ago; it's to do with the fact that the machine can't determine if people are underage and entitled to buy a child ticket. Not at all ideal as situations go but in theory, if it's a concession it's not an guaranteed ticket yet it's a common enough ticket to warrant being on the TVM. One definitely to ask Irish Rail about tomorrow.

zagmund

Here, you've lost me with this logic.

You're telling me that in order to foil adults who might sneakily pay a child fare *which would never stand up to an inspection* they have taken away the child fare facility ?

Meaning that when a real, legitimate child comes along and wants to pay real legitimate money for a ticket they can't. Who wins in this situation ? The carrier - no since they lose out on the ticket sale. The child - possibly, since they don't have to/aren't able to buy a ticket and can go buy a comic or some drugs or something instead with the money they just saved. The sneaky adult - doesn't care either way, if they are going to try evading the fare they may as well jump over the barriers and ignore the stupid ticket machine. If the barriers are manned either end then they wouldn't get away with a childs ticket anyway.

Of course if these sneaky adults are accompanied by other adults who buy one full price ticket the sneaky ones can go right ahead and buy the child tickets anyway.

The machine doesn't have to or need to confirm the age of the customer. All it needs to do it take money in, give tickets out and let the staff worry about whether the ticket is the correct one. Should the ticket machine stop selling tickets to (say) Pearse because I could be one of those sneaky adults and buy a ticket to Pearse but go on to Booterstown or Seapoint and just cruise out the un-manned gates ? Nope, sell whatever ticket the customer asks for and if they are found with a childs ticket or a ticket to an earlier stop or whatever then just fine them.

z

TheChrisD

foggy_lad wrote: »

The u16 option is available but only if an adult ticket is also purchased in the same transaction so Irish Fail dont want unaccompanied minors on their services!

Well that's damn annoying. I had this happen to me last month when bringing my sister into town. Ticket office was closed at Dunboyne, so had to use the machine for her ticket (me being on Free Travel) and only had the choice for an adult ticket.

If anything it's only a minor pain for me, but I can see where it could potentially be a major pain.

n97 mini

zagmund wrote: »

Meaning that when a real, legitimate child comes along and wants to pay real legitimate money for a ticket they can't.

This is my daughter. Her solution is to travel for free as she can't buy a valid feckin ticket!

Only IE could come up with such feckin bullshit!

foggy_lad

It begs investigation how many minors/u16s have been stopped in the past by the diligent employees of the RPU for not having tickets which they could not buy and forced to pay a penalty fare of €100?

mickydoomsux

Weird, this must be a localised thing because our TVM definitely allows child tickets to be bought seperately

BrianD

Is there a family ticket available from these machines?

Certainly it makes no sense that a machine can't sell U16 because adults would purchase it. Even allowing that they have proof of age if stopped by an inspector, some money is better than no money.

n97 mini

BrianD wrote: »

Is there a family ticket available from these machines?

I tried but couldn't see a family ticket either.