Ticket Barrier Installation

First Great Western have recently been doing many station improvements across the South West's network including installing the new 'Help Points', putting in new real time screens and announcement systems, and other general improvements to continue the great work FGW have recently been doing. The latest thing though seems to be the addition of new ticket barriers to currently un-barriered stations. 

The two stations that are currently receiving the treatment both carry a lot of traffic, these being Exeter Central and Truro. Both of these are quite obvious candidates. Truro receives a lot of people from both ends of the county, and also contains the branch line to Falmouth. Before now people walked through the ticket hall to exit. The doors were fairly small though and at peak times the area would become bottle necked with passengers, so the addition of gates to the sides of the platforms seems a sensible idea. Fare evading can also be a problem in this area because of certain un-manned stations. This gives the ticket inspectors more work to do and therefore not all passengers can been physically checked or issued with tickets in their journey and therefore this of course results in loss revenue for the TOC. Though there is also an exit from the Pumpkin Cafe that goes out onto the main road past the station. If this new system is to work surely this is going to have to be boarded up, or people will simply escape through there. 

Exeter Central often has extra staff on hand at the exit to the station to check the tickets, so people don't necessarily get away with fare dodging that easily, but of course the addition of the barriers here I'm sure will be greatly appreciated as people hurry down the flights of steps to the platforms. Though as Mr Rawlings pointed out, there is again a second exit from Exeter Central, so again something will have to be done here before the barriers can see full effect. Whether they can close the exit entirely is questionable, so we shall have to see what happens!