Ticket Gates

Some of the city centre train stations have finally installed ticket gates that you pass through when entering and exiting the station. This replaces the surly union guy who checks your ticket on a good day and reads the paper on others. And I think the idea is, this gets rid of the crowds of people standing around; those fuming and waiting to get out of the station why the union guy has a browse of everyones ticket. Apparently lots of modern-type countries have these.

But the new machines are a slight overkill, with a fancy slow swoosh as the glass doors open and close. They don't swallow your ticket when you're finished either and unfortunatly, they've decided to switch on every light, with the result that you have green glowing arrows pointing you in every direction once you've entered your ticket..




Seeing how long it took Irish Rail to actually install them in the first place, I figure it'll be another ten years before they fix it..