Another case of “you can’t cure stupid” brought to you by Southeastern Trains.

Our local station seems to have a high incidence of fare evaders, and consequently, we often have ticket inspectors waiting for us at the doors of our otherwise uncontrolled station. In a move to improve efficiency and reduce fare evasion, the lovely people at Southeastern have invested in some automatic ticket barriers which were installed a few weeks ago.

Our new ticket barriers

Our station is also unmanned about 50% of the time, meaning that you cannot buy a ticket from a real person. Instead, you need to purchase your ticket from the automated ticket machine.

Automated ticket machine

Now here’s where someone fell off the stupid tree and hit every branch. The automated ticket machine is located inside the station, on the platform by the tracks. This arrangement worked very well before they installed the new ticket barriers.

But now we have ticket barriers outside the platform, and the ticket machine inside the platform. And yes, you guessed it. You need a ticket to get through the barriers and onto the platform.