...the French are made to!
On Monday this week I needed to buy a public transport ticket from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. My travels would be varied and multi-modal culminating at Orly Airport on the opposite side of Paris, and a quick bit of mental calculation (and guess work as to where I'd actually go!) meant I needed the one day Paris Visite ticket, valid in the outer zones (Aeroports Inclus).
Whilst there are three principal means of travel from CDG to central Paris (RER Line B, the coach operated by Les Cars Air France, and an express bus service operated by RATP, the Parisien municipal operator) my own travels would start on local bus 350. However I didn't rate my chances of buying the ticket on the bus so sought to buy it from the RER station at both Terminal 2, and at the airport's central bus and rail station Roissypole.
In my short career with Transport for London queues have been a constant source of both frustration and continued employment. Queues for rail replacement buses, queues at Olympic venue stations, queues at ticket machines after we close all the ticket offices. Queues for escalators, for trains, for lifts, you name it, if there's a queue on the Tube at some point I've planned, modelled, measured, and hopefully resolved it - or at least made it less bad.
This made the queues at CDG interesting (and a considerable waste of my time for more reasons than one!)
The banks of ticket machines have two significant problems. The first is a high degree of non-availability, i.e. broken, and the second if they don't sell the most useful visitor ticket, the Paris Visite. It is not unreasonable to expect that visitors to the city, tourists or suits, will require a ticket which gets them in to the centre of the city, probably allows them to travel around between attractions (or meetings?), and then gets them back to the airport. Yet the ticket machines do not sell any variation of the Paris Visite. So you queue up, eventually get to the machine, and your time is wasted.....you must visit the ticket office. How do I know this? I did it. I like testing the intuitiveness and capabilities of ticket machines.
So you queue up at the ticket office, and low and behold, they know EXACTLY what the average visitor wants because it is at the top of their notices, placed to keep you occupied and interested whilst queuing for second time!
I think the problem is the ticketing function at CDG is operated by SNCF; conversely the RATP machines at Orly Airport DO sell the Paris Visite!
Oh, and 23.50 Euros is steep for a day ticket within the city limits but I suppose it compares reasonably with the £17.20 peak zones 1-6 travelcard in London which includes Heathrow Airport. I suppose both Crossrail in London and Le Projet Grand Paris in Paris will set some interesting challenges for those who set fares.
On Monday this week I needed to buy a public transport ticket from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. My travels would be varied and multi-modal culminating at Orly Airport on the opposite side of Paris, and a quick bit of mental calculation (and guess work as to where I'd actually go!) meant I needed the one day Paris Visite ticket, valid in the outer zones (Aeroports Inclus).
Whilst there are three principal means of travel from CDG to central Paris (RER Line B, the coach operated by Les Cars Air France, and an express bus service operated by RATP, the Parisien municipal operator) my own travels would start on local bus 350. However I didn't rate my chances of buying the ticket on the bus so sought to buy it from the RER station at both Terminal 2, and at the airport's central bus and rail station Roissypole.
In my short career with Transport for London queues have been a constant source of both frustration and continued employment. Queues for rail replacement buses, queues at Olympic venue stations, queues at ticket machines after we close all the ticket offices. Queues for escalators, for trains, for lifts, you name it, if there's a queue on the Tube at some point I've planned, modelled, measured, and hopefully resolved it - or at least made it less bad.
This made the queues at CDG interesting (and a considerable waste of my time for more reasons than one!)
 |
| The ticket office at CDG2, with the queue out of the door. |
 |
| Ticket machines = queues |
 |
| Even one ticket machine can generate quite a following! |
 |
| The queue for the main bank of ticket machines snaking round the necessarily large ticket hall! |
 |
| And opposite, another queue for tickets keeps growing, |
 |
| Meanwhile, Roissy serves CDG Terminals 1 and 3 as well as being a significant interchange in itself. Here's the ticket office, with obligatory queue. |
 |
| And a bank of 6 ticket machines, of which only 4 were working (one has a notice with an expected fix date of 15 May, some two weeks hence, Cubic eat your heart out!) |
The banks of ticket machines have two significant problems. The first is a high degree of non-availability, i.e. broken, and the second if they don't sell the most useful visitor ticket, the Paris Visite. It is not unreasonable to expect that visitors to the city, tourists or suits, will require a ticket which gets them in to the centre of the city, probably allows them to travel around between attractions (or meetings?), and then gets them back to the airport. Yet the ticket machines do not sell any variation of the Paris Visite. So you queue up, eventually get to the machine, and your time is wasted.....you must visit the ticket office. How do I know this? I did it. I like testing the intuitiveness and capabilities of ticket machines.
So you queue up at the ticket office, and low and behold, they know EXACTLY what the average visitor wants because it is at the top of their notices, placed to keep you occupied and interested whilst queuing for second time!
 |
| They know what the customers want, just the plentiful ticket machines don't sell it! |
I think the problem is the ticketing function at CDG is operated by SNCF; conversely the RATP machines at Orly Airport DO sell the Paris Visite!
Oh, and 23.50 Euros is steep for a day ticket within the city limits but I suppose it compares reasonably with the £17.20 peak zones 1-6 travelcard in London which includes Heathrow Airport. I suppose both Crossrail in London and Le Projet Grand Paris in Paris will set some interesting challenges for those who set fares.