Horrible doors on British trains (2010) | Hacker News Reader

Horrible doors on British trains (2010)

lukehalliwell.wordpress.com

34 pointsganonm62 comments

As far as I understand this is a historic safety mechanism.

Trains were very popular and important in the UK, transporting nearly the same amount of passenger pre World War 1 as they do today.

At this time no central locking existed and many train compartments, especially for the rich, had their own door that opens to the outside.

With handles on the inside it is much more likely to open by accident. The door contained the only window in the aisle between the seats of the compartment, where you would stand to look outside, so people naturally lean against it.

At the time central locking came around it wasn't necessarily reliable and people were already used to the situation, so there is little reason to suddenly introduce internal door handles again.

Not to mention the terrible new ticket machines introduced in train stations across the country, who supposedly have touch screens but require pressing on a specific angle the buttons. The machines have one of the worst UI designs I have ever witnessed which confuses and delays on a daily basis people who just want to go to work.

And let's not mention the new trains that have an LCD display for bookings which is actually not used because they still put reservation papers on top of the seat. I have asked several times ticket inspectors and apparently the booking software doesn't work and often crashes. How hard can it be???

Enough ranting!

'The machines have one of the worst UI designs I have ever witnessed which confuses and delays ...'

The few stations where I've witnessed this, the bloke standing by the machine will just wave people through an open gate, provided they don't look like someone who will be a fare-dodger; which seems a very efficient way of doing things really?

On a couple of occasions they refused to do that, not sure why. Still, what is the point of ticket machines and barriers if you are going to wave people through based on bouncer principles.

Exactly.

Ironically, today, we read about a supermarket with no checkout yet we still have simple ticket barriers that quite often don't work?

> touch screens but require pressing on a specific angle the buttons

It's possible the angle thing is because your nail works better than your fingertip. I've had this situation a couple of times, and selecting with the nail definitely worked better, but my experience with this is completely anecdotal.

That is likely the correct answer. I believe the problem is the machines use a resistive touch screen (which respond to pressure - and hence the finger nail is more effective) as opposed to the capacitive touch screens that pretty much everyone else has adopted.

Not sure if that is the case. I have tried everything so far, fingers, nails and the only way is to direct your finger at an angle. These are not the same machines with the ones in Paddington, Victoria, etc. They are brand new and very unresponsive.

I also don't understand why the ticket machines don't use a QWERTY keyboard layout, makes it a real pain when you're trying to type in a station name in a rush.

And the fact that in shiny new London Bridge station, which handles millions of passengers, they have deigned to install 3 ticket machines in total.

Is it possible they're trying to make buying tickets a miserable experience to steer people towards owning an oyster card? Whatever their reason - it's stupid

No, not in this case. These are machines for train tickets, to places outside the oyster zone. London Bridge is a mainline station, so for most destinations it serves you will need a ticket.

Wow I had no idea, that's pretty bad.

> How hard can it be???

Welcome to IT \o/

I managed and worked on numerous projects like this and I know what you mean. However there is always a UAT phase that allows us to tackle issues like that. I dont think there was any kind of UAT phase here.

This paragraph about the door in the station is astounding:

> The design model here is that the door is motion-sensor-activated. But the system image communicates to the user that it’s button-operated, so the user ends up with the wrong user model. Worst of all, the designer of this door went to lengths to create this bad system image. They deliberately designed a piece of plastic that looks like a button, aimed the motion sensor at it, and even added a light inside the button to highlight it more prominently to the user. They should have read Don Norman.

I think what happened is the door was motion-activated, but people were failing to activate the sensor. But then, instead of drawing attention to the sensor, or adding a real button, they made a fake button that is vaguely in the area that the sensor points at, to try to trick people into moving their hands in the sensed region.

I've been fighting these buttons my whole adult life, until reading this article I had no idea the button wasn't even a button (though they do not depress, I just assumed it was touch-sensitive).

As one commenter points out, by far the worst UI is that of the toilet door mechanisms on some trains: three buttons for close, lock and open. It's terribly over-engineered, confusing, and requires an instruction panel. For a toilet door lock.

The toilet doors are awful - on more than one occasion I've tried to enter the bathroom only to see a horrified person sitting with their trousers/skirt down being slowly revealed to the world (having failed to hit the lock button after the door closed). No matter how frantically they mash the buttons they have to wait for that giant door to slowly open fully, then slowly close. Just awful.

They really are ridiculous. I was on a train journey recently where a frantic mother spent a good 5 minutes trying to extract her child who had accidentally locked the door from the inside and was in hysterics because he couldn't get out.

https://zarino.co.uk/media/virgin-toilet-lock.jpg

For anyone who wants to see a door handle only an engineer could love.

If the "open" button both unlocks and opens, what use case is there for closing the door from the inside without locking it?

The doors take so long to close that it would be easy to press the button and immediately exit the toilet, leaving it locked but with nobody inside, effectively taking it out of use for other passengers.

I think it is to prevent vandals from closing and locking the door from the outside.

I use that button to close the door when I have finished using the train toilet. You have to race the automatic door and rush out before it closes on you.

(Of course the button should be outside).

Why do you want to close the door if you're not inside? If that's not the norm, doesn't it just indicate to others that the toilet is occupied?

Because they stink, and it's very unpleasant for people in the carriage sitting near the toilet if the door is open.

> I had no idea the button wasn't even a button

I too "pressed" those buttons hundred of times. Never I would have imagined that they are just a piece of plastic with a motion sensor pointed on.

Luckily on my trains we have those as well as the old style toilets. I don't trust the new ones at all.

That's the door between train carriages, not in the station. I've never experienced an issue with the fake button but I'm going to pay attention to that sensor now!

And replacing the motion sensor with an actual button never occurred to anyone. I guess it was a vendor's business requirement to justify the price? I can imagine that conversation between manager and engineer, "No, you can't remove the motion sensor. We sold them motion-sensitive doors! And while you're at it, the sensor's cost needs to be reduced more."

On busy commuter trains those doors (between carriages) never close because there are people standing close enough to trigger the sensor at all times. As a result the train is noisy and draughtier than necessary.

Sometimes the button and the sensor don't work so you have to pull them apart with your bare hands.

This is indeed quite bad... but it also reminds me of trains in NL, some have mid section doors that have the same layout as on the photo, with a lit up button that you need to press to open the door. Usually I'd see people try to pull the small handle for minutes on end just to give up and instead stand in the pathway.

Or other doors that have a automatic closing function and you need to pull a handle for it to open again. When entering the train, not everyone pulls the handle so it sometimes automatically closes when someone is in between the door. If nobody knows that they need to pull the handle this can take a while before the horde of people entering/exiting resumes moving again. (Especially hard on old ladies that get stuck :( )

Parisian metro and RER are nice. Metro is just a silver handle you flip and I believe it locks while in movement (I haven't ridden long enough in Paris to be able to see someone try to flip the handle when it moves).

Sweden/Denmark do it a bit better even. Sweden/Denmark regional trains are just a button in the door that lights up when you can press to open (only when stopped). In Denmark the metro is all automated with the doors. They do also have the infuriating motion sensors for the middle of the trains though where you stand there like an idiot sometimes trying to trip it and end up having to wave your hand above your head to get it to open.

> Sweden/Denmark regional trains are just a button in the door that lights up when you can press to open (only when stopped).

To be fair, the majority of the trains I've been on here in the UK work like this too (and all of the London Underground trains work this way). It seems that the externally-handled carriages mentioned in the article are being phased out.

The exterior-handle doors were very common on the "slam door" trains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slam-door_train

They had one massive advantage that the sheer number of doors, one for every group of 8 seats on some units, made it very easy to get on and off. The disadvantage was the inconvenience and danger to the user, as well as inaccessibility for disabled users.

The other advantage was you could open the door as the train was pulling into the station and jump off onto the platform as it was slowing down but still moving.

Years back, there were a spate of deaths resulting from people falling from train doors while moving. I expect this explains why some doors are now difficult to open?

http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=393

Also accepted, just good-old poor design can also be a factor.

The handle only on the outside of the door is quite a bit more ridiculous than what I was expecting. The old-style doors in German trains can also be hard to open. They have a handle on the inside, but they seem to require a considerable amount of force at times, and they have no clear indicator on when they are locked or unlocked. And the time to unlock after the train stops doesn't seem very consistent to me. They aren't very common anymore, but they do tend to confuse passengers that aren't used to them.

> Notice how a real person’s arm doesn’t reach the handle quite as easily as the stick figure in the diagram

Not that these doors aren't terrible design (they are), but notice how the stick figure is facing towards the handle when they open it, but the man in the image is facing away from the handle and reaching behind him to open it. If he turned around to face the other way before trying to open the door, he'd find it a lot easier.

He's doing that because the designers of the door appear to have forgotten that 90% of people are right-handed...

It's been a while since I've had to open a train door by leaning out of the window. All the trains I take have buttons to open the doors.

I do this almost every day. The old Great Western Railway fleet (which is still most of the services out of Paddington) has these horrible door handles.

This is quite out of date as mentioned - some of the old slam-door trains were hard to use and a little scary, but they've been out of commission anywhere I've travelled for... a decade? More?

Interested on the doors in-between carriages though, I see these quite a lot, and they aren't the most responsive buttons. I will be looking out for those sensors!

HSTs with exterior-open doors are still running all over Britain - the whole Great Western network, certain CrossCountry routes, diesel East Coast services to northern Scotland, etc.

They are due to be replaced in the next couple of years, however, or (in a few cases) fitted with electric doors.

Oh really? I didn't realise. Guess that shows how far I've travelled by train lately - I mostly stick to South Western Rail.

That's quite funny to read having the Brexit in the back of the mind. With the crippling EU regulations as one of the main reasons. Well, the dignity of a British person needs to be challenged sometimes to remind them that it's still there.

The post is from 2010, and title is a bit misleading even with that taken into account. I haven't seen a train with this type of door for many, many years. I don't doubt there are still a few still knocking about in the UK though.

I travel from the south-west of England towards London every weekday, on a service that runs hourly. As far as I know, the trains that service this route only use this type of outside-only-opening train door, including the train I rode this morning. They are still very common here.

It must be a few routes that still use these trains. I was commuting from Guildford into London until quite recently and it was always an electric-opening door.

Yes, a majority of the fast trains running from London towards Wales have this style of door.

The entirely of the east coast main line (Run by Virgin Trains East Coast) runs a 50-50 split of HST 125 and 225's. The HST 125's have this "handle on the outside, lean out of the window configuration".

They are due to be replaced in 2020.

The trains I use don't have these kinds of doors but some of the trains running from Edinburgh on the "inland" section of the Fife loop have the old style external door handles.

Some of the trains running to London on the Midland Main Line are this old format. They are broadly speaking far more comfortable to sit in than the newer ones with powered doors, although they do lack mains power sockets by the seats, because they don't have a diesel engine under every carriage to roar and rattle.

Electrification can't come soon enough, but it won't because the government have abandoned that plan. Again.

The trains from Paddington through Bristol have this type of door. I've never found them notably awkward - The main issue I see is people using them with the wrong hand (as the man in the photograph is doing) as your arm doesn't bend the way it needs to.

I posted this due to taking a train from London to Swindon last weekend and encountering this exact problem! We nearly missed our stop due to being unable to open the door (and I couldn't see an instructional diagram like the one shown in the blog post).

VTEC's trains to Aberdeen (and other non-electrified routes) are all HSTs, and all have this type of door.

Scotrail are getting a hold of GWR's old HSTs, but putting electric doors on them.

The old stock GWR trains are still like this. They still use quite a few of them although they are being removed slowly by the looks of things.

Mk3 coaches are still in use on a number of routes but most will be withdrawn by 2020 due to changes in disability access requirements.

The toilet doors, on the other hand...

They have to be the most confusing door system I've ever seen.

The very worst has to be the toilet lid blocking the flush button, so you have to touch (or ninja kick) the lid down in order to flush. My hands have never felt clean since.

They just seem to open whenever they feel like regardless of the occupants needs.

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