
Horrible doors on British trains (2010) - ganonm
https://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/horrible-doors-on-british-trains/
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jo909
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.

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ninjamayo
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!

~~~
dazc
'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?

~~~
ninjamayo
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.

~~~
dazc
Exactly.

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

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jstanley
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.

~~~
fredley
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_.

~~~
smcl
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.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
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.

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mrarjen
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 :( )

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SOLAR_FIELDS
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.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> 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.

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pjc50
The exterior-handle doors were very common on the "slam door" trains:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slam-
door_train](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.

~~~
gadders
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.

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dazc
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](http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=393)

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

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fabian2k
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.

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bengillies
> 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.

~~~
to3m
He's doing that because the designers of the door appear to have forgotten
that 90% of people are right-handed...

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dghf
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.

~~~
shrikant
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.

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Nursie
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!

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
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.

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

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dschuetz
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.

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n4r9
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.

~~~
kelnage
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.

~~~
n4r9
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.

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moonbug
The toilet doors, on the other hand...

~~~
gehsty
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.

