Certainly needs SOME feasible solution put in place, or at least the wheels put in motion. Everybody always talks about the Balcombe tunnel, but it just needs that viaduct just past Haywards Heath to suffer some kind of malfunction and the Brighton-London line will be snookered for months if not...
Why don't you just show your card at the manually operated barrier and demand they let you through? Make a scene if necessary. It's like when the Oystercard thing packed up over Xmas, they just had to open the gates and let people through. Why not throw their KEY card failures back in their face?