Southern Beau
Member
Can we not let this turn in to a “everyone should use e tickets” bombardment to those who still want a choice to use paper tickets?
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Attitudes to ticketless travel
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crosscity
Member
It is about 75 yards up the steps to the booking office, and the same distance back so 150 yards in totaI. I didn't really need the extra walk as I just wanted to get home. Why should I have to put myself out because the railway had failed twice to offer me a chance to pay?
If there had been a similarly located, open, ticket office at Bourneville, you no doubt accept that you would have had to use this. Why, then, is it any different that the open ticket office was at your destination?
I think people have little defence for being caught stealing, but if caught without a ticket can (and often will) argue that if they just pay then no harm done. Hence people arguing against PF's and insisting all they should pay is the original fare.
As such, people feel there's no harm trying it on by not buying a ticket - and get extremely upset if punished because they don't feel it's a big deal.
The irony is that these days*, shops are pretty powerless to do anything about shoplifters. It's unlikely they'd make a civil case against someone for a Mars bar, and at best might get to ban them. The police sure as hell aren't going to do anything about it, even if the theft is of something considerably more expensive.
Frankly, given people's attitudes these days I am surprised people don't shoplift more. In fact, I wonder how many people may not shove a bottle of wine down their trousers, but may skip a few items at the self checkout (especially now many new tills don't weigh goods, or if people use handheld scanners and take a chance that they won't get a random scan, or that the 'scan any 5 items' staff check may still miss the items they didn't scan).
* Edit: Actually it isn't even these days. I recall many, many years ago the police saying they weren't interested in thefts of £75 or less. That's probably even higher today.
On the few times I've had to board a train without a ticket, either because the ticket machine was out of action or ticket type not available, I have boarded the train near where the guard is situated and said I need to buy a ticket.
Easier if they physically alight from the train rather than just look out the rear cab window.
I realise this is not always possible with a long train where joining passengers may be unaware of where the guard will be situated but on short trains it normally works.
It is also possible to walk through the train to find the guard, knocking on the door if they are locked in the rear cab.
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crosscity
Member
I did not have the intention of not paying the fare. If the Bournville booking office had been open, a guard walked through the train or someone was checking tickets at the car park exit at Kings Norton I would have had the opportunity to pay.
It was a rare event and only happened a handful of times in the fifteen years I worked at Bournville.
It's about the same distance to use the self service tills in Tesco but that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay for your stuff.
This is a very good illustration of how and why people rationalise fare evasion, because I guarantee if you needed to buy a physical item you wouldn't think it okay to steal because purchasing it involved delaying you getting home with a 150 yard (!) walk.
crosscity
Member
Because I had to walk past the ticket office to get to the platform at Bournville. At Kings Norton my exit from the station was into the car park and I had no need to use the booking office exit as it was in the opposite direction to my home.
Haywain
Veteran Member
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That’s not the same as the example I was commenting on.
crosscity
Member
Having posted on here to admit not paying my fare of around £1 from Bournville to Kings Norton around five times in 15 years in BR days, I would have been mortified to be stopped and not have a ticket without a valid reason. My frustration was not being able to pay my fare without inconveniencing myself. I do not agree with the idea that I should not pay my fare because the train would have run anyway.
Nowadays with ticket machines and paying by internet there are more ways for me to pay, so less likelihood of me being frustrated that I couldn't.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Indeed I suspect that will have resulted in reduced casual evasion, as people buy one on their phone by default?
I once paid for goods in a small shop using my Amex card, in one of those old embossing machines. Unbeknown to me, or the (stand-in) sales assistant, the shop had no account with Amex. After eight weeks of the £12 not appearing on my statement, I went back to the shop to query the transaction. The owner remembered her stand-in friend wrongly accepting Amex; and being annoyed with her at the loss. She was so astonished at my offering my apologies and presenting a £20 note, that I had to gently prompt her for the £8 change!
The shop was a mile away from home.
<Goes away to adjust halo>
The shop was a mile away from home.
<Goes away to adjust halo>
Ok, let's put it this way. If you had made the journey in the opposite direction, you would undoubtedly have 'gone out of your way' to use the Kings Norton ticket office. So why does it make any difference that the (slight) inconvience was at the end of your journey, rather than at the start?
You had every opportunity to pay the fare in this instance, but chose not to. Whilst I couldn't care less, you can't claim to hold the moral high ground in doing so
But there are also benefits to the passenger - being able to buy one without having to queue (and thus having to guess how much time you'll need at the station), and being able to have multiple copies of the same ticket in case you lose one.
(Edited to correct source of quoted text)
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It's only due to shortcomings on the part of the railway that these problems even arise. I hardly think avoiding unjust penalties can be construed as a benefit.
Well I'd argue that they are still benefits even if you think that things should be arranged differently so they aren't needed.
I'm not sure in what world losing a ticket wouldn't in some way be at least a inconvenience though.
If I buy an e-ticket to go into town from my local station I can't see what it's cost me above using a machine, and it saves a few minutes even if I assume nobody else is using the machine when I get there.
Admittedly it's saved the railways a little bit of money by not printing out a ticket. I don't feel I should get a tiny discount because of that, though I do think that a £10 charge for an entirely automated refund (i.e. when a ticket hasn't been printed so nobody has to look at a physical ticket) is unjustifiable.
I don’t know what’s happened here but I did not say this.
Apologies. I don't know what happened either (I clearly messed things up somehow) but I've corrected it now.
Reading these threads it does concern me that the railway doesnt distinguish between the honest mistake, youthful learning curves and the intentional theft of travel.
It does feel there is a mix of thuggish attitude on one hand, and a mis-leading “it’ll be ok” response on the other, from staff, but a firmly punitive response from the system always follows.
It feels to me there should be more of a balance, with an err to remediate by “paying up now”, with some level of innocence & education first (ie crediting back where the wrong ticket was bought), or a one strike policy when referred to the system, with a firmer stance taken for repeat offenders… this whack em hard whack em deep whack em now policy only alienates otherwise honest passengers away from the railway…
Everyone at some point has made an innocent mistake with a train ticket, its too easy to make a mistake, and some rules are just too hard to understand, and the system itself can be flawed.
reading the forum, all too often its young travellers, who are just beginners at solo travel, with expired railcards. Teenagers always test it, its part of growing up, but too heavy handed response .. it just breeds resentment that lasts for decades, when really its education thats needed.
I sometimes think the system is seeking to deliberately prey on innocent mistakes, using legal to its advantage from the outset, rather than last resort.
It does feel there is a mix of thuggish attitude on one hand, and a mis-leading “it’ll be ok” response on the other, from staff, but a firmly punitive response from the system always follows.
It feels to me there should be more of a balance, with an err to remediate by “paying up now”, with some level of innocence & education first (ie crediting back where the wrong ticket was bought), or a one strike policy when referred to the system, with a firmer stance taken for repeat offenders… this whack em hard whack em deep whack em now policy only alienates otherwise honest passengers away from the railway…
Everyone at some point has made an innocent mistake with a train ticket, its too easy to make a mistake, and some rules are just too hard to understand, and the system itself can be flawed.
reading the forum, all too often its young travellers, who are just beginners at solo travel, with expired railcards. Teenagers always test it, its part of growing up, but too heavy handed response .. it just breeds resentment that lasts for decades, when really its education thats needed.
I sometimes think the system is seeking to deliberately prey on innocent mistakes, using legal to its advantage from the outset, rather than last resort.
I agree. In these days of databases, surely a "shot across the bows" would suffice for a first offence/mistake, with only later transgressions attracting a serious penalty.
It is galling to have accidentally breached the rules. My only penalty experience was in Budapest where my wife bought a ticket for one stop, waved it at the inspector manning the top of the departure escalator, only to be stopped at the destination for not having validated the ticket at the start station; on an isolated pillar secreted well away from the escalator. Fining her £20, the unsympathetic inspector remarked that TfL would have fined her four times as much. Maybe he harboured a resentment of TfL. We certainly do of Budapest!
Agreed - the railway is given far too much legal power with which it is free to slap honest people who’ve made a mistake with criminal records and 3 figure fees to recuperate petty sums, often less than £3-4.
Reform will come, and the sooner the better. The current system is unfairly biased towards the TOC’s, and this, combined with many staff taking the view that the system and “the railway” should come before passengers can lead to the impression of a very anti-passenger railway.
Agreed - although many seem to hold the view that the railway would be better with fewer customers! There are far too many in the industry who have little to no concept of “customer service”, combine this with an unfairly biased set of laws and you make the industry very unattractive and unfriendly.
It often feels like the railways are out to get you and want to catch you out - very complex ticketing rules (how many passengers would even know when to consult the routeing guide, let alone how to?) and very harsh penalties for failing to comply perfectly are not entirely fair for those inexperienced to the system.
Indeed - honest mistakes do happen. Teenagers and young people get a bad name throughout society (unjustifiably so in my view), and this system targets these people (putting them off the railway), as well as those who are on low incomes and cannot afford a three figure settlement to pay for a 50p fare anomaly.
Perfectly put - and a symptom of a railway which prioritises itself and revenue over providing a decent service for passengers and developing a good image for itself.
It does rather seem that way to me, made worse by the fact that there doesn't seem much of a penalty for staff who don't understand the all rules - even if they inadvertently give out incorrect advice that gets a passenger into trouble.
I think there is at least one TOC with a policy of automatically settling out of court for a first "offence" unless there is actual evidence of intent. Now threatning to prosecute then saying but we'll let you off you pay doesn't sound ideal to me, but outside PF areas I don't think there is any other mechanism for "fining" people.
I wonder if supermarkets are as harsh with people who fail to scan something with a hand-held scanner? You might have been trying to save 50p by not scanning that tin of beans even though everything else in your basket was scanned so we'll assume you were and prosecute you for shoplifting?
It also seems me that there's a view that someone with an expired railcard (that they're still entitled to) has robbed the railway of the difference between a full and discounted fare for all the journeys they made with it. But looking at it another way, isn't the railway's loss just the cost of renewing the railcard?
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This is a very sensible idea in principle, but I do question how open it would be to exploitation given that there's no way of being sure that a person is giving you their genuine name and address unless you only apply the escalating reaction process to people who carry and present valid identity documents.
You do realise it isn’t the railway that will “slap honest people who’ve made a mistake with criminal records”, it’s the courts.
It’s rare for mistakes to be criminalised… “I’m an honest thief, guv”, and “Everyone in prison is innocent, as the sayings go…
There seems to be a strange paranoia on here that many innocent passengers find themselves criminalised for ticketing irregularities. Can you provide any examples of “miscarriages of justice” of this nature?
I suspect the majority of rail users would believe the reform should be to crack down harder on fare evasion. The rest of this paragraph is just a wildly sweeping and generalised dig at staff. It doesn’t represent the vast majority of staff I work with (at least not the customer facing ones), most of whom do their best in difficult circumstances and sometimes in the face of vile abuse.
It would be better with fewer “customers” who try to extract revenue, yes!
Does it? I think your experience is coloured by the fact you enjoy exploiting obscure easements and questionable ticketing loopholes and therefore (inevitably) get challenged more than most. The majority of people just buy a simple ticket to get from A to B and will rarely experiencing any questioning at all.
You might respond that the system is too complex, and I might even agree. Perhaps the reform should be to remove these easements and make all fares more straightforward (and expensive)? Be careful what you wish for!
The system does indeed target people. It aims to punish those who use the railway without contributing to its cost, thereby ripping off the honest majority of passengers.
If you’re young and/or on a low income, should you be allowed to shoplift, in your view? You seem to be objecting to the existence of the criminal law rather than anything specific to the railway.
How do you do anything apart from collect an on the spot penalty if someone doesn't give a valid name and address?
It's not the courts that decide who to prosecute.
I suspect the vast majority of rail users have no idea that they could end up being prosecuted for a criminal offence for losing a ticket on a train or failing to notice that their railcard expired last week, let alone jumping on a train without time to get a ticket and planning to get one from the guard.
How do you compel somebody to pay an on the spot penalty unless you have the legal power to do so?
There's the approach used by NS in the Netherlands - people who've been caught without a ticket, or with one that is invalid, are sold a new ticket with a €50 penalty on top, payable on the spot. If they can't pay on the spot, they can be issued a deferred payment as long as they can produce a valid identity document. Can't or won't show ID? The RPIs have the power of arrest and will happily hand you over to the police.
In some ways this is more harsh than the system used in England at the moment, and especially so where a Penalty Fare is only 20-odd quid, but on the other hand it's harder to circumvent.
I think it's important though to keep in mind that the spectrum of people involved in ticketing offences on the railway is a broad one, ranging from the people who've genuinely just made a small oversight and not remedied it properly all the way up to the serial cheaters (short-faring, doughnutting, concession fraud, that sort of thing) and the people who've no intention of ever paying a single penny or co-operating at all. A robust enforcement system has to account for all of these.
I would suggest that to some during the BR years they saw nationalisation and public ownership as being partly personal therefore as they were paying their hard earned taxes to pay for the railway they were entitled to something in return.
Edsmith
Member
I've heard similar stories to this about people who were perfectly willing to pay but were unable to do so, the railway industry don't help themselves.
I think attitudes towards fare evasion have certainly changed since the pandemic when people got used to not paying and it's now rather difficult to get the genie back into the bottle.
You’ve rather missed the point that prosecution, in itself, is merely a process. It’s neither a punishment, nor a criminal record. Do you object to the way the criminal law operates in this country? How should it be changed?
Indeed so, because they simply do what’s required of them. Most normal, decent people simply buy the ticket required. Discretion is almost invariably used to let people off entirely who have made an honest mistake, then you have penalty fares, then you have prosecution as a final option.
The suggestion that innocent people are being criminalised by the “big bad railway”’s ticketing enforcement is a regular one on here. And one I’m yet to see a shred of evidence of it. Frankly it smacks of a conspiracy theory….
crosscity
Member
The geography of Kings Norton station and where I lived meant that I took a different route to the station, which meant I passed the booking office (this is absolutely true).Ok, let's put it this way. If you had made the journey in the opposite direction, you would undoubtedly have 'gone out of your way' to use the Kings Norton ticket office. So why does it make any difference that the (slight) inconvience was at the end of your journey, rather than at the start?
You had every opportunity to pay the fare in this instance, but chose not to. Whilst I couldn't care less, you can't claim to hold the moral high ground in doing so
I do not claim any moral high ground. Technically I may have avoided the fare, but as I've said it was out of frustration of not being able to pay without inconveniencing myself. I had no intention of avoiding the fare. There is the possibility (I can't remember) that the first time it happened I may have walked round to the booking office to find that was closed too.
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