I am horrified at how strict the rail operators are

[yorkie]

A few examples, I'm intrigued as to how other people think these should be handled:

1) Passenger presents advance ticket for a long distance journey, involving a change of train, valid for the following day. Passenger insists he needs to travel now to visit a relative in hospital (be original please ), but is unable to purchase another ticket. Warn him, but allow him to travel, on the basis that he should have to present his ticket again for the main leg of the journey. Passenger then leaves the train at a different station, not served by the operator or trains to the destination on the ticket.

2) Passenger approaches guard before boarding a very busy service in the middle of the PM peak. "I've got a ticket for the next train, but can I get on now?". Ticket is actually an advance for the train two hours later. Guard refuses. Passenger attempts to gain sympathy by claiming both that his boss bought his ticket and that he's finished work early and wants to get home. Guard still refuses. What if he had boarded without asking the guard and then been checked on the train?

3) Passenger presents guard with an advance ticket. Different TOC. Different time. Different day(!). Different route (same origin and destination). Told to buy new ticket. Refuses to pay that price. Tries to buy new ticket online - still an advance (and therefore still for the wrong time), still for the wrong TOC, still for the wrong route.

4) Another advance. Wrong TOC. Wrong time. Wrong route. "My friend bought it for me".

5) Railcard discounted ticket. No Railcard. "I am new here. My friend bought it for me".

6) Any number of the "pay when challenged" brigade, who regularly board busy services (in a penalty fares area) to travel one stop, knowing there's a very high chance that the guard won't get to them.

7) Advance ticket. Correct route. 4 hours early. "I just thought I'd catch an earlier train, I didn't want to wait".

What has any of that got to do with the original premise of the thread?

What about these examples:

1) A passenger uses an off peak ticket at a valid time, but encounters Northern staff at Wakefield

2) A passenger uses an LNER train between Newcastle and Sunderland on a T&W Metro ticket

3) A passenger travels via Reading on a +via London ticket from Manchester to Basingstoke (or similar), and doesn't complete the double back via London

4) A passenger uses the Elizabeth Line on an All Line Rover

5) A passenger travels in accordance with the itinerary issued in conjunction with their ticket

(I could go on)

All real examples where tickets were valid and yet the train company concerned denied them their rights

And that's before we even get into customers actually mistakes, where the appropriate action would be to issue an excess or a new fare and instead passengers are issued penalty fares or prosecuted.

 

[Pushpit]

A few examples, I'm intrigued as to how other people think these should be handled:

1) Passenger presents advance ticket for a long distance journey, involving a change of train, valid for the following day. Passenger insists he needs to travel now to visit a relative in hospital (be original please ), but is unable to purchase another ticket. Warn him, but allow him to travel, on the basis that he should have to present his ticket again for the main leg of the journey. Passenger then leaves the train at a different station, not served by the operator or trains to the destination on the ticket.

For all of these examples, penalty fare them at 10 times the fair version of the missed fare. Use the small claims court to enforce payment. Offer some discretion if the traveller offers to pay immediately when challenged (e.g. £10 admin fee plus the missed fare). Prioritise staffing so that broadly travellers know they will be checked before, during and at the end of their trip.

 

[nanstallon]

For all of these examples, penalty fare them at 10 times the fair version of the missed fare. Use the small claims court to enforce payment. Offer some discretion if the traveller offers to pay immediately when challenged (e.g. £10 admin fee plus the missed fare). Prioritise staffing so that broadly travellers know they will be checked before, during and at the end of their trip.

This is a much more sane way to deal with the matter. I would decriminalise fare dodging, but impose heavy civil penalties for deliberate fare evasion - to deter, but not to wreck somebody's career. The present system is heavy handed, and gives power to bullies.

 

[Hadders]

For all of these examples, penalty fare them at 10 times the fair version of the missed fare. Use the small claims court to enforce payment. Offer some discretion if the traveller offers to pay immediately when challenged (e.g. £10 admin fee plus the missed fare). Prioritise staffing so that broadly travellers know they will be checked before, during and at the end of their trip.

Ten times the value of the missed fare. That does sound rather disproportionate.

This is a much more sane way to deal with the matter. I would decriminalise fare dodging, but impose heavy civil penalties for deliberate fare evasion - to deter, but not to wreck somebody's career. The present system is heavy handed, and gives power to bullies.

The law around ticketless travel and fare evasion needs urgent reform but I'm not sure decriminalising it is the answer.

Someone who doesn't engage with the process currently ends up with a byelaw conviction or at worse a conviction under the Regulation of the Railways Act, sor most purposes the criminal record is spent after a year.

Make it a civil matter and someone not engaging ends up with a County Court Jusgement. Then try getting any form of credit for the next six years. Is that really better?

 

[Pushpit]

Make it a civil matter and someone not engaging ends up with a County Court Jusgement. Then try getting any form of credit for the next six years. Is that really better?

I think so because ultimately the person concerned has a debt to repair. Giving someone a criminal record for an 80p fare is out of any sense of proportion, but if you get an 80p debt with a bank, a mobile telephone company, a credit card, a rent payment, car park fee, then these may all end up with a CCJ if someone disengages totally. Strangely that disengagement doesn't tend to happen that often.

 

[furlong]

Isn't the main problem here railway companies failing to comply with various legal expectations, attempting to exploit loopholes and abusing their dominant position in their relationship with passengers?

The bodies that were supposed to keep them in check have failed. HMCTS didn't notice basic errors of procedure or law? The ORR failed to monitor compliance with consumer law and took no action? Transport Focus wasn't focussed enough on the Passenger to make any meaningful difference? RDG failed to agree to hold the industry to higher standards? The Ombudsman never looked beyond individual cases to spot trends that require intervention? The DfT failed to supervise adequately the system for which it is responsible?

If the system is to survive:
1) the train companies must be required to apply a Public Interest Test before any prosecution, with a clear set of guidelines giving examples of what is and isn't likely to meet the test in a railway context with some method of holding rogue companies to this standard
2) retailer accreditation and standards for ticket presentation must be improved to pay full regard to consumer law (so passengers are left with no excuse for failing to understand what they did and didn't pay for)
3) the system of Penalty Fares and out of court settlements should be combined and standardised nationally (through a genuine wide-ranging public consultation, possibly via a short-term expert body set up for the purpose, with the SRA's 2002 documents incorporated and updated for the modern age), rebalancing it towards penalising deliberate evasion and never innocent mistakes (as the SRA originally tried to do, but over time train companies failed to adhere to some of their obligations and instead of enforcing them, the DfT dropped them without replacement)
4) there should be some minor changes to make tickets more passenger-friendly e.g. allowing an excess to remove a TOC restriction (similar to a change of route), dealing with confusing names like 'Advance' (that can be walk-up) and 'Anytime' (that can be time-restricted)
5) there should be consideration of wider incentives that encourage correct ticket purchasing behaviours (carrots not just sticks - e.g. Northern's slightly-discounted on-the-day advances that reduce re-use fraud)
6) systems commonly defrauded (refunds, delay repay) need to be made much tighter both through more robust and clearer user interfaces (so nobody can get away with saying they made a false claim accidentally) and at-the-time monitoring (no more nonsense of people making 100s of obviously false claims before anything gets done)
7) the rogue byelaw that purports to eliminate intent from fare evasion should be dropped (or revert to its position prior to the sneaky byelaw renumbering where a breach did not lead to a fine), making it clear again that the regime in (3) is the intended approach to minor instances of deliberate fare evasion
8) all staff in public-facing roles should take a mandatory compliance test each year to certify they understand the basic principles of ticketing and enforcement - this will cover everything that passengers might be expected to understand about the systems so they can always answer the most common questions from passengers correctly and know how to obtain the answers to rarer or more complicated questions. (E.g. when to request a refund and when to request delay repay, though really those systems should be combined; 2-character restriction codes are visible to passengers on tickets, so staff must be able to show they can explain them correctly to passengers and explain the methods for checking whether or not a ticket is valid on a particular train.) This will entail creating and maintaining new public content providing definitive national information (including all the special cases such as using delay repay for certain types of refunds at some particular train companies but not others) and expecting all staff to know this defined set of content. (The fewer special cases the railway invents, the simpler this will be.)

In terms of ticket reform, I'd argue passengers should have the option of creating a national railway ID which they can optionally attach to their e-tickets and digital railcards. (Basically an extension of the railcard app to non-railcard holders, with e-tickets linked to that holder, with the effect of joining up accounts across multiple retailers improving fraud detection and recovery measures.)
If they attach their ID (or someone else's ID) to a ticket, then that ticket can only be used by that person. Advantage to the passenger is that if for any reason they are unable to present the ticket (phone battery dead) their identity becomes a sufficient substitute and they can avoid penalties for being unable to present it at the time (similar to forgotten railcard, on a limited but probably more generous number of occasions, potential admin charge if happens too often etc.). It'll be sufficient for a guard to scan the ID - if there's more than one valid ticket attached they can confirm the right one to use (and if any other unscanned tickets have already been used and should be marked as such) and they may also be granted some ability to check travel history across tickets.

 

[Tester]

Isn't the main problem here railway companies failing to comply with various legal expectations, attempting to exploit loopholes and abusing their dominant position in their relationship with passengers?

The bodies that were supposed to keep them in check have failed. HMCTS didn't notice basic errors of procedure or law? The ORR failed to monitor compliance with consumer law and took no action? Transport Focus wasn't focussed enough on the Passenger to make any meaningful difference? RDG failed to agree to hold the industry to higher standards? The Ombudsman never looked beyond individual cases to spot trends that require intervention? The DfT failed to supervise adequately the system for which it is responsible?

If the system is to survive:
1) the train companies must be required to apply a Public Interest Test before any prosecution, with a clear set of guidelines giving examples of what is and isn't likely to meet the test in a railway context with some method of holding rogue companies to this standard
2) retailer accreditation and standards for ticket presentation must be improved to pay full regard to consumer law (so passengers are left with no excuse for failing to understand what they did and didn't pay for)
3) the system of Penalty Fares and out of court settlements should be combined and standardised nationally (through a genuine wide-ranging public consultation, possibly via a short-term expert body set up for the purpose, with the SRA's 2002 documents incorporated and updated for the modern age), rebalancing it towards penalising deliberate evasion and never innocent mistakes (as the SRA originally tried to do, but over time train companies failed to adhere to some of their obligations and instead of enforcing them, the DfT dropped them without replacement)
4) there should be some minor changes to make tickets more passenger-friendly e.g. allowing an excess to remove a TOC restriction (similar to a change of route), dealing with confusing names like 'Advance' (that can be walk-up) and 'Anytime' (that can be time-restricted)
5) there should be consideration of wider incentives that encourage correct ticket purchasing behaviours (carrots not just sticks - e.g. Northern's slightly-discounted on-the-day advances that reduce re-use fraud)
6) systems commonly defrauded (refunds, delay repay) need to be made much tighter both through more robust and clearer user interfaces (so nobody can get away with saying they made a false claim accidentally) and at-the-time monitoring (no more nonsense of people making 100s of obviously false claims before anything gets done)
7) the rogue byelaw that purports to eliminate intent from fare evasion should be dropped (or revert to its position prior to the sneaky byelaw renumbering where a breach did not lead to a fine), making it clear again that the regime in (3) is the intended approach to minor instances of deliberate fare evasion
8) all staff in public-facing roles should take a mandatory compliance test each year to certify they understand the basic principles of ticketing and enforcement - this will cover everything that passengers might be expected to understand about the systems so they can always answer the most common questions from passengers correctly and know how to obtain the answers to rarer or more complicated questions. (E.g. when to request a refund and when to request delay repay, though really those systems should be combined; 2-character restriction codes are visible to passengers on tickets, so staff must be able to show they can explain them correctly to passengers and explain the methods for checking whether or not a ticket is valid on a particular train.) This will entail creating and maintaining new public content providing definitive national information (including all the special cases such as using delay repay for certain types of refunds at some particular train companies but not others) and expecting all staff to know this defined set of content. (The fewer special cases the railway invents, the simpler this will be.)

In terms of ticket reform, I'd argue passengers should have the option of creating a national railway ID which they can optionally attach to their e-tickets and digital railcards. (Basically an extension of the railcard app to non-railcard holders, with e-tickets linked to that holder, with the effect of joining up accounts across multiple retailers improving fraud detection and recovery measures.)
If they attach their ID (or someone else's ID) to a ticket, then that ticket can only be used by that person. Advantage to the passenger is that if for any reason they are unable to present the ticket (phone battery dead) their identity becomes a sufficient substitute and they can avoid penalties for being unable to present it at the time (similar to forgotten railcard, on a limited but probably more generous number of occasions, potential admin charge if happens too often etc.). It'll be sufficient for a guard to scan the ID - if there's more than one valid ticket attached they can confirm the right one to use (and if any other unscanned tickets have already been used and should be marked as such) and they may also be granted some ability to check travel history across tickets.

An excellent piece of writing, to which I offer my full support.

Your last paragraph could sensibly lead to a form of national railcard (even if starting out modestly) as the carrot!

 

[AlterEgo]

I didn’t say that. Mistakes the contravene legislation are criminal matters.

“it’s a crime so it’s a crime so it’s a crime” which isn’t even an argument.

In every aspect of life, it is our responsibility to understand what is legal and what is not, and accept that when we do something that contravenes law there are consequences.

People break the law all the time without realising what the law is. You do this to. We all do. Ignorance cannot be a defence but you cannot roll this out as a way of defending criminalising very minor offences.

Does it really? Do you mean overcharging or charging [in your view] too much? If passengers are being overcharged then yes there should be some form of retribution, but its not criminal [law] to charge a passenger more than he minimum they needed to pay.

What if it was? Should it be? Why is one a crime and one isn’t?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Oct 2024 ==

Isn't the main problem here railway companies failing to comply with various legal expectations, attempting to exploit loopholes and abusing their dominant position in their relationship with passengers?

The bodies that were supposed to keep them in check have failed. HMCTS didn't notice basic errors of procedure or law? The ORR failed to monitor compliance with consumer law and took no action? Transport Focus wasn't focussed enough on the Passenger to make any meaningful difference? RDG failed to agree to hold the industry to higher standards? The Ombudsman never looked beyond individual cases to spot trends that require intervention? The DfT failed to supervise adequately the system for which it is responsible?

If the system is to survive:
1) the train companies must be required to apply a Public Interest Test before any prosecution, with a clear set of guidelines giving examples of what is and isn't likely to meet the test in a railway context with some method of holding rogue companies to this standard
2) retailer accreditation and standards for ticket presentation must be improved to pay full regard to consumer law (so passengers are left with no excuse for failing to understand what they did and didn't pay for)
3) the system of Penalty Fares and out of court settlements should be combined and standardised nationally (through a genuine wide-ranging public consultation, possibly via a short-term expert body set up for the purpose, with the SRA's 2002 documents incorporated and updated for the modern age), rebalancing it towards penalising deliberate evasion and never innocent mistakes (as the SRA originally tried to do, but over time train companies failed to adhere to some of their obligations and instead of enforcing them, the DfT dropped them without replacement)
4) there should be some minor changes to make tickets more passenger-friendly e.g. allowing an excess to remove a TOC restriction (similar to a change of route), dealing with confusing names like 'Advance' (that can be walk-up) and 'Anytime' (that can be time-restricted)
5) there should be consideration of wider incentives that encourage correct ticket purchasing behaviours (carrots not just sticks - e.g. Northern's slightly-discounted on-the-day advances that reduce re-use fraud)
6) systems commonly defrauded (refunds, delay repay) need to be made much tighter both through more robust and clearer user interfaces (so nobody can get away with saying they made a false claim accidentally) and at-the-time monitoring (no more nonsense of people making 100s of obviously false claims before anything gets done)
7) the rogue byelaw that purports to eliminate intent from fare evasion should be dropped (or revert to its position prior to the sneaky byelaw renumbering where a breach did not lead to a fine), making it clear again that the regime in (3) is the intended approach to minor instances of deliberate fare evasion
8) all staff in public-facing roles should take a mandatory compliance test each year to certify they understand the basic principles of ticketing and enforcement - this will cover everything that passengers might be expected to understand about the systems so they can always answer the most common questions from passengers correctly and know how to obtain the answers to rarer or more complicated questions. (E.g. when to request a refund and when to request delay repay, though really those systems should be combined; 2-character restriction codes are visible to passengers on tickets, so staff must be able to show they can explain them correctly to passengers and explain the methods for checking whether or not a ticket is valid on a particular train.) This will entail creating and maintaining new public content providing definitive national information (including all the special cases such as using delay repay for certain types of refunds at some particular train companies but not others) and expecting all staff to know this defined set of content. (The fewer special cases the railway invents, the simpler this will be.)

In terms of ticket reform, I'd argue passengers should have the option of creating a national railway ID which they can optionally attach to their e-tickets and digital railcards. (Basically an extension of the railcard app to non-railcard holders, with e-tickets linked to that holder, with the effect of joining up accounts across multiple retailers improving fraud detection and recovery measures.)
If they attach their ID (or someone else's ID) to a ticket, then that ticket can only be used by that person. Advantage to the passenger is that if for any reason they are unable to present the ticket (phone battery dead) their identity becomes a sufficient substitute and they can avoid penalties for being unable to present it at the time (similar to forgotten railcard, on a limited but probably more generous number of occasions, potential admin charge if happens too often etc.). It'll be sufficient for a guard to scan the ID - if there's more than one valid ticket attached they can confirm the right one to use (and if any other unscanned tickets have already been used and should be marked as such) and they may also be granted some ability to check travel history across tickets.

Quite. Anyone looking at this and deciding they’d still like to talk about passengers hasn’t a clue how power works.

 

[Skymonster]

So which mistakes should be criminal matters then?

Those which legislation makes criminal matters.

This is a false equivalence fallacy.

Are you suggesting that the mistake you made is in any way equivalent to drink driving?

They are both mistakes that could result in convictions.

Do you have any evidence there is more fare evasion in Scotland, or is this purely a guess?

Do you have much experience of rail travel on Scotrail?

I’ve traveled by train in Scotland a fair bit - several times this year for eample. You suggested that conviction wasn’t a possibility in Scotland and inferred that evasion was no worse there than it is in England - but didn’t present any evidence either.

So you are arguing that you deserve to be criminalised?

Had I actually boarded the train and been subject to a ticket check, I would have deserved whatever the legislation suggests the penalty should be. If that had been criminalisation, so be it - I would very angry with myself, but the error was my mistake and dealing with the consequences would have been my problem, that I created. I certainly wouldn’t have come here moaning about it. Its about understanding the rules, the consequences of not following them, and taking personal responsibility. As I said if you wish to campaign for changes to legislation that offer greater leniency go ahead, but please don’t suggest passengers should not be pursued to the extent of the law just because you don’t like the law.

There is no onus on me to come up with a "solution"; what do you think the solution is? Criminalise everyone who makes a mistake who isn't stopped by a gateline?

Ah so you want lesser penalties, but you don’t have any suggestions as to how evasion can be reduced. As I said up thread, there are two ways to reduce evasion: more rigorous ticket checking before during and after the journey, or harsh penalties for those who are caught that act as a deterrent. As far as I can tell, the only other alternatives de facto accept that nothing much can be done to discourage evasion and revenue loss across the network is inevitable. If there’s another way, one that doesn’t increase operating costs massively but also increases passenger compliance with ticketing rules and thus reduces revenue leakage, please do tell - I’m very interested.

Why should there be such an unlevel playing field?

You diverting the argument into passengers being overcharged serves no useful purpose in the context of penalising passengers who don’t hold valid tickets. Two wrongs don’t make a right, its just another “false equivalent fallacy” similar to the one you accuse me of putting forward above.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The law around ticketless travel and fare evasion needs urgent reform but I'm not sure decriminalising it is the answer.

Someone who doesn't engage with the process currently ends up with a byelaw conviction or at worse a conviction under the Regulation of the Railways Act, sor most purposes the criminal record is spent after a year.

Make it a civil matter and someone not engaging ends up with a County Court Jusgement. Then try getting any form of credit for the next six years. Is that really better?

Decriminalising is a lot better.

For starters, it removes the railway’s ability to extort inflated settlements from passengers who have made minor errors; you can’t add spurious administration fees to a civil matter. And I use the word extort deliberately: there is a reason why Northern routinely use the threat of prosecution for minor errors even though the bulk of their network is subject to a Penalty Fare scheme.

The civil courts are certainly not any more robust than the magistrates’ courts; the bulk processing centre at Northampton just rubber stamps everything. And there are consequences for not engaging whichever legal system you use.

You mention the “worst thing” being a criminal record, and that’s not true. If you don’t engage and don’t pay a fine then the bailiffs will turn up and seize your stuff. The ultimate sanction if you wilfully refuse to pay a fine is that you go to prison, and bailiffs use this threat liberally to their advantage. You don’t have the threat of prison with a CCJ.

 

[RochdalePioneers]

This debate is somewhat bizarre. Surely the conviction barrier is obvious:

Caught short-faring. With multiple repeated deliberate examples found on investigation? Prosecution.
Caught using a ticket sold by the train company who caught them, where the railcard discount isn’t applicable for that time but the train company sold it and issued an itinery anyway? No prosecution.

Yes, we know some people are setting out to defraud the railway of ticket revenue. So catch and prosecute them. That isn’t the same as any error is setting out to defraud - especially when the error is with the train company app / staff / policy.

In a normal business, when bad publicity happens there is usually an internal review. Have we got this right. My assumption when businesses endlessly are scandal ridden or hit with outraged customers leaving 1-star reviews citing business-damaging practices is that management know and either don’t care or have deliberately chosen to operate the business in this way…

 

[Skymonster]

Actually the whole basis for this debate is a fallacy, because as has been pointed out here and elsewhere, people who make mistakes but then engage with the system DO NOT get criminal records. Criminalisation is reserved for persistent offenders, and as a last resort for those who ignore the consequences of their actions and hope the problem will go away. In my case, had I been ticket checked and reported, all I would have ended up with is a lost hour or two writing letters and bigger hole in my bank account than replacing the incorrectly dated ticket incurred. The threat of criminalisation as a backstop is entirely proportionate, given that those who proactively seek a less punitive outcome to a one-off error will almost certainly be offered one. I could argue that the charges for recovery of investigation costs are excessive, but (a) I’m not sure they are and (b) that’s a different debate.

 

[RochdalePioneers]

Actually the whole basis for this debate is a fallacy, because as has been pointed out here and elsewhere, people who make mistakes but then engage with the system DO NOT get criminal records. Criminalisation is reserved for persistent offenders, and as a last resort for those who ignore the consequences of their actions and hope the problem will go away. In my case, had I been ticket checked and reported, all I would have ended up with is a lost hour or two writing letters and bigger hole in my bank account than replacing the incorrectly dated ticket incurred. The threat of criminalisation as a backstop is entirely proportionate, given that those who proactively seek a less punitive outcome to a one-off error will almost certainly be offered one. I could argue that the charges for recovery of investigation costs are excessive, but (a) I’m not sure they are and (b) that’s a different debate.

No, the relevant point is that operators like Northern *seek criminal prosecution*. Whether it gets there or not doesn’t matter as much as the reality that Northern seek it.

Again, this includes crimes such as being sold a ticket for a train where the railcard discount sold *by Northern* was not valid.

 

[johncrossley]

Speeding is worse than short-faring. Speeding can cause death to an innocent party. Short-faring won't cause someone to die. But speeding does not lead to a criminal record.

 

[skyhigh]

Actually the whole basis for this debate is a fallacy, because as has been pointed out here and elsewhere, people who make mistakes but then engage with the system DO NOT get criminal records.

TfL would disagree with you there. They seem to prosecute 90% of cases.

 

[Fermiboson]

No, I don’t think it warrants a criminal conviction - not for a first offence anyway. Campaigning for change is one thing. But given what we have, I do accept responsibility for complying with the rules of the system and I accept that the ramifications of not doing so is my own problem and not anyone else’s.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Oct 2024 ==


There’s no metaphor involved: I really did mess up my ticket yesterday. And I consider myself lucky being snagged at the gateline. But how does anyone but me know I made an innocent mistake? I could have been trying it on because I’d noticed the tickets for a different date were cheaper. Where do you draw the line? How do you draw a line unless you check the history of the passengers involved in each anomaly?

Nobody on this forum tries to advocate or advise people who are guilty by the letter of the law to get out of legal consequences illegitimately; we advise on what the likely consequences are and comment that these consequences are usually disproportionate, which you seem to agree with. I don’t see the point you’re trying to make.

 

[BanburyBlue]

Speeding is worse than short-faring. Speeding can cause death to an innocent party. Short-faring won't cause someone to die. But speeding does not lead to a criminal record.

Speeding does lead to a criminal record if you are a repeat offender, are travelling fast enough to miss the option of a speed awareness course/Fixed Penalty, or don't engage with the process. i would also imagine that causing death by speeding, wouldn't be prosecuted as 'speeding'.

 

[Haywain]

Speeding is worse than short-faring. Speeding can cause death to an innocent party. Short-faring won't cause someone to die. But speeding does not lead to a criminal record.

Speeding is a criminal offence - and a strict liability one - that has possible civil remedies as stated above. If more people considered speeding to be a crime it might become less of a problem. In railway terms the equivalent civil remedy is a Penalty Fare.

 

[ianBR]

The industry has made tickets and rules more and more complicated.

Even guards and ticket office staff get things wrong as evidenced in this forum. And yet customers who make mistakes are treated like criminals

Railcards are a classic example. They used to be paper based and you’d see the expiry date every time you pulled a ticket out the wallet

The industry has now pushed people towards using apps which are generally terribly designed and not user friendly

The Trainline app is a classic example. Instead of displaying your railcard expiry date in a banner when you open the app, or telling you the expiry date when you buy a ticket - you have to remember where to find the damn thing within the app which takes multiple key strokes.

They also fail to meet the requirement that railcards should always be accessible without signing in. I’ve been on a train where my app has updated and I need to sign in again when I don’t have a signal and can’t remember my password

And despite saying they sent emails at renewal time I know from personal experience this does not always happen and they didn’t respond to my complaint about this

There is no excuse for railcards that are held in their own app not to be more visible and checked during the purchase

Overall the industry should be banned from prosecuting anyone until it gets its house in order and puts passengers at the centre of how it designs apps, e-tickets and rules

Ticket machines should be forced to display restrictions in plain English in a warning screen before a purchase is completed

 

[johncrossley]

Speeding is a criminal offence - and a strict liability one - that has possible civil remedies as stated above. If more people considered speeding to be a crime it might become less of a problem. In railway terms the equivalent civil remedy is a Penalty Fare.

You don't get a criminal record for speeding. You might not even get points if you take the speed awareness course.

 

[Haywain]

You don't get a criminal record for speeding. You might not even get points if you take the speed awareness course.

As stated above, a speed awareness course is effectively a civil remedy for a criminal offence - it could be regarded as an out of court settlement. If the case goes to court it will result in a criminal conviction.

 

[Cuthbert]

You don't get a criminal record for speeding. You might not even get points if you take the speed awareness course.

Check if you need to tell someone about your criminal record

When to tell a potential employer, university, college or insurance company about a criminal record, when it becomes 'spent' and what shows up on a DBS check.

www.gov.uk

 

[Fermiboson]

A few examples, I'm intrigued as to how other people think these should be handled:

1) Passenger presents advance ticket for a long distance journey, involving a change of train, valid for the following day. Passenger insists he needs to travel now to visit a relative in hospital (be original please ), but is unable to purchase another ticket. Warn him, but allow him to travel, on the basis that he should have to present his ticket again for the main leg of the journey. Passenger then leaves the train at a different station, not served by the operator or trains to the destination on the ticket.

2) Passenger approaches guard before boarding a very busy service in the middle of the PM peak. "I've got a ticket for the next train, but can I get on now?". Ticket is actually an advance for the train two hours later. Guard refuses. Passenger attempts to gain sympathy by claiming both that his boss bought his ticket and that he's finished work early and wants to get home. Guard still refuses. What if he had boarded without asking the guard and then been checked on the train?

3) Passenger presents guard with an advance ticket. Different TOC. Different time. Different day(!). Different route (same origin and destination). Told to buy new ticket. Refuses to pay that price. Tries to buy new ticket online - still an advance (and therefore still for the wrong time), still for the wrong TOC, still for the wrong route.

4) Another advance. Wrong TOC. Wrong time. Wrong route. "My friend bought it for me".

5) Railcard discounted ticket. No Railcard. "I am new here. My friend bought it for me".

6) Any number of the "pay when challenged" brigade, who regularly board busy services (in a penalty fares area) to travel one stop, knowing there's a very high chance that the guard won't get to them.

7) Advance ticket. Correct route. 4 hours early. "I just thought I'd catch an earlier train, I didn't want to wait".

IMO:
1) PF. Passenger’s excuse shows awareness of invalidity of ticket but presumably not sufficiently severe for a TIR. Note down ticket number and send it to whereever so that it is invalidated for further use.
2) PF as above.
3) TIR - nearly verbatim 5(3) “refuses to pay the correct fare”.
4) Depends on attitude test, really. I’d lean towards charging an excess to the flexible fare if that isn’t an exorbitant amount on the route concerned.
5) Also depends on attitude test but assuming one is satisfied they are honest, PF.
6) This one is both practically harder to tackle and also runs into safeguarding issues. Given that most of said brigade are likely to be minors (at least, in my personal experience in WM and W Yorks) you just can’t TIR them without the appropriate staff present, it being the right time of day, etc. If I were management, I would get together a squad of 20 or 30 RPIs and note down the ID of everyone who didn’t pay when boarding on a given service, then do it again a week later and anyone whose name shows up on both lists gets a TIR/straight to prosecution letter. I recognise this is a very inefficient way of dealing with it, and depending on how packed the service is may be impractical.
7) Let off with warning - but would be nice if one could take down the name without going to a TIR and one had a system which could identify if the person was trying this out for the first time. If there is a very significant difference in price (e.g. on an LNER train during peak vs late evening) - charge excess to cheapest valid flexible (or if it’s a trial route, excess to highest price of 70 min flex - do guards have this discretion?)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Oct 2024 ==

Broadly agree with the rest of your points, but

6) systems commonly defrauded (refunds, delay repay) need to be made much tighter both through more robust and clearer user interfaces (so nobody can get away with saying they made a false claim accidentally) and at-the-time monitoring (no more nonsense of people making 100s of obviously false claims before anything gets done)

Blind implementation of this will likely lead to bank transaction style red tape for incredibly simple claims, and we really don’t need the delay repay system to be any more inconvenient. I have always preferred the old fashioned “write to customer support with photo of ticket” method for anything more complicated than a delay on a direct train and I wonder if there is merit to returning to that.

8) all staff in public-facing roles should take a mandatory compliance test each year to certify they understand the basic principles of ticketing and enforcement - this will cover everything that passengers might be expected to understand about the systems so they can always answer the most common questions from passengers correctly and know how to obtain the answers to rarer or more complicated questions. (E.g. when to request a refund and when to request delay repay, though really those systems should be combined; 2-character restriction codes are visible to passengers on tickets, so staff must be able to show they can explain them correctly to passengers and explain the methods for checking whether or not a ticket is valid on a particular train.) This will entail creating and maintaining new public content providing definitive national information (including all the special cases such as using delay repay for certain types of refunds at some particular train companies but not others) and expecting all staff to know this defined set of content. (The fewer special cases the railway invents, the simpler this will be.)

Not disagreeing with this, but thought it would be an interesting vignette for you to know that TPE’s current method of test takes the form of a Kahoot quiz.

In terms of ticket reform, I'd argue passengers should have the option of creating a national railway ID which they can optionally attach to their e-tickets and digital railcards. (Basically an extension of the railcard app to non-railcard holders, with e-tickets linked to that holder, with the effect of joining up accounts across multiple retailers improving fraud detection and recovery measures.)
If they attach their ID (or someone else's ID) to a ticket, then that ticket can only be used by that person. Advantage to the passenger is that if for any reason they are unable to present the ticket (phone battery dead) their identity becomes a sufficient substitute and they can avoid penalties for being unable to present it at the time (similar to forgotten railcard, on a limited but probably more generous number of occasions, potential admin charge if happens too often etc.). It'll be sufficient for a guard to scan the ID - if there's more than one valid ticket attached they can confirm the right one to use (and if any other unscanned tickets have already been used and should be marked as such) and they may also be granted some ability to check travel history across tickets.

Would this create the unintended effect of increasing suspicion on people who refuse to get said ID? Possible Equality Act challenges?

 

[AlterEgo]

Check if you need to tell someone about your criminal record

When to tell a potential employer, university, college or insurance company about a criminal record, when it becomes 'spent' and what shows up on a DBS check.

www.gov.uk

This explains that FPNs aren’t criminal records.

 

[Fermiboson]

Ticket machines should be forced to display restrictions in plain English in a warning screen before a purchase is completed

It’s a valid point, but as things stand some restrictions simply cannot be translated into plain English. Try fitting P7 onto a ticket machine screen without confusing everyone.

 

[Harpo]

There is no excuse for railcards that are held in their own app not to be more visible and checked during the purchase

Quite. I can’t imagine that there are many membership discounts in the world of commerce, that don’t require proof of entitlement before you receive your goods or services.

 

[island]

As I mentioned on another thread, be careful what you wish for.

Almost all of the people who end up getting convicted of crimes on the National Rail network are people who failed to engage with multiple contacts and attempts to settle out of court.

If you migrate to a civil system dealt with via the county court, there does not seem to me to be reason to suggest that these people would suddenly start engaging and settling. So you would replace:

• A 6 month limit for bringing proceedings with 6 years (5 in Scotland)
• Bulk processing through SJP with bulk processing through the county court business centre
• A 1 year period during which the case "remains on your record" with 6 years
• A criminal record (if any) that has a minimal effect for most job applications with a CCJ that has a real-life effect on obtaining financial products
• For people who missed their case for whatever reason and wanted it reopening, a statutory declaration costing at most £5 with a set-aside N244 application costing £303
• (edited to add) The train company needing to prove their case beyond all reasonable doubt with proving it on the balance of probabilities.

So again, be careful what you wish for.

 

[Fermiboson]

As I mentioned on another thread, be careful what you wish for.

Almost all of the people who end up getting convicted of crimes on the National Rail network are people who failed to engage with multiple contacts and attempts to settle out of court.

If you migrate to a civil system dealt with via the county court, there does not seem to me to be reason to suggest that these people would suddenly start engaging and settling. So you would replace:

• A 6 month limit for bringing proceedings with 6 years (5 in Scotland)
• Bulk processing through SJP with bulk processing through the county court business centre
• A 1 year period during which the case "remains on your record" with 6 years
• A criminal record (if any) that has a minimal effect for most job applications with a CCJ that has a real-life effect on obtaining financial products
• For people who missed their case for whatever reason and wanted it reopening, a statutory declaration costing at most £5 with a set-aside N244 application costing £303

So again, be careful what you wish for.

I suppose the question I would ask is, what currently happens to someone who ignores a speeding ticket?

 

[island]

I suppose the question I would ask is, what currently happens to someone who ignores a speeding ticket?

The following is intended as a typical treatment of a normal run of the mill case. It is not intended to be precise or spell out all the possibilities, so please treat it as though every sentence was prefixed by "typically".

They will be prosecuted for the offence of speeding.

If they are convicted in court, they will get a fine (usually larger than the £100 fixed penalty) plus costs and a surcharge, and their driving licence will be endorsed with 3 points.

Speeding convictions are treated the same as railway byelaw convictions, in that as non-recordable offences they won't appear on a basic or standard DBS check, and will only appear on an enhanced DBS check if deemed relevant to the role applied for.

 

[Fermiboson]

The following is intended as a typical treatment of a normal run of the mill case. It is not intended to be precise or spell out all the possibilities, so please treat it as though every sentence was prefixed by "typically".

They will be prosecuted for the offence of speeding.

If they are convicted in court, they will get a fine (usually larger than the £100 fixed penalty) plus costs and a surcharge, and their driving licence will be endorsed with 3 points.

Speeding convictions are treated the same as railway byelaw convictions, in that as non-recordable offences they won't appear on a basic or standard DBS check, and will only appear on an enhanced DBS check if deemed relevant to the role applied for.

In that case it seems to me the real problem is the massive *possible* punishment in RoRA and not the criminality itself. Many people who come to the forums appear to be under the impression that they could be imprisoned for their offence and I suspect that contributes both to the extortionate amounts TOCs are able to recover in OOCs as well as a general feeling of disproportionality. (Issues with how and when a PF/TIR/byelaw prosecution etc. are initiated notwithstanding.)