ScotRail to introduce £10 minimum fare for those not buying before boarding

[Bletchleyite]

Agreed but cross-border trains become problematic if so.

Are they problematic where they are actual proper international trains on the mainland?

 

[Wolfie]

Are they problematic where they are actual proper international trains on the mainland?

I've never looked into that but more generally often contracts state a specified legal basis.

 

[thedbdiboy]

Telford PlusBus with a Railcard is £2.75...

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Feb 2026 ==


Agreed but cross-border trains become problematic if so.

But GB has one rail network and a lot of journeys are cross-border.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not hostile to either devolution or full independence. In fact, I'm rather more open to it than the SNP seems to be, at times. I don't, for example, think London should have a veto.

But even if there were two separate countries it would still be the case that, as with the island of Ireland, there would be one rail network. It's hard enough for people to know and adhere to the rules when you have one set of T&Cs, let alone if you start being different for different's sake.

The rules are clear everywhere else. Buy before you board if there are facilities at the station where you board to buy the ticket you require, unless those facilities don't accept your only available form of payment. If you don't, there's a range of options available to TOCs to deal with the fact you've travelled without a ticket, one of which isn't to make up a hitherto non-existent fare outside of the simplified Anytime / Off-peak / Advance range.

The answer isn't two, seperate, completely unrelated sets of Conditions but rather a mirrored pair that allow the differences to exist without creating a vacuum for cross border journeys. It's going to be one of the tests of GBR operating in a devolved environment. A lot of basic requirements are already framed by consumer law, the PRO and the commitments of both Scottish and Westminster Governments.
But the fact remains that a significant part of the basic framework of the NRCoT is the requirement to have a ticket and what might happen to you if you don't, and the requirements and legal remedies on which these are based in the current edition largely cannot be applied in Scotland. The idea of the NRCoT is rooted in the 1992-96 privatisation and simply doesn't take account of devolution, so it makes sense to address this as part of GBR mobilisation.

 

[sheff1]

I've never seen a TVM that sells Plusbus.

Plenty of TVMs do sell Plusbus.

The technology is there now to determine whether someone has boarded a train ticketless. If the TVM is not operating or down, that can be conveyed to the guard via technology.

As as been confirmed on here, certain types of failure are not recorded/reported.

The rules are clear everywhere else. Buy before you board if there are facilities at the station where you board to buy the ticket you require, unless those facilities don't accept your only available form of payment.

Except your second sentence is not what the rules say.

****
Back to the new Scotrail policy. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, buying on board when travelling from a staffed station or one with a TVM has been widely practiced and accepted for years.

 

[Quincy]

First Aberdeen have a £50 "Standard Fare" for those without a valid ticket (I doubt anyone has been charged this, ever) in their Conditions of Travel:

Not first Aberdeen but down south, I have known a few people who have (apparently) been charged this when buying wrongly discounted tickets and checked by inspectors.

 

[NewcastleBrown]

It does seem odd to go to the trouble of doing this and then only setting it at £10. If you were persistently fare dodging before, I suspect the maths still works out at only £10 a time when you are caught

 

[Sirius]

I’m entertained their example - Bishopbriggs to Glasgow Queen Street - cannot be short fared in any case due to barriers at the latter. Unless you take the lift to low level and a train to another station and walk back, where you may encounter a gateline anyway. Seems like a lot of faff to maybe not even save £3 on your return journey.

However I suspect they did this to avoid naming problem stations.

Since there are no longer peak time fares I‘d guess the £10 fare is probably double the return fares being dodged in most cases. Journeys of at most 4 or 5 stops within the SPT area that neither start or end at a major station would be my guess at where most evasion occurs. At that point you’d need to avoid being caught on the train 5 times in a row to be in profit.

 

[kkong]

I’m entertained their example - Bishopbriggs to Glasgow Queen Street - cannot be short fared in any case due to barriers at the latter.

While not on the same route, you could buy a ticket from one of many other stations near Glasgow Central / Queen Street to get through the barriers.

 

[TUC]

Given that the vast majority of passengers outside London, Merseyside and a few other areas, and outside of offers such as Kids for a Quid, buy e-tickets, it's hard to see why this change is controversial or why most would have any excuse to not have a ticket

 

[applepie2100]

As a local on the former Strathclyde network I can see this being something that is very occasionally enforced by revenue protection blocks and hardly ever otherwise. Those that don't pay for their tickets already certainly won't start paying for them just because of a minimum onboard fare and I'm pretty sure that the on train ticket examiners won't want the grief caused by trying to force a few quid extra out of someone because they want to buy on board.

I completely agree that persistent high level fare evasion needs to be tackled but this doesn't seem to be the right way to do it.

 

[Kite159]

It is foolish to assume that all failure cases can always be remotely detected like this. What if the touchscreen digitiser fails in a way the software can't detect? There might be a drop in sales, but that might be the only indicator you get.

Or even if someone has decided to rub spit (or another bodily waste product) over the touchscreen for a laugh. To the various systems the TVM is reporting that it's working until someone reports the screen is unusable.

-----

If ScotRail moved into the modern era with PDF e-tickets rather than the more restrictive app based M-Tickets they might see more uptake in digital sales

 

[kkong]

If ScotRail moved into the modern era with PDF e-tickets rather than the more restrictive app based M-Tickets they might see more uptake in digital sales

I think the number of people who aren't buying digitally because ScotRail sells m-tickets rather than e-tickets must be minuscule.

In my experience, use of m-tickets on the ScotRail app is widespread on rail services in Scotland.

 

[philthetube]

It does seem odd to go to the trouble of doing this and then only setting it at £10. If you were persistently fare dodging before, I suspect the maths still works out at only £10 a time when you are caught

possibly to get the message through to the majority of passengers without causing too much grief with plans to raise the fare later.

they will also not want guards being placed in difficult situations.

 

[N1]

possibly to get the message through to the majority of passengers without causing too much grief with plans to raise the fare later.

they will also not want guards being placed in difficult situations.

The large volume of Scotrail stations with no ticket issuing facilities may also undermine this slightly. The list is not just WHL, Far North Line stations, there are significant number of stations across the Central Belt, Ayrshire, Fife that have no ticket issuing facilities, so those fare dodgers in the know will just claim they got on at those stations to avoid the £10. (If it works out as less than £10 for those fares).

 

[najaB]

The large volume of Scotrail stations with no ticket issuing facilities may also undermine this slightly. The list is not just WHL, Far North Line stations, there are significant number of stations across the Central Belt, Ayrshire, Fife that have no ticket issuing facilities, so those fare dodgers in the know will just claim they got on at those stations to avoid the £10. (If it works out as less than £10 for those fares).

I'm going to guess that for a lot of them the existing minimum fare is close enough to £10 to not really make much difference.

Also, how many of them are hotbeds of ticketless travel?

 

[scottishtrains]

The large volume of Scotrail stations with no ticket issuing facilities may also undermine this slightly. The list is not just WHL, Far North Line stations, there are significant number of stations across the Central Belt, Ayrshire, Fife that have no ticket issuing facilities, so those fare dodgers in the know will just claim they got on at those stations to avoid the £10. (If it works out as less than £10 for those fares).

Funny you say this, sometimes I’ve not even had the opportunity to buy a ticket travelling on ScotRail due to both stations lacking TVMs and the train not having any conductors/revnue protection

 

[N1]

I'm going to guess that for a lot of them the existing minimum fare is close enough to £10 to not really make much difference.

Also, how many of them are hotbeds of ticketless travel?

Difficult to measure, as it is dependent on when, where and on what train someone is challenged. Stations like Ashfield, Hillington East, Wester Hailes, Slateford, Kennishead can undermine it, depending on where you are challenged. Even stations like Inverkip restrict the minimum fare. Example, you have boarded train at Livingston South, aren't asked for a ticket until you are close to Haymarket, and buy a discounted return to Wester Hailes or Slateford. This allows you back in the barriers on the way back.

I don't think this is a massive source of fare evasion, or that the £10 on-board fare is a good idea, I do. But the large number of stations with no ticket facilities undermines its effectiveness.

 

[Wallsendmag]

I've never seen a TVM that sells Plusbus.

I've seen several hundred

 

[Dirty_Mac]

I've never seen a TVM that sells Plusbus.

Just bought one at Edinburgh (for Stirling) a month ago

 

[teaspoon]

Back to the new Scotrail policy. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, buying on board when travelling from a staffed station or one with a TVM has been widely practiced and accepted for years.

Indeed - though I'm always surprised by the queues of passengers waiting to buy a ticket to exit the gateline at Glasgow Central or Queen Street, and wonder what the ratio is between people who genuinely didn't have an opportunity to buy a ticket; those who intended to get one from the conductor but didn't encounter one; and chancers who claim to have boarded at the last (ungated) station.

Charging the latter two categories a tenner will probably bring those queues down quite a bit - and maybe save a bit on staffing costs.

 

[WesternLancer]

I had this e-mail from Scotrail this morning. Occurs to me that it's significantly less punitive than the PF approach in England and thus rather more customer friendly perhaps.

We’re writing to let you know about an upcoming change to rules for travelling on ScotRail services.

We’re introducing a new £10 minimum fare for journeys where a ticket hasn’t been purchased before boarding, but could have been. The minimum fare is intended to provide a clear and consistent approach for all customers and help reduce anti-social behaviour on the railway, which is often caused by a small minority travelling without a ticket.

We’ve now begun an education period to give customers time to become familiar with the change. From 1 July 2026, the £10 minimum fare will be put in place.

There are some exclusions where the minimum fare will not apply, including:[

• If your station has no ticket office, or it is closed and there is no ticket vending machine (TVM)
• If you hold a National Entitlement Card
• If accessibility requirements mean you cannot access the ticket office or use a TVM

Customers who can only pay in cash and can’t access a ticket office must obtain a ‘promise to pay’ ticket from a TVM and then purchase a ticket from on-train staff.

Further information is available on our website.

mTickets are a great option for buying before you board - just remember they must be bought and activated before travelling, and not on-train or at your destination station.

Thank you for choosing ScotRail and for helping us keep Scotland’s Railway fair for all.

 

[35B]

In practice, I don't think it'll make that much of a difference. The point of conflict ("why should I pay more") remains, as the objection of people charged will be to the principle of paying more. I also anticipate a lot of edge cases around railcard use.

The stakes, though, will be lower as the amounts involved are lower - and the comparison of impact with English operators will be interesting.

 

[Tram203]

Curious to know how the "customers who can only pay in cash" part will be enforced / confirmed as true.

E.g, passenger takes £20 note out of wallet and conductor / RPI catches sight of bank card in said wallet.

"Why didn't you use that card to buy before boarding"?

How can the endless list of possible reasons given - e.g card is cancelled, waiting for new PIN, account is empty etc etc - be verified?

 

[trei2k]

This is covered by the new policy:

Customers who can only pay in cash and can’t access a ticket office must obtain a ‘promise to pay’ ticket from a TVM and then purchase a ticket from on-train staff.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Curious to know how the "customers who can only pay in cash" part will be enforced / confirmed as true.

E.g, passenger takes £20 note out of wallet and conductor / RPI catches sight of bank card in said wallet.

"Why didn't you use that card to buy before boarding"?

How can the endless list of possible reasons given - e.g card is cancelled, waiting for new PIN, account is empty etc etc - be verified?

In practice it just means you want to pay cash and will do that. Card will be subject to the uplift.

The real purpose of PtP is the same as Permit to Travel - to prove where you came from so you can't short fare.

 

[kkong]

I guess comes into play if someone attempts to "short fare" on a bus. Boards in Aberdeen city centre, asking for a ticket for somewhere within the city suburbs but stays on outside the city area where the fare would be more?

That's not possible because First Aberdeen don't operate any services outside the city limits (except the weekend night buses to Banchory, on which city fares apply anyway).

 

[ChilliSauce]

OK, so you get on an Avanti at Preston (ungated) and go to Euston and are sold an Anytime at £198 rather than an Off Peak at £70 because you didn't pay before you boarded. An extra £128, not under a tenner.

Why does that not have to be fully compliant with the Penalty Fares Rules? It isn't. And it's been how it's worked for years including back into BR days.

Or better still last Saturday I got on Avanti in Preston and settled myself down in Coach "K" ..no one came to check my ticket / pass. The train terminated at Milton Keynes ...I got off and the tickets gates were wide open .. Another "free" ride !

 

[Bletchleyite]

Or better still last Saturday I got on Avanti in Preston and settled myself down in Coach "K" ..no one came to check my ticket / pass. The train terminated at Milton Keynes ...I got off and the tickets gates were wide open .. Another "free" ride !

I don't upgrade any more as I prefer the new Standard seats over the 1st ones, but before the refurb I often did, and in both Avanti and Virgin days I was probably actually charged the Standard Premium/Weekend First upgrade about 50% of the time if that.

Obviously if you paid nowt that could have resulted in a prosecution - there definitely is means to pay before boarding at Preston!

 

[mmh]

In practice it just means you want to pay cash and will do that. Card will be subject to the uplift.

The real purpose of PtP is the same as Permit to Travel - to prove where you came from so you can't short fare.

Although there are many stations with no ticket machines to get one from. There are Glasgow suburban stations without them where a single to Central / Queen Street is a lot less than £10.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Although there are many stations with no ticket machines to get one from. There are Glasgow suburban stations without them where a single to Central / Queen Street is a lot less than £10.

If there is no means of purchasing a ticket then they can't charge you that. Surprising that there are such stations when Northern have even put a TVM at remote stations on the Settle-Carlisle, but ScotRail has always been a bit different. Stations like that are a hole in that system, but (a) you need to know which ones if you are going to misuse it, and (b) I guess there's no TVM due to potential vandalism at some locations?