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Not exactly fare evasion, but another thing to throw into the mix is that many tourist sites and forums recommend the 2 for 1 "Days Out" where you can get discounted entry to a number of London attractions if you travelled by train, which is promoted by National Rail. The scheme includes a large number of attractions such as the London Dungeons, St Pauls, London Transport Museum and Westminster Abbey. You need to show the train tickets to be able to claim the 2 for 1 discount.
Often, the Vauxhall to Waterloo journey is suggested as a cheap way to get tickets. Of course many people get into London by a number of means, none of which involve trains, or actually live there, so the tickets go unused other than for the purpose of claiming the discount and there is no fare evasion. I guess they could check to see if rail tickets were actually used for travel but there is no real way that the attractions could check this.
In practice no one makes you show tickets (or at least no one has asked me and I've taken advantage of this offer many times) and a contactless card would be sufficient anyway* and cheaper than Vauxhall - Waterloo, so I'm not sure who is suggesting that!
*Technically, a contactless card wouldn't be valid by the terms of the offer but a. I don't think it would be challenged in practice b. A Lichfield Trent Valley to Lichfield City ticket would be (even in London) so there's still no reason to use the Vauxhall ticket
Seems a reasonable interpretation of "Where the entrance to or exit from any platform or station is via a manned or an automatic ticket barrier no person shall enter or leave the station, except with permission from an authorised person, without passing through the barrier in the correct manner."
I would be shocked if any passenger I have ever spoken to has read this sentence a single time in their life, but it is pretty much common sense anyway.
It's not blocking all e-tickets, it's blocking flows (origin-destination pairs). To take a high profile example on another TOC, Vauxhall-Waterloo has Oyster/Contactless, so there is virtually no inconvenience to real customers by blocking e-tickets.
I have explained to SWR that this is not the case, and it's unfortunate that the myth continues to be perpetuated by the industry.
As much as the industry might like to pretend otherwise, there's this thing called "split ticketing" that exists. The RCS controls apply per ticket. Vauxhall->Waterloo can and will be sold in a split for longer distance journeys. As soon as one ticket is ToD-only, you've screwed over the whole booking - despite there being no evidence whatsoever that the customer is misusing the tickets they are paying for.
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I suspect the push for e-tickets has come from people incented to save money, eg by commission on the basis of savings made, and rarely thought of the unintended consequences.
The customer experience is better. The public overwhelmingly don't want to faff around with a ticket machine, particularly when they have pretty poor reliability. The data operators get for detecting and preventing fraud is significantly better. Undoubtedly, E-Ticket scanning will have vastly cut down on refund fraud (particularly as CCST tickets often aren't marked/clipped visually at all on-board by staff anymore). The system as a whole is a pretty secure one from a cryptographic perspective and the E-Ticket scheme has directly funded investment in validation equipment and new barriers via a levy that retailers have paid on each and every issued ticket.
The fulfilment method is not at fault here.
What the article isn't saying is the truth of the matter which is: "We procured barriers from Cubic that aren't fit for purpose and don't allow us to apply the same controls we can to paper tickets to tickets with a barcode, therefore - instead of upgrading validation equipment or running more revenue protection exercises/more consistently scanning tickets on-board, we are cracking this nut with a sledgehammer and just banning E-Tickets in their totality. In the process we will inconvenience our paying passengers, but that's a small price to pay."
That reality makes the industry look rather silly though, doesn't it? Better to blame electronic tickets for the problem and imply that retailers have deliberately enabled this.
This isn't the impression that I get at my local station.They appear to be quite popular with passengers of all ages,despite there being an open ticket office as well.
I don’t see how the most popular ticket retailing sites are to blame for people abusing the availability of e-tickets.
For my own amusement, I tried to book a Brighton to Preston Park return ticket on the site promoted by this forum. Guess what? It offers to fulfill the order with e-tickets.
I don’t know that station well, but Preston Park has no e-readers or even gates on the Eastern side of the station. I know this only because during disruption, our train terminated there once and there was a bus 5A due within 10 minutes, so we walked down
I don’t see how the most popular ticket retailing sites are to blame for people abusing the availability of e-tickets.
For my own amusement, I tried to book a Brighton to Preston Park return ticket on the site promoted by this forum. Guess what? It offers to fulfill the order with e-tickets.
I don’t know that station well, but Preston Park has no e-readers or even gates on the Eastern side of the station. I know this only because during disruption, our train terminated there once and there was a bus 5A due within 10 minutes, so we walked down
Retailers aren't to blame. But they're a convenient scapegoat for firms that haven't sorted their revenue protection out - and short journey tickets like these are then a very convenient target when they start showing up on spreadsheets.
This isn't the impression that I get at my local station.They appear to be quite popular with passengers of all ages,despite there being an open ticket office as well.
This isn't the impression that I get at my local station.They appear to be quite popular with passengers of all ages,despite there being an open ticket office as well.
This isn't the impression that I get at my local station.They appear to be quite popular with passengers of all ages,despite there being an open ticket office as well.
Elephant & Castle station is just a bit odd since it has no barriers despite being in zone 1 (slash 2). Fare evasion has been rampant there from what I've seen.
It has been difficult because of the layout, but it is getting them soon, as part of the station upgrade (mid-2028 according to this article), and presumably as part of these plans recently "flipped" the ticket office around to face the entrance rather than the internal area. I suspect the forthcoming town centre exit (former shopping centre exit) will need to be remotely monitored.
Can station operators not block certain e-ticket flows at the gateline? Perhaps that's what you meant by "don't allow us to apply the same controls we can to paper tickets to tickets with a barcode", but that would be the obvious solution, where the passenger can be asked where they boarded, to show additional tickets for their whole journey, see that it wasn't scanned at Vauxhall and question it, etc.
I assume Vauxhall-Waterloo showing up in splits is relatively rare and each ticket holder can get a bit of scrutiny when revenue inspections are conducted.
Ticket machines don't sell the full range of tickets either, you can't buy the North Wales Rover ticket from the ticket machine at Chester (even though it's operated by TFW) as it's not listed on the machine, so you have to wait for the ticket office to open.
Plus i often buy a return, which i then combine with a day rover, which i can get from the same ticket office (at Liverpool Lime Street), rather than having to get off & buy the rover at the station were the ticket changes over, such as off peak return to Crewe combined with a West Midlands Day Rover, the ticket machine doesn't sell the day rover.
Can station operators not block certain e-ticket flows at the gateline? Perhaps that's what you meant by "don't allow us to apply the same controls we can to paper tickets to tickets with a barcode", but that would be the obvious solution, where the passenger can be asked where they boarded, to show additional tickets for their whole journey, see that it wasn't scanned at Vauxhall and question it, etc.
My understanding is that no, many of the barriers are way too primitive to do these sorts of checks. That's why when TOCs do a revenue protection exercise, they usually tape over the barcode readers or bring in a separate product (such as Ticket Keeper's "T-Val" box) and force passengers to scan tickets there instead.
You would hope that some of the new barriers (e.g. the ones at High Wycombe and the Vix/S&B products) are better in this regard, but I genuinely don't know if that is the case or not.
I have explained to SWR that this is not the case, and it's unfortunate that the myth continues to be perpetuated by the industry.
As much as the industry might like to pretend otherwise, there's this thing called "split ticketing" that exists. The RCS controls apply per ticket. Vauxhall->Waterloo can and will be sold in a split for longer distance journeys. As soon as one ticket is ToD-only, you've screwed over the whole booking - despite there being no evidence whatsoever that the customer is misusing the tickets they are paying for.
Split ticketing is, and always has been the right to use combinations of tickets where they are available and are used in compliance with the NRCoT. There is no requirement to offer tickets or fares in specific formats for the sole purpose of enabling their use in split ticketing transactions.
Split ticketing is, and always has been the right to use combinations of tickets where they are available and are used in compliance with the NRCoT. There is no requirement to offer tickets or fares in specific formats for the sole purpose of enabling their use in split ticketing transactions.
Completely misses the point. Your desire should be to improve the passenger experience. You can do that and protect revenue, the two things are not mutually exclusive.
Not exactly fare evasion, but another thing to throw into the mix is that many tourist sites and forums recommend the 2 for 1 "Days Out" where you can get discounted entry to a number of London attractions if you travelled by train, which is promoted by National Rail. The scheme includes a large number of attractions such as the London Dungeons, St Pauls, London Transport Museum and Westminster Abbey. You need to show the train tickets to be able to claim the 2 for 1 discount.
Often, the Vauxhall to Waterloo journey is suggested as a cheap way to get tickets. Of course many people get into London by a number of means, none of which involve trains, or actually live there, so the tickets go unused other than for the purpose of claiming the discount and there is no fare evasion. I guess they could check to see if rail tickets were actually used for travel but there is no real way that the attractions could check this.
Don't disagree with this point,but from personal observation, ticket machines are still popular,despite the claim that "people don't want to faff around with them"
We've already seen a lot of these cases on the forum. The funny thing is that if people were a bit more clued up they'd stop dropping themselves in it as soon as a threatening email arrives... We usually only get people coming to the forum after they've already responded admitting guilt.
Everyone here pays their train fares and a lot of them give up their time for free to give advice to people like you who have found themselves ensnared by train companies. Perhaps you might like to reflect on your attitude.
It's the basis of your opinion but not the basis of public transport. The basis of public transport is that it is available to everybody on the payment of the appropriate fare. It is not a pay-what-you-want system.
Hello there, After not taking the train for a while I was caught today daughnuting from Waterloo to Ash Vale. I know what I did is wrong, I do it as I find the fares stupidly expensive. Yes I know they go up because of people like me but not only. I was given a travel irregularity report and I...
Completely misses the point. Your desire should be to improve the passenger experience. You can do that and protect revenue, the two things are not mutually exclusive.
Hang on, I'm just trying to provide some observations/facts in respect to the specific situation. This doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with me! No TOC in their current structure is going to swerve closing a revenue protection loophole because it makes split ticketing harder in some cases - that's a simple statement of fact.
Hang on, I'm just trying to provide some observations/facts in respect to the specific situation. This doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with me! No TOC in their current structure is going to swerve closing a revenue protection loophole because it makes split ticketing harder in some cases - that's a simple statement of fact.
It's not a "revenue protection loophole", it's simply incompetence on the part of the train operators who do not have fit-for-purpose validation equipment. Those are the facts.
And the "solution" the industry has come up with to address it is poor, and makes the passenger experience worse for some people paying for tickets legitimately. We had exactly the same excuses wheeled out for the changes to walk-up refunds which made rail travel less attractive to businesses.
As a reminder, you can have both revenue protection and do work to protect the user experience. RDG could amend the spec tomorrow to add an additional data source and add an easement allowing long-distance combinations of tickets to be fulfilled electronically (whilst forcing ToD fulfilment for problematic flows if purchased individually, if that's the direction the operators want to go in*). That won't happen because the user experience is simply not a priority.
* It's a really dumb direction and there is nothing inherently about ToD that makes it more resistant to fraud. The industry will realise this when it suddenly has far less data to work with.
Do ticket machines allow purchase of physical tickets that are both from another station and for a future date? I know that if you buy online for collection that's both possible and normal, but that leaves an electronic footprint in the retailer's system.
And in any case, making it impossible on one specific ticket machine to purchase from a different origin is simply not an effective anti-fraud measure in 2026. That ship has sailed.
The efforts need to be concentrated on catching people in the act and using appropriate technology properly to assist with that.
The worst offenders, who've been at it for weeks, months and years, should be being prosecuted under the Fraud Act. As should those giving false details at point-of-purchase or using stolen payment cards to pay for their travel. As should those caught with deliberately fabricated/counterfeit tickets and Railcards. Is the legal bar higher? Yes, it is. Will it mean a bit more work? Yup. Should that mean we just give up and try and extract a settlement before calling it a day? Absolutely not.
It does (there's no reason paying by card at a TVM shouldn't also leave a footprint, mind you) but that online retail footprint will be of limited use for the most serious offenders. You'll get the low-hanging fruit. Realistically, anyone serious has probably paid using stolen card details, false personal details and used a network connection in a different country. Obviously, retailers try and prevent that from happening but it's a difficult problem to conclusively solve made all the more difficult by some card issuers and payment providers.
It does (there's no reason paying by card at a TVM shouldn't also leave a footprint, mind you) but that online retail footprint will be of limited use for the most serious offenders. You'll get the low-hanging fruit. Realistically, anyone serious has probably paid using stolen card details, false personal details and used a network connection in a different country. Obviously, retailers try and prevent that from happening but it's a difficult problem to conclusively solve made all the more difficult by some card issuers and payment providers
And the audit trail ToD provides in an industry context is basically limited to print time and station (assuming the TVM isn't actively lying about where it is... don't ask). Aside from the dumbest of offenders, that's far less useful data than the scans from actual the point of travel, if we had reliable technical partners and a sensible number of revenue staff (who in my opinion would quickly pay for themselves)
We are aware of an issue with emails from the Forum to Microsoft-based email accounts (hotmail/outlook/live.com email addresses). This is being looked into currently, thanks for your patience meanwhile.
