Increase of TfL Incomplete Journey Fare Trial

Kite159 · 24 Jun 2026

From the 5th July to 31st October there will be a trial by some TOCs within London with an increase of the incomplete journey fare from London terminals & Tottenham Hale (strangely not Farringdon/Stratford or Clapham Junction) where the charge will be up to £30,40.

Sorry if this isn't worthy of a topic

RailUK Forums

JonathanH · 24 Jun 2026

The inclusion of Tottenham Hale suggests that the gateline at Stansted Airport isn't permanently staffed.

However, it does indicate a difficulty of operating a tap on / tap off contactless system on a network which isn't fully gated, and which doesn't have first to last staffing of ticket barriers.

Arguably this is a slightly 'lazy' solution to the better approach of permanent revenue protection at entry and exit points to the railway.

Benjwri · 24 Jun 2026

JonathanH said:
Arguably this is a slightly 'lazy' solution to the better approach of permanent revenue protection at entry and exit points to the railway.

At what cost though? We could never afford to gate and staff every station in even just the south.

Kite159 · 24 Jun 2026

Benjwri said:
At what cost though? We could never afford to gate and staff every station in even just the south.

Especially from first to last train.

JonathanH · 24 Jun 2026

Benjwri said:
At what cost though? We could never afford to gate and staff every station in even just the south.

Maybe true, but there is an inconsistency about first to last staffing where there are gates. It would be reasonable for somewhere like Stansted Airport to have the gates staffed at all times.

Southern have, at least in theory, first to last staffing at many of their gated stations even with only one or two trains an hour.

Halish Railway · 24 Jun 2026

Isn’t some of this to do with the method of buying a ticket to the likes of Enfield Town, Brimsdown etc., where it is cheaper for people travelling to King’s Cross with LNER with a flexible ticket to these stations?

JonathanH · 24 Jun 2026

Halish Railway said:
Isn’t some of this to do with the method of buying a ticket to the likes of Enfield Town, Brimsdown etc., where it is cheaper for people travelling to King’s Cross with LNER with a flexible ticket to these stations?

No, this is a PAYG matter. People touch in at a major station, then don't touch in at the end of their journey. The incomplete journey charge is currently less than many journeys within the PAYG area.

One of the issues cited with nationwide PAYG availability is the difficulty of setting an appropriate minimum fare of this nature.

By setting it high, it penalises 'honest mistakes', or occasions of 'timing out' in disruption.

By setting it too low, it means that people are tempted not to touch out when travelling longer distances. However, recurrence of this is deterred by cards being blacklisted for too many incomplete journeys.

Kilopylae · 24 Jun 2026

£30.40 seems like an appropriate compromise to me, given Project Oval. I assume people can still ring the TfL helpdesk to get it refunded in cases of disruption, technical issues or honest forgetfulness at unbarriered finishing stations?

Benjwri · 24 Jun 2026

JonathanH said:
By setting it high, it penalises 'honest mistakes', or occasions of 'timing out' in disruption.

TfL is very proactive in letting people correct these issues though, through both the web and the phone so accessible to all, it's only people who constantly do not record taps, and cannot provide a feasible explanation to TfL, that are going to be caught out by it.

JonathanH · 24 Jun 2026

Benjwri said:
TfL is very proactive in letting people correct these issues though, through both the web and the phone so accessible to all, it's only people who constantly do not record taps, and cannot provide a feasible explanation to TfL, that are going to be caught out by it.

Yes, I agree that TfL are good in this regard, although £30 could be a high short term sting for someone with limited income who makes a mistake.

bakerstreet · 24 Jun 2026

JonathanH said:
Yes, I agree that TfL are good in this regard, although £30 could be a high short term sting for someone with limited income who makes a mistake.

Especially if that might be 2 x £30 in times of disruption if you exceed the journey time limits.

Sonic1234 · 24 Jun 2026

JonathanH said:
Southern have, at least in theory, first to last staffing at many of their gated stations even with only one or two trains an hour.

What a waste if the station really only has 1tph.

Edvid · 9 Jul 2026

In relation to this trial, Ticketing & Revenue Update #160 includes an important bit of info that hasn't been made public through normal means (see bit in bold).

CONTACTLESS PAYG MAXIMUM FARE TRIAL

[...]

The trial reflects the higher fares that can apply on these National Rail journeys and is designed to encourage customers to complete their journeys correctly.

Although only around 3% of contactless PAYG journeys are recorded as incomplete, the new charging arrangement is intended to reduce these occurrences while ensuring the correct fare is paid.

Once the trial has concluded, TfL will review the results before deciding whether to introduce the higher maximum fare permanently.

Staff should also be aware of an important change to the refund process. Customers with incomplete PAYG contactless journeys involving stations included in the trial will no longer be able to request a refund through their TfL online account.

Instead, they must contact TfL Customer Services by telephone, where their claim will be assessed.

Surreytraveller · 9 Jul 2026

I can see where people have two maximum fares incorrectly charged during disruption, will just ring their bank up and do chargebacks.
It's easy enough to get new cards with the same bank account if TfL start blacklisting cards under these circumstances

speedy1 · 10 Jul 2026

"Instead, they must contact TfL Customer Services by telephone, where their claim will be assessed."

How long until that's 100% an AI bot which doesn't understand anything except denying the request ... ?

saismee · 10 Jul 2026

The obvious solution is for TfL to automatically ease PAYG time limits in disruption. It is surely possible if the taps are reconciled later anyway, as they could refer to various systems to see how long delays were.

Surreytraveller · 10 Jul 2026

If people are going to have to chase TfL after they've suffered disruption for a refund, then surely it's going to undermine the whole system, and people will just use other forms of tickets?
And the whole thing will be another waste of money

Tetchytyke · 10 Jul 2026

Staff should also be aware of an important change to the refund process. Customers with incomplete PAYG contactless journeys involving stations included in the trial will no longer be able to request a refund through their TfL online account.

Instead, they must contact TfL Customer Services by telephone, where their claim will be assessed.

Having to do it by telephone only seems needlessly bureaucratic, I hope TfL have extra call handlers available to deal with it.

I get them wanting to manually verify a refund, but surely an email through the portal would be sufficient for them to do that?

Watershed · 10 Jul 2026

Tetchytyke said:
Having to do it by telephone only seems needlessly bureaucratic, I hope TfL have extra call handlers available to deal with it.

I get them wanting to manually verify a refund, but surely an email through the portal would be sufficient for them to do that?

I think the whole point is to add friction to reduce the incentive to abuse the incomplete journey completion facility. Much like how TfL say you need to post in your ticket if you want to claim delay compensation on a paper ticket.

LLivery · 10 Jul 2026

Considering the number of times I've been timed out because it has wrongly merged a return journey into one single journey (because I was just taking an out of city family member to London Bridge/other termini, and promptly got the first train back), I can't say I like this. Having to explain station staff why I've been timed out when I get back was always difficult because they always accused me of not touching in. Yet on the phone they always understand what happened.

If you have very little funds in your bank account, this can cause real issues for you.

Benjwri · 10 Jul 2026

LLivery said:
Considering the number of times I've been timed out because it has wrongly merged a return journey into one single journey (because I was just taking an out of city family member to London Bridge/other termini, and promptly got the first train back), I can't say I like this. Having to explain station staff why I've been timed out when I get back was always difficult because they always accused me of not touching in. Yet on the phone they always understand what happened.

If you have very little funds in your bank account, this can cause real issues for you.

Why do you have to explain to station staff that you’ve been timed out? Contactless is all back office and the barriers won’t reject you unless your card is blocked.

Surreytraveller · 10 Jul 2026

This has worked in my favour. TfL has merged two separate journeys before, when it was actually two physical separate journeys. So I paid only half the price.
The whole system can be a bit messy, and the tenancy for National Rail to have mass disruption will only cause big problems, unless, once outside London, there is no maximum journey time

Tetchytyke · 10 Jul 2026

Watershed said:
I think the whole point is to add friction to reduce the incentive to abuse the incomplete journey completion facility.

I totally get that, but I'm not sure why it has to just be a phone call. There are situations now where you can't complete a journey via self-service- it wouldn't let me for Thames Clippers where a touch didn't register- they were fine with a message through the portal. I didn't need to ring up.

Adam Williams · 10 Jul 2026

I trust they've done an Equality Impact Assessment prior to this change...?

Watershed · 10 Jul 2026

Tetchytyke said:
I totally get that, but I'm not sure why it has to just be a phone call. There are situations now where you can't complete a journey via self-service- it wouldn't let me for Thames Clippers where a touch didn't register- they were fine with a message through the portal. I didn't need to ring up.

I've used the contact form for similar things. I'm sure it would still be accepted, for example consider someone who is deaf, they wouldn't necessarily (easily) be able to make a call. But the advertised method being a phone call will be enough to put most people off.

I don't think it's a very customer centric attitude and I don't agree with it, but I can see the rationale.

LLivery · 10 Jul 2026

Benjwri said:
Why do you have to explain to station staff that you’ve been timed out? Contactless is all back office and the barriers won’t reject you unless your card is blocked.

No clue. But it's happened twice when I still used it. It was fine otherwise

Hadders · 11 Jul 2026

There's a danger of getting into the Railforum standard minority here.

People have been campaigning for 'London style contactless' to be extended further out from London for years.
This has happened but it brings complications if there is a missed touch in, whether deliberate or inadvertent
Let's say someone boards a train at Baldock and forgets to touch in and travels into central London, changing to the underground at Finsbury Park, and touches out at Oxford Circus when they exit through the barriers. There's no way of knowing where they've travelled from. They might've made a short journey or a long one
Ideally there would be ticket barriers from first to last train at every station in the contactless area. Realistically this isn't going to happen. It's never happened on the DLR and it's certainly not going to happen at places like Baldock, Knebworth or Watton at Stone
The contactless system will try and auto-correct a missing touch. You can also correct some missing touches online or you can call the TfL helpdesk to assist , although there is a limit on the number of times you can do this to prevent abuse
Ultimately, what should the incomplete journey charge fee be? If it's too high it risks beinga disproportionate aount for someone who's made a short distance journey and simply forton to touch in. On the other hand, it if it's too low it could be less than touching in and paying the correct fare.

speedy1 · 11 Jul 2026

People have been campaigning for 'London style contactless' to be extended further out from London for years.

Which people? A minority...? Do those campaigning for or supporting a further roll-out do so understanding the risks of an Incomplete Journey Fare? Was it explained to them a likely consequence would be to increase the level of that charge?

Ultimately, what should the incomplete journey charge fee be?

I think the Overton window needs to re-widen.

I'm no expert at all but isn't TfL doing a few things to increase the chances of an Incomplete Journey Fare: leaving barriers open, removing fairly-priced paper tickets, and now making it more difficult to correct a journey?

People can clutch your pearls and point out that food on a shelf is not an invitation to steal and people should be perfect at all times, but barriers for a very long time have served as good human user interface to force collection of a fare. Travellers are busy, hot, in a rush, etc. It's also easy to miss a touch-in/error during rush hour.

Frankly they should take the fare-dodging on the chin as a result of all cost savings or increased revenue they are getting from increased contactless (the only 2 reasons they would have done it), or bin it if the risks are too high, and not inch towards routine penalty-faring of well-intending customers.

You could also argue the penalty fare should be £500 because you can arrive in peak times from an open station 250 miles away, travel in First, somehow avoid ticket checks then exit via a contactless barrier.

To me it's stretching beyond its usefulness as a mechanism to avoid fare dodging. There is already too much snakes-and-ladders in the rail network.

£34 could quickly turn into £68, then £126... a large enough amount – coincidentally – to cover quite a few shorter journey fare dodging...

Hadders · 11 Jul 2026

speedy1 said:
Which people? A minority...? Do those campaigning for or supporting a further roll-out do so understanding the risks of an Incomplete Journey Fare? Was it explained to them a likely consequence would be to increase the level of that charge?

Contactless has been a method of payment on public transport in London since 2014, it's not exactly a new thing. People like the convenience of it and want it extending to 'their' station, often aided by local authorities and MPs 'campaigning' for it. Extension of contactless often comes with 'simplified' fares for which there are winners and losers, but that's out of scope for this thread.

If you introduce a PAYG system you have to consider the sort of issues that I mentioned in my earlier post. These issued, especially the incomplete journey charge, are more of an issue the larger a PAYG system becomes.

speedy1 said:
I'm no expert at all but isn't TfL doing a few things to increase the chances of an Incomplete Journey Fare: leaving barriers open, removing fairly-priced paper tickets, and now making it more difficult to correct a journey?

This is nothing to do with TfL. AThis issue is the exitension of contactless to National Rail stations further away from London. The area now extends as far north as Bletchley, Harlington, Baldock and Stansted Airport. TfL administer the scheme so that it is a 'joined up' charging network across the whole contactless area in and around London.

While there has been changes to fares as a result of the extension, no paper tickets have been removed. Quite the opposiite on fact as paper tickets now replicate PAYG fares in the larger contactless area.

TfL aren't making it any harder than it has been previously to correct a journey. But the issue remains, what should the incorrect journey charge be in the contactless area for someone who, deliberately or accidentally, boards a train at (say) Baldock travels to Oxford Circus and touches out?

CyrusWuff · 11 Jul 2026

Hadders said:
TfL aren't making it any harder than it has been previously to correct a journey. But the issue remains, what should the incorrect journey charge be in the contactless area for someone who, deliberately or accidentally, boards a train at (say) Baldock travels to Oxford Circus and touches out?

Or for a more extreme example, once Pay As You Go is rolled out in Greater Manchester, someone who touches in at Euston, doesn't get checked on the train, and touches out at Manchester Piccadilly?

Increase of TfL Incomplete Journey Fare Trial

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