When referring to any forum post(s), can you include a link/quote please? Thanks
Sure, post #3 on this thread, for example.
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SWR cracking down on Vauxhall - Waterloo doughnuts/short fares - Also GTR
- Thread starter Puffing Devil
- Start date
Sure, post #3 on this thread, for example.
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RailUK Forums
@yorkie has described the policy. The point of it, which has been broadly consistent since Alasdair Darling was at Transport, is to shift the share of the costs of rail from taxpayer subsidy to the farepayer. If you consider that most people don't use trains, and that most rail users are middle class, the argument is that it's a subsidy to the middle class that costs working class taxpayers.
Before the moderators jump in, conversation on whether that is true, and if so how true, is definitely one for another thread.
Going back to the core topic, I suspect part of the reason for the reporting is to warn people off this kind of short faring and doughnutting, and get the message out there that the railway can and will find you when you do it.
I absolutely agree with the concerns on that thread; some of those journeys would absolute legitimately be done using point to point tickets.
How would I make those journeys, given I couldn't just tap a contactless card? Forcing people to use CCST/TOD is antiquated, and few people want to faff around with smart cards (seasons are a bit different, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion)
It's also a rather arbitrary and difficult to remember list.
Vauxhall to Waterloo is quite different, because the vast majority of passengers would be using Contactless/Oyster PAYG.
I would object to any expansion beyond Vauxhall though.
I doubt it. Yes for some, but the majority are hardened through the thrill and the justice in their eyes of not paying. I knew people that used to call the bendy buses in London "the free bus" not because they couldn't afford a bus fare, just they didn't, in their eyes, feel any need to pay for it
I'd suggest that, if this is a general issue, the answer should be to put a de-minimus amount on where contactless payment is available.
There must (should?) be a trade-off in balancing the effectiveness of enforcement against the cost of it. This country does seems to be heading down the repressive rabbit hole of wanting 100% effectiveness, at whatever indirect cost to legit passengers. That latter cost probably never appears on any income/expenditure report at TOC level. It must be fairly easy to calculate the optimum effort where increased income balances increased effort.
The fishing email must be the most effective in this regard, if part of a fully automated process based on linking eticket purchase with an absence of tap-ins. I suspect that the grandstanding blockades are not actually very good value in comparison. Maybe extra frighteners could be put on by regularly and randomly selecting a small proportion of cases for prosecution, instead of settling every case where the fraudster cooperates.
The fishing email must be the most effective in this regard, if part of a fully automated process based on linking eticket purchase with an absence of tap-ins. I suspect that the grandstanding blockades are not actually very good value in comparison. Maybe extra frighteners could be put on by regularly and randomly selecting a small proportion of cases for prosecution, instead of settling every case where the fraudster cooperates.
I think they should be prosecuting and chasing the outstanding fare through civil court if over a certain amount and duration of offending. There's no need for one or two short tickets, but when there's £250+ in fares avoided across at least a month then I don't see why these people should be getting away with a settlement.
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
You can't prosecute if you can't prove to the criminal standard that fare evasion took place. The criminal standard is beyond all reasonable doubt. This is often paraphrased as being so sure as to be certain.
You can't, from a spreadsheet, prove that someone travelled illegitimately. You can assume they did- and for Vauxhall to Waterloo your assumption would very probably be correct- but assumption is not beyond all reasonable doubt. There will be a small subset of people buying that ticket who buy it legitimately and who legitimately may have no scan record or a scan record which only shows a scan at one end. There is no compostage requirement with e-tickets.
Maybe they could pursue more cases through the civil courts but the amounts the civil courts would award wouldn't be any different to a settlement amount. And you're supposed to give people the chance to settle before taking civil action anyway, so you couldn't go straight to the County Court in these circumstances.
The way private prosecutions are conducted is already under a lot of scrutiny. Randomly choosing who to prosecute would be opening a whole new can of worms.
I don't see the issue with the current system where the prosecution cases select themselves by not paying their Penalty Fare or by not replying to correspondence. Those who engage get to write a large cheque to the operator, those who don't get prosecuted. That gives the best value to the taxpayer.
andy33gmail
Member
To give a real example, there have been times I’ve walked the middle portion of a journey. And presumably there would be circumstances where people had the opportunity to get a lift. Depending on timings & whether there were scans, this could look very suspicious
SargeNpton
Established Member
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Visible operations like that, as well as catching out people on the day who are transgressing, also dissuade other people who see it in action and may otherwise have been tempted to try it on at a later date.
If you know there's a chance you might get caught you are less likely to try it. Same with Police speed camera vans in speeding hotspots.
I’ll add my insignificant insight into the suggestion that Swr have unwittingly contributed to this problem by almost 100% failing to check tickets on the train. Like most of us I’ve travelled extensively across the country, in Europe and beyond, and it seems to be the only place you can travel for months without having to show a ticket on the train.
Some people claim they see the railway as "the system". They also see "the system" as bad, do not have faith in it or have lost trust, so fare evade as a way of saying fu to it.
Failed Unit
Established Member
Mod Note: Posts from here were originally in a Fares advice thread. Merged here as it's the same topic.
I have seen a few articles on this in the press today.
Basically it seems like GTR is going to block Aztec code tickets at certain stations to stop short faring. For example it seems to me that GTR will remove e-tickets from certain stations such as Finsbury Park, so people can just buy a ticket to clear the barrier. These are not declared (I assume so they can keep changing them around.)
I understand why they are doing this, but how does this work for legitimate users of the product, such as someone using them for AP Long distance routes (or will it only be local fares that are restricted?) It is not a bad idea, but how are they going to stop people just touching on with their credit card instead, with the maximum fare.
It sounds like it is a big problem, however on some rural stations I have struggled to get a signal at certain stations until the train is moving. (Granted these stations are no in penalty fare areas so I would just purchase from the guard as my first chance like I have before technology like this existed)
Post edited for one of the links
www.lbc.co.uk
Similar articles appeared on many media sources
I have seen a few articles on this in the press today.
Basically it seems like GTR is going to block Aztec code tickets at certain stations to stop short faring. For example it seems to me that GTR will remove e-tickets from certain stations such as Finsbury Park, so people can just buy a ticket to clear the barrier. These are not declared (I assume so they can keep changing them around.)
I understand why they are doing this, but how does this work for legitimate users of the product, such as someone using them for AP Long distance routes (or will it only be local fares that are restricted?) It is not a bad idea, but how are they going to stop people just touching on with their credit card instead, with the maximum fare.
It sounds like it is a big problem, however on some rural stations I have struggled to get a signal at certain stations until the train is moving. (Granted these stations are no in penalty fare areas so I would just purchase from the guard as my first chance like I have before technology like this existed)
Post edited for one of the links
UK's largest rail operator scraps digital tickets at some stations in crackdown on fare dodgers | LBC
Greater Thameslink Railway announced the launch of the three-month ticketing trial last week.
www.lbc.co.uk
Similar articles appeared on many media sources
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You'll have to use paper tickets
Failed Unit
Established Member
Frustrating, but the whole purpose of an advance is that you can’t “just buy it” - I am not for example going to short Fare at Stevenage and save money with any of the LNER advances. However the articles I have seen haven’t got that level of detail.
Kite159
Veteran Member
Most likely the tickets involved will include the likes of Finsbury Park to London Terminals, London Bridge/Elephant & Castle to Blackfriars, Tickets within the Thameslink core itself. Such tickets where the vast majority of genuine travellers will be using Oyster/Contactless for due to the cost saving.
By increasing the "Incomplete Journey Fee"
Who sets the incomplete journey fee? I'd assumed that at-least within the zones it would be set by tfl since it's first and foremost their system.By increasing the "Incomplete Journey Fee"
Kite159
Veteran Member
TfL set the fee
Failed Unit
Established Member
I personally don’t think that it is high enough. I always correct mistakes when the tap in / out isn’t recorded but it isn’t for the money saved it is more of hope that if a reader isn’t working it gets fixed.
We are talking about QR tickets, but I hope TfL limit the number of times you can make such corrections.I probably do it a couple of times per year, so I doubt that shows up in the statistics as someone that it “trying it on”
We are talking about QR tickets, but I hope TfL limit the number of times you can make such corrections.I probably do it a couple of times per year, so I doubt that shows up in the statistics as someone that it “trying it on”
It has increased in the last month or two for journeys starting or ending at London Terminals and some central National Rail interchanges, up to £30.40.
Do you still believe it's not high enough?
Failed Unit
Established Member
That is more reasonable - it also shows I haven’t had one to correct recentlyIt has increased in the last month or two for journeys starting or ending at London Terminals and some central National Rail interchanges, up to £30.40.
Do you still believe it's not high enough?
I doubt they would block them for all tickets to /from those stations, but probably just for very short flows where contactless makes more sense, e.g Finsbury Park to London Terminals m
They can't stop this.
If people choose TOD but have time to collect, train companies just want people to miss the train and get the next one.
However, if GTR do what SWR are doing, I would expect it to be a case of disabling e-tickets for flows where the vast majority would be using Contactless.
thedbdiboy
Established Member
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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.
Failed Unit
Established Member
That is probably a better situation, most of GTR has the key (with some annoying missing stations such as Peterborough and Cambridge). I do see a lot of people using the QR codes at Welwyn Garden City, however they could very easily be longer flows in the same way as they are now my preferred medium for longer travel. For shorter distances it is either key or contactless (the key is easier to claim delay repay otherwise it would be gone as well)
Welwyn Garden City for example has stopped child fare paper tickets for many years forcing users to have the ticket inspected physically.
Fawkes Cat
Established Member
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The Guardian has now run on this: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/aug/08/train-operators-crack-down-digital-ticket-fare-dodging
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This'll be a nice little earner: In addition to sotpping the short farers, they'll get to penalty fare people genuinely just bombing into town who expect to open their e-ticket when the inspector comes, but just get a collection code instead. Can I ask which origin/destination pairs are being blocked? Any outside the Oyster/Contactless area?
swt_passenger
Veteran Member
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They’re not saying. This has also been discussed since Wednesday within the very similar SWR discussion in the disputes section:
SWR cracking down on Vauxhall - Waterloo doughnuts/short fares
Get ready for a spate of posts! South Western Railway has launched a major enforcement operation targeting 'short faring'; specifically passengers traveling from further out who purchase cheap barcode tickets for the short Vauxhall-to-Waterloo leg simply to clear the barriers at Waterloo. SWR...
www.railforums.co.uk
Well, except for passengers with Railcards travelling in the evening peak of course.
I'm sure fares and ticketing reform will ensure they resolve that problem with some new time restrictions on the fares, though!
Or, hear me out, we could invest in and run a proper revenue protection system with enough staff and reliable systems and methods that would catch short farers, people without railcards, people doing refund fraud, and all the other types of fare evasion
Instead we play this game of anti passenger sledgehammers that target one specific type of fraud only because it's easier to get that signed off - passengers be damned, making their lives worse isn't something that appears on metrics, and we can't spent money even if we'd be better off longer term.
I'm sure we'll see this short sightedness continue.
(views obviously my own)
The "only buy ticket when revenue officer turns up" has been a problem for years. On the other hand having a digital record of ticket purchases has surely helped the railway reclaim many more millions as it was previously very difficult with paper tickets and cash. Often these fare evaders are too dumb to realise they're just creating a digital record for the railways to use against them.
Remember once upon a time you used to be given a plastic counter when you bought from the station closest to Manchester Piccadilly. If you bought a ticket on the platform at Piccadilly and didn't have it or any idea of it then it was clear you didn't get on there.