Attitudes to ticketless travel

[Richardr]

Fare evasion happens because the railway allows it to happen.

Fare evasion happens because people decide not to evade their fares. The fact that not every journey has inspectors or similar isn't the cause.

It is like saying that domestic violence happens because there is not a policeman stationed in every household.

 

[43066]

Fare evasion happens because people decide not to evade their fares. The fact that not every journey has inspectors or similar isn't the cause.

It is like saying that domestic violence happens because there is not a policeman stationed in every household.

Absolutely (although I think you mean decide to rather than decide not to ).

Arguments equivalent to saying “Your pocket was picked/house was robbed/car was nicked because you allowed it to be” would, quite rightly, be shot down as victim blaming in any other circumstances.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Arguments equivalent to saying “Your pocket was picked/house was robbed/car was nicked because you allowed it to be” would, quite rightly, be shot down as victim blaming in any other circumstances.

If you leave your house unlocked and go on holiday you're a fool, knowing that burglars exist.

There's victim blaming (e.g. saying that a woman wearing skimpy clothing and getting drunk is fair game for a rapist, which she's clearly not) and there's contributory negligence (e.g. the above, or having a railway with no revenue protection whatsoever).

 

[35B]

Arguments equivalent to saying “Your pocket was picked/house was robbed/car was nicked because you allowed it to be” would, quite rightly, be shot down as victim blaming in any other circumstances.

Possibly, though in a commercial context there is an expectation that a company will seek to protect itself. But @owidoe is right in suggesting that part of the problem lies in the railway focusing on the wrong thing (cure) rather than making it so trivially easy to pay to travel that people have to go out of their way to not pay.

 

[Richardr]

Absolutely (although I think you mean decide to rather than decide not to ).

Arguments equivalent to saying “Your pocket was picked/house was robbed/car was nicked because you allowed it to be” would, quite rightly, be shot down as victim blaming in any other circumstances.

Thanks - correct. I've left it as an edit would make your correction odd .

 

[43066]

If you leave your house unlocked and go on holiday you're a fool, knowing that burglars exist.

A fool perhaps. Or someone who just forgot to turn the key because they were rushing out of the house, or because they have dementia etc. None of these situations reduces the moral culpability of the malfeasor (or the legal culpability, given that the criminal law generally doesn’t recognise the concept of contributory negligence).

Possibly, though in a commercial context there is an expectation that a company will seek to protect itself. But @owidoe is right in suggesting that part of the problem lies in the railway focusing on the wrong thing (cure) rather than making it so trivially easy to pay to travel that people have to go out of their way to not pay.

@owidoe ’s general point which I think boils down to: “making it easier to pay will reduce fare evasion” is very valid, but is subtly different to saying “fare evasion happens because the railway allows it to happen”. The comparison to software piracy (ie if you make it more convenient to pay than not to pay the problem will disappear) is an interesting one, but I think only really works at barriered locations/on staffed trains. Otherwise it will almost invariably be more convenient not to pay a train fare, at least until (God forbid!) automatic payment via CCTV facial recognition becomes widespread.

Of course Oyster and Contactless have meant the the “tap in tap out everywhere” suggestion mooted by @owidoe has been largely universal in London for years now, with the barriers acting more as a reminder than an enforcer in many cases.

 

[Doubleplus]

how you deal with those who don’t have a balance high enough to cover their fare and those don’t have contactless cards - the last two of which sound like being a free pass for fare evaders.

It might be a harsh approach, but presumably it might be possible (or may already be permitted) for a travel operator to be allowed to keep trying to debit the fare amount, or any portion of it, repeatedly and indefinitely until the debt is paid?

 

[ChewChewTrain]

It might be a harsh approach, but presumably it might be possible (or may already be permitted) for a travel operator to be allowed to keep trying to debit the fare amount, or any portion of it, repeatedly and indefinitely until the debt is paid?

Difficult to know what the Maximum Fare should be in the case of those who fail to tap out, though. Didn’t the walk-up cost of a single from Wick to Penzance reach four figures several years ago?

Like so much else in life, it’s probable that no journey settlement system will ever be anywhere near perfect. As long as you require people to perform actions (whether buying tickets or tapping in/out or looking at a camera), some will fail to do so whether deliberately or otherwise. “Actionless” solutions (e.g. implanted microchips!) will bring inevitable civil liberties concerns and the technology will never work flawlessly. We can rest easy that there’ll always be something for us to complain about on these pages, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

 

[jon0844]

All these measures were very easily defeated by anyone with the slightest motivation. What stopped piracy being so commonplace was convenience of buying. The rise of Steam, Netflix and Spotify meant that it was, for the first time, genuinely easier to buy media than to illegally download it.
The railways, right now, have not worked that out.

People have been illegally downloading music, film, TV series' and streaming football etc for years, and now that most of the streaming services have gone up in price a lot, it has been growing even more. In some ways, like football matches, it has become harder for the average person to do it, but it's still a thing. Now people have even faster Internet connections and VPNs are cheap, I do think we'll see more and more people deciding to pirate content.

I think the industry has actually worked out that it's better not to talk about piracy as much as before, as it probably alerted a lot of people to what was possible and probably inadvertently encouraged more people to look up how to do it.

I get your point though, but the comparison with making things easier on the railway really isn't going to suddenly make the many chancers and opportunists decide to pay. Their mindset is of a nature that makes them seek any way to not pay, and not feel guilty about doing so, or think they're doing anything particularly wrong (and plenty of people will sympathise also).

(As an aside, when it comes to the likes of Spotify, Netflix etc, an awful lot of people share their accounts to save money - in breach of the T&Cs. Even Nadine Dorries did/does it! Microsoft are actually going to allow people paying for the family Xbox Game Pass to do this, but the others don't and some intend to clamp down on it. Again, a lot of people are quite happy to do so thinking the companies can afford it and it's 'no big deal'.

 

[greyman42]

Berney Arms, Ulleskelf, Blea Moor etc... It would cost more in staffing costs than you'd save in the reduction of fare evasion. And where would these staff work? You couldn't just leave staff on a platform with no facilities for a full shift.

Blea Moor?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Blea Moor?

Dent is the nearby station, Blea Moor is just a signalbox.