I've also seen RPIs out, particularly at High School at 11pm and also Royal Centre at 7am. All I can say is, I hope they're getting paid well to work all hours of the day and night! This is a very new thing to NET and needlesstosay I was not very impressed to see them out at this time of day. I think you have to ask yourself, whether there is any realistic point, to what extent are they stopping fare evasion at these times. At the end of the day, somebody is paying their wages, and I'll be damned if they aren't getting value for money![/rant]
Surely the point of revenue protection checks is that they are pretty much random. If joe public gets the idea that RPO's (or whatever they are called) only work at specific locations during weekday daytimes, then fare evasion at other times is going to become rife, and it tends to snowball, as more and more people see others getting away with not paying and decide they may as well not pay either. (according to some, this is what happened on London's bendy-buses.)
From experience elsewhere, I'd say the chance of passengers at 11 pm trying to skip paying may be higher than in the middle of the day.
While it's easy to put a cash figure on the excess / penalty fares any RPO issues on any one shift, it's harder to quantify the number of future fares that get paid because the chance of getting caught is perceived to be higher.
There's also an unquantifiable value in having RPO's appear at all hours in giving (law abiding) passengers a sense of security / giving (dubious) passengers a sense that they might get caught if they do anything anti social.
I'm not entirely sure if this is a step forward.. The thing I liked about the tram was that it seemed relatively carefree compared to the arcane and complex rules of the railway. However I can see how a conductor might struggle to sell tickets in rush hour..
I am inclined to agree - it's interesting that both midland metro and Sheffield supertram went from pay at station to conductor operation to reduce fare evasion. However, one or two peak hour journeys I've made on the Nottingham tram, even with second conductors on each tram, they (the conductors that is, not the trams) were hardly able to move...
And in answer to part of the original question, I think buses tend not to have by-laws these days (although London may be different) - much of this sort of thing is covered by the national "Public Service Vehicles (Conduct of Drivers, Inspectors, Conductors and Passengers) Regulations 1990" (as amended) and operators' own conditions of carriage.
