Discussion About Whether Fare Evasion Should be Decriminalised

[redreni]

A yellow card doesn't mean that that person's history can't be investigated. Also, if someone is caught with no ticket at all in London then the obvious thing is to impose the next stage penalty. Given that intra London travel is now almost entirely contactless or Oyster there are virtually no valid excuses for no ticket, and the checks that are done now are a bit like a yellow card but possibly less effective! If a contactless card or phone is checked during a journey (but isn't shown to be blocked), is that recorded and a further check done later to find if it had been tapped in or out?

I would point out that Contactless offers no Railcard discounts at all, while Oyster offers no Network or Two Together Railcard discounts, so there are plenty of situations in which it is perfectly reasonable for people not to want to use those forms of payment because they are more expensive than buying a ticket.

I would also point out there are dozens, if not hundreds, of suburban London train stations that only have one TVM, and they do go on the blink.

The circumstances in which a person would have a valid excuse for having no ticket are rare, but not as vanishingly rare as the railway would like people to believe. With a little investment it could make these situations less likely to occur, but it chooses not to.

 

[blimmo]

Why would anyone every buy the correct ticket if all you'd have to do is pay the difference in fares plus a £100 charge. Many would take that risk and substantially evade paying their fares.

I think the vast majority of people think this is exactly how it works now. They see the prominent penalty fare posters and compare to their experience of parking fines. The possibility of criminal prosecution for paying a small amount less than they should seems like such a disproportionate response that it doesn't even cross their minds.

To answer the question of why anyone would buy the ticket: if the penalty is sufficiently high (after being caught sufficiently many times) and the probability of being caught is sufficiently high then it is still madness to risk the penalty fare. This is exactly how pay and display parking works and most people do in fact pay.

I also think the intentful offences should stay. Hence the other reason to pay: intentionally avoiding your fare would actually be illegal even if you'd be very unlikely to be caught enough to face consequences higher than simply penalty fares. I think a combination of practically expensive and technically illegal is the best way to discourage evasion without accidentally giving anyone a criminal record due to a simple mistake.