Failure to produce a ticket when requested

[pethadine82]

Travelling on a Northern service, RPIs boarded and there was a lady sitting diagonally opposite who claimed to have a ticket.
The RPI asked her for a ticket and she rummaged in her bag, saying that she had bought one.

The RPI told her he would come back and checked the rest of the carriage.
The lady meanwhile was frantically rummaging in her bag but could not find it.
The RPI came back and pulled out some stationary while stating that she was travelling without a ticket, then low and behold the lady managed to find her ticket!

The RPI smiled and said that if she had taken any longer it may not have been a good outcome.

How long to RPIs give before they start taking down details?
What happens if they start writing out a penalty fare and the passenger produces their ticket.

To be fair to the lady, she seemed a million miles away, and her handbag was huge, god knows what she carries but smiled when I saw a bunch of lipsticks and eyeliner pens.

 

[northwichcat]

Are you sure it wasn't the guard who issued a Unpaid Fares Notice? Northern don't have an official penalty fare scheme.

 

[455driver]

Nobody issued the UFN, the lady found her ticket!

there is no time limit, if the RPI asks for a ticket and the passenger does the pocket dance then they can issue the paperwork straight away, the RPI was more then reasonable in the case you mentioned.

 

[Gathursty]

Interesting. Most people I'd assume would have tickets to hand, in a pocket, wallet or in a purse so when the conductor enters the carriage and shouts tickets please, I'd imagine 95% of people would find their ticket in time to be checked. My exceptions would be some disabled people and people looking through luggage to find the ticket.

 

[Matt Taylor]

when the conductor enters the carriage and shouts tickets please, I'd imagine 95% of people would find their ticket in time to be checked.

Generally it's 50% at best, the other 50% are too busy talking, reading, listening to music, sleeping or fare dodging.

 

[Greenback]

I think 50% is a tad high, certainly on my regular journeys! The usual occurrence is there is an announcement before leaving Swansea that there will be a full ticket check, so please have your tickets., railcards and passes ready. Then the guard calls out 'All tickets please' on entering the carriage.

Despite this, my fellow commuters usually only start to get their tickets out when they see me doing so, and most of the other passengers start fumbling for theirs when the conductor gets to them!

 

[Chris999999]

The usual occurrence is there is an announcement before leaving Swansea that there will be a full ticket check, so please have your tickets., railcards and passes ready.

This is where the problem arises. Many people get out their tickets, passes and railcards when they hear this announcement, but after a few minutes (1,2,4 etc) they get fed up with waiting when no inspection occurs, and put them away again and get on with what they were doing.

There is no point in telling people to get out their tickets several minutes before they will be inspected.

 

[OhNoAPacer]

This does raise some issues, let us suppose that the passenger can't produce a ticket, leading, correctly, to the issuing of some form of PF/UFN or whatever, a little later the passenger happens to find the ticket, what is the situation here, can the PF/UFN be withdrawn? Part of me suspects that the rules state that as the ticket was not presented on request that the 'penalty' issuance should stand, but what I do wonder is if it can be withdrawn by the guard/conductor/RPI or if it would be need the passenger to try to get it cancelled when dealing with the follow up letter.

This does remind me of something similar happening to me once several years ago. I had been to Carlisle for the day and was returning (to Whitehaven). As the train left Carlisle I got out my wallet to have the ticket to hand for inspection, panic, no ticket. What had happened was that it was a new wallet, and unbeknown to me there was, what can only be described as an internal flap that covered up where I had placed my ticket, and fortunately before the guard got to me I had calmed down, had another look and found the ticket. As it happens, this being the Cumbrian coast line, all that would have happened if I hadn't found the ticket was that I would have bought a single on the train, but of course had it been somewhere less relaxed about such things, I might have been one of those on here asking for advice

 

[northwichcat]

This does raise some issues, let us suppose that the passenger can't produce a ticket, leading, correctly, to the issuing of some form of PF/UFN or whatever, a little later the passenger happens to find the ticket, what is the situation here, can the PF/UFN be withdrawn? Part of me suspects that the rules state that as the ticket was not presented on request that the 'penalty' issuance should stand, but what I do wonder is if it can be withdrawn by the guard/conductor/RPI or if it would be need the passenger to try to get it cancelled when dealing with the follow up letter.

One thing to be careful of here is a passenger who's had their ticket checked (but not stamped or marked) could pass it on to a ticket-less passenger if the guard/ticket inspector goes away and comes back to them later on with PF/UFN documentation.

 

[Greenback]

This is where the problem arises. Many people get out their tickets, passes and railcards when they hear this announcement, but after a few minutes (1,2,4 etc) they get fed up with waiting when no inspection occurs, and put them away again and get on with what they were doing.

There is no point in telling people to get out their tickets several minutes before they will be inspected.

I've never seen anyone get their tickets out following the announcement. I think announcements are completely ignored by the majority, either because they have dozed off/zoned out, are reading, have headphones on, are concentrating on their smart phone, have become immune to them or just aren't interested in listening to them. The exception to this is when the train comes to an unexpected halt, and then the majority are listening intently to find out why!

The majority of 'welcome aboard' announcements are routine, and often too long, so people switch off.

 

[cuccir]

This does raise some issues, let us suppose that the passenger can't produce a ticket, leading, correctly, to the issuing of some form of PF/UFN or whatever, a little later the passenger happens to find the ticket, what is the situation here, can the PF/UFN be withdrawn? Part of me suspects that the rules state that as the ticket was not presented on request that the 'penalty' issuance should stand, but what I do wonder is if it can be withdrawn by the guard/conductor/RPI or if it would be need the passenger to try to get it cancelled when dealing with the follow up letter.

Technically the passenger has committed a prosecutable offence here, under Byelaw 18(2):

A person shall hand over his ticket for inspection and verification of validity
when asked to do so by an authorised person.

As has been pointed out, it's quite easy to imagine schemes whereby a passenger later finding 'their' ticket has actually found it on the floor or used a friend's. That said, guards/RPIs do generally have discretion if they feel that this is a genuine case of having a disorganised bag/pocket system

 

[talltim]

Technically the passenger has committed a prosecutable offence here, under Byelaw 18(2):

A person shall hand over his ticket for inspection and verification of validity
when asked to do so by an authorised person.

That doesn't actually say how long they have to do so.

 

[Stigy]

Technically the passenger has committed a prosecutable offence here, under Byelaw 18(2):



As has been pointed out, it's quite easy to imagine schemes whereby a passenger later finding 'their' ticket has actually found it on the floor or used a friend's. That said, guards/RPIs do generally have discretion if they feel that this is a genuine case of having a disorganised bag/pocket system

I'd like to think common sense would prevail in such circumstances. It would be easy to bottom this out if there were other people with the traveller, in that the RPI probably wouldn't go away then return. Plus his instinct would tell him to play closer attention of the ticket whilst inspecting the now found ticket. The intention of Byelaw 18(2) is for people that can't produce a ticket at the time of inspection, or refuse to show their ticket. If somebody mis-places their ticket and finds it before their journey is complete (assuming they're on the train), that should be fine, and the company would be quite foolish, in my opinion, to pursue such a charge. The idea of this Byelaw is that if somebody produces a ticket at a later date, in an attempt to win their PFN appeal etc, this can easily be quashed as the ticket was not produced on the date in question (Playing Devil's Advocate, who's to say the travellers friend wasn't using the ticket on the date in question, hence why the traveller could not produce it?).

It annoys me to hear staff saying that "You can get your money back on appeal if you produce your ticket" etc etc, for the above reason. It's arguably a silly policy that some TOCs have in place which basically says this too.

 

[Greenback]

I have seen this happen a number of times, and on one memorable occasion I couldn't find my ticket.

Fortunately, the staff member has always allowed people a chance to locate the ticket in my experience. I am glad of this, as I went into a total panic when my ticket was not in its usual place. Luckily I had just slipped into a different pocket, and located it quite quickly, but the feeling of horror was very intense, as I knew I had a ticket, and my instant reaction was to think I'd lost it or thrown it away.

When I've seen or heard the same thing happening to others, it's always been a case of 'have a good look and I'll come back in a minute'.

 

[DownSouth]

As has been pointed out, it's quite easy to imagine schemes whereby a passenger later finding 'their' ticket has actually found it on the floor or used a friend's. That said, guards/RPIs do generally have discretion if they feel that this is a genuine case of having a disorganised bag/pocket system

This is an advantage of a smart card system - a portable reading device can show an alert if it has previously interrogated the same card, with this being reset at the start of each ticket check.

The best defence against that with a paper ticket is just the Mark 1 eyeball.

 

[ValleyLines142]

One thing to be careful of here is a passenger who's had their ticket checked (but not stamped or marked) could pass it on to a ticket-less passenger if the guard/ticket inspector goes away and comes back to them later on with PF/UFN documentation.

Very good point actually. I was on a Valley Lines service in Cardiff a couple of years back and three schoolgirls boarded. Two of them had what I'm guessing was a return as they showed their tickets to the conductor, but the other girl was fumbling around in her bag trying to find her ticket. The conductor said he'd return in five minutes to give her a chance to look for hers. The girl then told the other two she doesn't use the train often and was trying to avoid paying the fare. One of the others then gave her her own ticket and obviously it looked as if she had found her ticket after the brief fuss when the conductor returned, although of course it only happened to be the exact same ticket he'd looked at about five minutes earlier!

 

[455driver]

A person shall hand over his ticket for inspection and verification of validity when asked to do so by an authorised person.

That doesn't actually say how long they have to do so.

Yes it does! :roll:

 

[Romilly]

Yes it does!

Well it does and it doesn't. The use of "when" clearly suggests that the request and the handing-over must be close in time. But contractual conditions and legislation have to be made to work in the real world. In that world, passengers keep tickets in wallets, purses, and handbags and other bags. But also in that world, the guard will have a whole train-load of tickets to inspect. Accordingly, if a passenger, on being asked for a ticket, proceeds to retrieve the container, open the container, look for the ticket and then hand it over, there will be a measurable time gap between the request and the handing-over. But if all those things are done without undue delay, I have no doubt that the ticket will have been handed over when asked for. In other words, it is implicit that there is a reasonable time within which to comply with the request. The trouble with "not undue" and "reasonable" is that they are context-specific concepts, which means that the size of the permissible time gap between request and handing-over will be a different number of seconds for each different passenger.

So the rule tells you that you have a reasonable (but relatively short) time within which to comply with the request, but not how many seconds. So the rule does and does not tell you how long you have for compliance.

 

[455driver]

So you go into a chip shop, were asked for your order and they then decided to serve 20 other people behind you, several ordering the same as you, that would be okay in your world simply because you placing the order doesnt mean you are going to get served next!

When asked means just that, not 5 minutes later.
I cant believe anyone would think it meant anything different! :roll:

 

[Romilly]

Actually my chip shop has such a complicated system of partly cooking to order that anything's possible.

More to the point, a quick experiment shows that it takes a fit person about 10 seconds to retrieve the correct ticket from amongst several in a purse that's in a handbag that's on the table or their lap, or from a wallet that they have to retrieve from an inside pocket. My point was that in such a case taking 10 seconds counts as handing over when asked. But when an elderly traveller's ticket is in their bag which some kind fellow traveller has put up on the rack for them, and it's a day when their hands are particularly trembly so that it's not easy getting a ticket out of the bag once someone has lifted it down for them, taking 2, 3 or 5 minutes would count as handing over when asked since they've taken all necessary steps as quickly as possible. And if their condition amounted to a disability, allowing them extra time would be a reasonable adjustment.

 

[455driver]

Fine take a bloody week to hand your ticket over but dont moan that the guard didnt get through the train to you when you are at the other end! :roll:

 

[maniacmartin]

I don't get why people keep their tickets in big luggage anyway. Certainly mine always stay on my person - they aren't exactly massive to store!

 

[OhNoAPacer]

So to those arguing that the production of the ticket should be immediate, what about people traveling together where the person holding the tickets has gone to the loo, or even if it is a couple using a duo card and the loo user has the card, now the guard is not to know if this is the truth or a fare dodge attempt? Presumably you would expect a UFN or whatever to be issued.

The bottom line is that in the real world people do sometimes take a while to find things, and people have been known to put things in unexpected places, e.g. in a fluster instead of putting the ticket in their pocket they packed it in their case.

In the end, I expect that legally it all boils down to t reasonable, you know the word that keeps lawyers in gainful employment

 

[cjmillsnun]

Well it does and it doesn't. The use of "when" clearly suggests that the request and the handing-over must be close in time. But contractual conditions and legislation have to be made to work in the real world. In that world, passengers keep tickets in wallets, purses, and handbags and other bags. But also in that world, the guard will have a whole train-load of tickets to inspect. Accordingly, if a passenger, on being asked for a ticket, proceeds to retrieve the container, open the container, look for the ticket and then hand it over, there will be a measurable time gap between the request and the handing-over. But if all those things are done without undue delay, I have no doubt that the ticket will have been handed over when asked for. In other words, it is implicit that there is a reasonable time within which to comply with the request. The trouble with "not undue" and "reasonable" is that they are context-specific concepts, which means that the size of the permissible time gap between request and handing-over will be a different number of seconds for each different passenger.

So the rule tells you that you have a reasonable (but relatively short) time within which to comply with the request, but not how many seconds. So the rule does and does not tell you how long you have for compliance.

No the rule says WHEN ASKED. That's immediate, however the guard or RPI has something called discretion. They will normally allow you a few minutes whilst they check the rest of the coach.

 

[MikeWh]

No the rule says WHEN ASKED. That's immediate, however the guard or RPI has something called discretion. They will normally allow you a few minutes whilst they check the rest of the coach.

So by your reckoning, everyone who isn't actually holding their tickets is relying on discretion. It will take 5 seconds to get the ticket out of my inside pocket and the wallet which will be encasing it.

 

[Tracky]

From time to time I will leave somebody who is taking their time and come back to them later. If I don't believe them, I may charge them in the understanding that if they find their ticket before the end of the journey I will refund them. (I have never had to do a refund yet)

 

[furlong]

It annoys me to hear staff saying that "You can get your money back on appeal if you produce your ticket" etc etc,

If staff offer that concession, people would be well advised to ask for it to be placed in writing so it cannot be disputed later.

 

[talltim]

My reading of that is that the 'when' applies to the asking, not the producing.

BTW, for the benefit of 455driver, I'm not actually saying that people should take as long as they like to produce their tickets, just that the wording (as is so often true) is not clear.

 

[Haywain]

My reading of that is that the 'when' applies to the asking, not the producing.

BTW, for the benefit of 455driver, I'm not actually saying that people should take as long as they like to produce their tickets, just that the wording (as is so often true) is not clear.

The wording is very clear to those who don't try to pick it to shreds in order to find fault.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

The wording is very clear to those who don't try to pick it to shreds in order to find fault.

I agree.

There is no need to import any precise scale of time into the wording. It doesn't help.

I think Tracky's explanation of the application of the policy in practice is adequate and realistic. And I've lost count of the number of times I've heard "I'll come back to you" on board.