Wouldnt 100% privatising the industry do that ?
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Passengers - would you report a fare dodger?
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Wouldnt 100% privatising the industry do that ?
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R
RailUK Forums
Not at all. What's needed is a complete re-think, so it's no longer more lucrative for Northern to provide inadequate facilities for ticket purchasing, and instead cause people to either miss trains, be delayed at destination, or be asked to pay huge sums to avoid prosecution. No other business in any other industry can treat its customers in such a way.
I'd like to see TOCs compliance with the NRCoC and TSA to be a strict liabiltiy criminal matter, with taxpayer-funded prosecutions where they're in breach - however passengers could choose to offer £80 fixed penalties to make the matter go away. That would be a 'level' playing field
Not at all. What's needed is a complete re-think, so it's no longer more lucrative for Northern to provide inadequate facilities for ticket purchasing, and instead cause people to either miss trains, be delayed at destination, or be asked to pay huge sums to avoid prosecution. No other business in any other industry can treat its customers in such a way.
I'd like to see TOCs compliance with the NRCoC and TSA to be a strict liabiltiy criminal matter, with taxpayer-funded prosecutions where they're in breach - however passengers could choose to offer £80 fixed penalties to make the matter go away. That would be a 'level' playing field
Inadequate as in .....tickets offices, TVMs, conductors on board and ticket desks at destinations? Is that not enough in terms of options? Is it just the numbers of such that are an issue ?
If TOCs are non compliant with the NRCoC , surely that would breach the terns of a franchise? Must admit I ve never looked at this all so you are probably better placed to answer that anyway
RJ
Established Member
Nope. Wouldn't get involved due to having no evidence of witnessing any fare evasion. They could be going on like that and have a valid ticket for all anyone knows.
EM2
Established Member
Assuming 'in' should be 'it', we certainly haven't.
EM2
Established Member
Where or when does that not apply?
You buy at the ticket office.
If there isn't one, or it's closed, you buy at a TVM.
If there isn't one, or it's broken, you use the Permit To Travel machine.
If there isn't one of those either, or it's broken, you pay the guard or conductor.
If there's not one on your train, you pay at destination.
If that's not possible, then the railway loses out, but that would be their fault not yours.
JohnB57
Member
That are often closed or non-existent and, if open, may have huge queues way in excess of the Passengers Charter 'commitment'
Like at Garforth? A solitary slow TVM hidden behind a drinks machine that no-one using the main entrance would ever see, and which it's not compulsory to use anyway (there's a sign saying buy on board if the ticket office is closed) hardly counts. If it was compulsory to use it, many people would miss their train despite arriving in good time. It doesn't sell the full range nor accept all payment methods anyway.
Whose primary role is that of Guard, ie safety & timekeeping. There's no prospect whatsoever of selling all the tickets they need to, on busy services.
Selected destinations, and at busy times the queues may be enormous, causing people to be late for work through no fault of their own.
You know that not all those options exist for many journeys!
Yes, but there's no enforcement. LO staff are regularly denying being bound by the NRCoC or even being part of National Rail, but nothing's ever done about it.
Going back to Northern, it's more lucrative to not bother supplying adequate facilities, and instead make it difficult for customers, who are then threatened with prosecution if they don't pay a £80 sum which many may feel is a "bribe" or a "fine", but is actually an out of court settlement branded as a "fixed penalty".
EM2
Established Member
I don't see how. The railway gives you numerous opportunities, if you take none of them, why shouldn't they penalise you?
Smudger
Member
i dunno if i would report, i mean you got t think of your own well being as things are not the way they used to be
If You look at what Yorkie posted a moment ago, if the railway doesnt give you any opportunity to pay, then the point of why should you be penalised is logically valid. So the logical question to follow that is " what is the minimum the railway should provide ? "
Smudger
Member
That's a good question, but I suspect the answer will be that the smallest stations will continue to have have nothing.
But just 10 days ago we did Gowerton-Llanelli and there was no facility to buy our tickets at either station, however although vast numbers were headed East, only a few went West, and so the Guard had just enough time to sell us our Small Group Day Return tickets. We were, however, only going one-way!
The previous train we got as part of that trip had no inspection and if we had not already had tickets we'd not have had any opportunity (closed ticket office followed by non-existent ticket office).
The next journey also had no facilities whatsoever, but the Guard did come round and again sold us Returns for our single journey. The journey after that also had no facilities either, however we had tickets, but one of us had been trying to get an excess but the rail industry decided they didn't want his money (because a Guard can't do it - only a ticket office could - but none of those we had encountered was open!) so his ticket was never excessed.
ATW say "It is YOUR responsibility to purchase the correct ticket for your journey at the first available opportunity" but they don't like to provide much in the way of an "opportunity" in my experience.
JohnB57
Member
If you read the post of mine you quoted again, that's not what I said. "...pay for something with relative ease" was the phrase I used and quite frankly, having listed the typical sequential possibilities, I'm amazed you're arguing - and you're clearly not being ironic either.
I realise this is a railway forum and there are those that will defend anything rail orientated to the death. But, come on. Paying for something is such a basic requirement, it should be the easiest part of a purchase and in many instances on the railway, it's just the opposite.
EM2
Established Member
So what's the 'relative ease' option? 24/7 ticket offices and nothing else? Or just TVMs, that can break down?
The railway give you a multitude of options, so you have no excuse not to pay the fare you should, and only if none of those are available is there a reasonable excuse not to pay.
The railway give you a multitude of options, so you have no excuse not to pay the fare you should, and only if none of those are available is there a reasonable excuse not to pay.
Do you think then that there should also be redundancy in methods of payment available . So for example currently if someone boards my train at an unmanned station with no TVM and alights my train at an unmanned station with no TVM and my ticket machine is faulty on board then there is no way that they can be expected to pay for their journey . Unless I issue them with an UPFN which most of the time I do not have time to actually issue owing to the frequency of stops .
Which then comes under the banner of " the investment isnt worth doing because the pure cost exceeds the revenue generated " Which then leads to " is it worth keeping the station open in the first place? "
If it costs £10000 a year to maintain a small station which doesnt generate any revenue because it has absolutely no ticket facilities whatsoever, by putting in a TVM which also costs £10000 a year but only generates £5000 per year revenue, then the overall loss has actually increased despite revenue now coming in. I realise thats a bit simplistic , but you can see what Im getting at.
It depends on the station, but I could certainly point to stations with adequate facilities and contrast them to stations with inadequate facilities.
York, I'd say, has good facilities. I know you may say "but that's a big station", but at other big stations there may be huge queues for example.
Garforth has poor facilities. The ticket office is rarely open, there is a sign saying buy at destination - but the queues could be huge. There's one slow TVM which is very much hidden and not visible from the main entrances to either platform.
Hope you don't mind, but the words I added in red should really be added for accuracy?
But how do you define "available"?
For example, does a huge queue for a machine count as "available"? Does a huge detour to another platform count as "available"? And if the answer to that last question is "yes" how long should I allow at an unfamiliar station to walk up and down all the platforms looking for a TVM?
What if the ticket you want isn't available? It's not at all clear what the relevant Train Company wants you to do then - it seems they can't agree with each other!
JohnB57
Member
TVMs that are well maintained and don't break down? We don't have a 24/7 railway on most areas so ticket offices open all day is overkill. Payment by smart phone? Prepayment by PayPal? Ticket machines on trains?
You continue to argue as if I'm condoning non-payment - I'm not. I'm simply saying that if we had true commercial competition, you can bet your bottom dollar that they'd all find a way to provide a transparent fare structure and quick easy payment - they'd sink if they didn't. The lack of any competition - or any real commercial benchmark - and the easy penalty fare option give them no incentive do do so.
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EM2
Established Member
Yorkie, this is the point that I'm trying to make to JohnB57, which is 'what is relative ease'?
In the case of Garforth, there are three options. The ticket office, if open. The TVM. Or paying at destination. So what should the railway do to increase the 'relative ease' that John desires? A fully-manned office? More TVMs? Is that the most economical thing for the railway to do? Moonshot has illustrated the point well.
In the case of Garforth, there are three options. The ticket office, if open. The TVM. Or paying at destination. So what should the railway do to increase the 'relative ease' that John desires? A fully-manned office? More TVMs? Is that the most economical thing for the railway to do? Moonshot has illustrated the point well.
My kind of forumite lol !!
I absolutely take that point.
But in our case, there was a TVM at Gowerton but it didn't have the Small Group Day fares loaded. So they went to all that expense, but they didn't do the job properly!
At Llanelli, the ticket office closed early. If the Guard hadn't been able to come round to sell us tickets (which in this case he did - just!), the TVMs at Llanelli wouldn't have been able to sell the tickets either, and don't have the option to select alternative origins.
On the Heart of Wales, you don't expect TVMs, and the friendly Guard (who I'd rate 10/10) had plenty of time to sell us the tickets, and talk about the excess problem too.
At Aberystwyth, I suppose one might reasonably expect the ticket office to be closed on a Sunday, however Avantix machines are incapable of applying the excess one of our group required, so he had to be 'let off', despite being willing to pay.
So, in some cases, the TVMs are provided but incapable of selling the correct ticket type, or origin/destination, or discount, or excess. In other cases, the Guard is equipped with an Avantix machine and both parties are happy for an excess to be paid, but the Avantix says no and so no payment can be made.
The rail industry appears to make it hard to pay at times, and that perhaps - wrongly - encourages some to not pay at all, and in some cases people who are willing to pay are denied the opportunity. It wouldn't happen in any other industry.
I think even D is probably too high.
Out of those, I'd go for D. Obviously!
PFs are only applicable in selected areas, and the chances of actually being checked by an authorised collector in those areas is generally very slim.
So most people who, let's say, make the mistake of boarding a train in Southern livery from a Southern station but is actually on loan to FCC would 'get away with it', despite being liable for a Penalty Fare.
So if the industry made it a lot easier to pay by installing smart readers at every station and issuing every passenger with a smart card that required touching in at starting station and touching out at destination, the excuse of " not having the opportinity to pay " can then be discounted?
Surely you dont just walk out of the supermarket with your shopping because the queue is too long ,
If the passenger does not find the facilities adequate they should complain as you would if the queue was too long at the supermarket ,
Perhaps the maximum wait times in the passengers charter should be enforceable in a more persuasive way . But there might always be the odd time when the booking office is particularly busy because of a special event or something so the fines or whatever other method of enforcement should only be levied if excessive queues are a regular occurrence at a certain location .
To an extent that is true, but then how many people do their supermarket shopping before they go to work? How often ( and I do this from time to time ) do people in a station supermarket simply abandon there purchases for queue issues because their train is due to depart in 5 mins?
or because they couldn't get to the station 5 minutes earlier so that they had the required time to buy their bottle of water and newspaper .
Joking aside it is true people will do that , but then the shop looses out on revenue because it cant provide adequate opportunities for a customer to pay .
At some locations the railway is also loosing out on revenue for not giving customer the opportunity to pay .
on a slightly unrelated note
I wonder how people traveling from stations like Leeds get on though ,you have to buy a ticket before you go through the barriers to your train . If you lived there and knew you had to get a train on a Monday morning I wonder how earlier than your train you would arrive at the station .
Its such a lottery depending on the stations you travel in between .
Sometimes the TOC is guilty of providing inadequete resources just because it can get away with it .And other times there is no economic case for providing a booking office or a TVM and the only hope the railway has of collecting the revenue is a guard with a ticket machine .
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