Could we get to the point of being required to hold a valid ticket before travelling. No excuses

[Bald Rick]

Moderator note: Split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/aslef-scotland-wanting-to-do-away-with-doo.241067

I also think we should fairly soon get to the point of being required to hold a valid ticket before travelling. No excuse in this day and age, frankly.

 

[MCSHF007]

I also think we should fairly soon get to the point of being required to hold a valid ticket before travelling. No excuse in this day and age, frankly.

Take a bow Sir. Got it in one.

 

[fishwomp]

I also think we should fairly soon get to the point of being required to hold a valid ticket before travelling. No excuse in this day and age, frankly.

The implementation of this is still poor.. but largely I agree, it has to come.

Ticket machines: inadequate speed, inadequate quantity. Arrive at station 5 minutes ahead of right time, find someone struggling to use it, or find a few other people with same idea.. goodbye train.

Mobile phones: there seems to be official policy that if your phone dies and is holding your ticket, you must buy another ticket - rather than buy another and then be able to get a refund for that by proving that you had a ticket. There will always be great opportunities for jobsworths on the future railway!

Oyster/card tap-in: can work, but they need to be able to handle pre-booked or complex pricing on the day which they can't do (split-ticket, no chance!)

 

[dk1]

Mobile phones: there seems to be official policy that if your phone dies and is holding your ticket, you must buy another ticket - rather than buy another and then be able to get a refund for that by proving that you had a ticket. There will always be great opportunities for jobsworths on the future railway!

And then there are always unscrupulous people who would travel with another & use this excuse for claiming the refund for their ticket.

 

[Southsider]

I also think we should fairly soon get to the point of being required to hold a valid ticket before travelling. No excuse in this day and age, frankly.

I agree but we have the odd anomaly that Scotrail ticket machines can’t issue concession tickets. it’s always in the pipeline but has been for years. I suspect it’s to do with the decentralised management of the concession system, very unusual for the Scottish government whose approach is normally centralise as much as possible.

 

[fishwomp]

And then there are always unscrupulous people who would travel with another & use this excuse for claiming the refund for their ticket.

A bake off between unscrupulous passengers and unscrupulous ticket inspectors with a target to earn..

 

[dk1]

A bake off between unscrupulous passengers and unscrupulous ticket inspectors with a target to earn..

Do they have a target or is it purely commission in that area? Either way revenue protection is always good to see.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

I also think we should fairly soon get to the point of being required to hold a valid ticket before travelling. No excuse in this day and age, frankly.

So airline style?

 

[Bletchleyite]

So airline style?

Swiss railway style?

Cash is the main challenge to doing this. If cash acceptance could stop, it would be much more feasible to have cheap card, bog roll issuing TVMs at smaller stations. I don't think we are anywhere near being able to insist people use mobile devices for this, not least because a number of rural routes have no signal at the station.

I suspect we may want to stay with a few Paytrain routes, branded as such and maybe even worked into dedicated platforms with their own gateline.

 

[RailWonderer]

What about passengers at Longcross or Spondon?

Ticket machines: inadequate speed, inadequate quantity. Arrive at station 5 minutes ahead of right time, find someone struggling to use it, or find a few other people with same idea.. goodbye train.

Exactly, and when the ticket machine is out of use and there is a queue at the ticket office, or if it's closed, you have to board anyway.
Platform staff and guards could not check every boarding passengers ticket anyway or trains all over the country would be grossly delayed. It would simply be silly.

 

[yorkie]

What about passengers at Longcross or Spondon?

I guess the proposed policy is that people have to use smart phones or not travel by train.

I would be against this; the railway should be open to all.

I wonder what @yorksrob thinks of this...

 

[Bletchleyite]

What about passengers at Longcross or Spondon?

If Kempston Hardwick can have a TVM (and it does), these two can.

 

[A0wen]

I also think we should fairly soon get to the point of being required to hold a valid ticket before travelling. No excuse in this day and age, frankly.

Surely if you have somebody on the train able to sell tickets, then all that is required is for somebody to have a valid form of payment i.e. debit or credit card ?

Alternatively put a simple 'tap in' machine at each station with a minimum amount debited e.g. £ 3 in the way the Permit to Travel machines used to work and then the fare gets settled when the person is approached either by a revenue inspector or at the end of their journey ?

 

[swt_passenger]

Do they have a target or is it purely commission in that area? Either way revenue protection is always good to see.

I believe it’s been explained by staff posting here in the past that dedicated revenue staff do not get commission, that’s only available for guards.

 

[yorksrob]

I guess the proposed policy is that people have to use smart phones or not travel by train.

I would be against this; the railway should be open to all.

I wonder what @yorksrob thinks of this...

It's fair to say I would be opposed to such a move !

 

[SteveM70]

also think we should fairly soon get to the point of being required to hold a valid ticket before travelling. No excuse in this day and age, frankly.

So every station needs to be able to retail every ticket type and accept every payment type?

 

[dk1]

I believe it’s been explained by staff posting here in the past that dedicated revenue staff do not get commission, that’s only available for guards.

Cheers. May explain why it was said they have targets.

 

[JonathanH]

So every station needs to be able to retail every ticket type and accept every payment type?

There might be a lot fewer types of ticket in the future if the London model is implemented elsewhere.

At some point it seems fairly certain that London itself will go Oyster / Contactless only.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

So every station needs to be able to retail every ticket type and accept every payment type?

That would be the obvious requirement. However I guess the counter argument will run similar to that being used against cash payers at present: If you don't like what the TVM offers, you can always buy in advance, on your mobile, get someone to do it for you etc.

Compulsory ticketing, without compulsory suitable ticket buying opportunities, is another obstacle to deter people from travelling. An idea placing burdens upon others without placing burdens upon those proposing the idea. There are instances, raised many times, where there is only a single ticket machine and crossing the tracks to buy a ticket and returning to the other platform can be a time consuming exercise. So a buying opportunity at every entrance and/or on every platform would be one of my requirements for the proposal to be acceptable.

There is the usual distinction, discussed recently, between long distance (more likely to know their travel in advance) and short distance travellers (more spur of the moment) using the same service. Similarly there is a distinction between lines where there is a turn-up-and-go frequency rather than an infrequent service.

Having had two TVM fails recently, neither my fault (EMR, Uttoxeter, a) circling 'in progress' thing yet nothing ever moved on or reset, and b) card declined as PIN required but it didn't actually say that on screen) I am not keen on the idea myself, but then I always carry cash to 'buy' myself out of any such problem by paying the guard.

There might be a lot fewer types of ticket in the future if the London model is implemented elsewhere.

At some point it seems fairly certain that London itself will go Oyster / Contactless only.

Outside of major urban areas, I guess not, as the latest 'ticket simplification' seems to have stalled and I dread to think of the contactless/capping arguments which would ensue for long distance travel. Fancy having a few hundred quid headroom in your account at all times just in case Avanti charge you the max from London to Manchester for reasons only known to the software alogorithms?

 

[A0wen]

So every station needs to be able to retail every ticket type and accept every payment type?

There's a case for saying 'cashless' - the reality is even benefits are paid into a bank account nowadays rather than being handed over by cash and even the most basic of bank accounts comes with a debit card, so there's no reason to stipulate including cash, especially when you factor in the costs of handling cash and the additional risks in terms of security (both of theft by employees and also the threat to employees of having cash on site). Funnily enough armed robbers don't get away with as much if there's no cash in the till because people have paid using something other than cash.

 

[MotCO]

Can't we learn from the bus industry and pay the driver?

 

[Baxenden Bank]

There's a case for saying 'cashless' - the reality is even benefits are paid into a bank account nowadays rather than being handed over by cash and even the most basic of bank accounts comes with a debit card, so there's no reason to stipulate including cash, especially when you factor in the costs of handling cash and the additional risks in terms of security (both of theft by employees and also the threat to employees of having cash on site). Funnily enough armed robbers don't get away with as much if there's no cash in the till because people have paid using something other than cash.

Cashless society has been discussed to death elsewhere. Plus cashless doesn't work either if the machine refuses to play - see both my examples.

Can't we learn from the bus industry and pay the driver?

They do it in The Netherlands (on a rural branch line).
If not pay the driver, why not have the ticketing facility on the train, door clearly marked like for bikes. Big yellow arrow - buy on board using this door.

 

[43096]

It's fair to say I would be opposed to such a move !

You were opposed to removal of the man carrying a red flag in front of the train!

 

[A0wen]

Cashless society has been discussed to death elsewhere. Plus cashless doesn't work either if the machine refuses to play - see both my examples.

And machines don't always accept cash - they can break or go out of service once full. There's an additional cost to emptying and banking the coins from them.

As an aside, many, many years ago I worked in St Albans during college holidays - I found that at one of the car parks if you fed it the full tariff (something like £ 1.80 back then) in 5p pieces that it would get to about £ 1.40 then reject all the coins you'd just fed it and go out of service ! As a result I used to keep a coin bag of 5p pieces and each morning worked my way round each of the machines in the car park, along with a piece of paper and pen to write a note to the "friendly"* traffic wardens.

* - friendly in the same way the Gestapo were friendly.

 

[Alex365Dash]

Cash is the main challenge to doing this. If cash acceptance could stop, it would be much more feasible to have cheap card, bog roll issuing TVMs at smaller stations.

I’d suggest it might be easier to roll out Promise to Pay nationwide (and actually have it properly implemented in the Penalty Fares system) than it is to stop accepting cash, which seems like a politically difficult decision.

Having had two TVM fails recently, neither my fault (EMR, Uttoxeter, a) circling 'in progress' thing yet nothing ever moved on or reset, and b) card declined as PIN required but it didn't actually say that on screen) I am not keen on the idea myself, but then I always carry cash to 'buy' myself out of any such problem by paying the guard.

There could also be a system similar to the current Metrolink one where you can call a number (or in this case also use a help point) to report the TVM not working and get a reference number to start your journey without a ticket. The plus to this is that the TOC then knows the TVM needs fixing!

 

[DC1989]

I was going to ask this in the DOO thread but thought it would be far too off topic - but this thread is exactly the place.

My girlfriend is Scottish and said she never used to buy a ticket prior to travel, just used to get on and someone would sell the ticket on board. So we got a train to Dundee from Edinburgh and back and that's what happened. However, on our next trip up we were in the middle of nowhere and got a train that was an LNER service. So I'm guessing it came from England. I was adamant we should buy a ticket before boarding on my phone but she was like stop stressing, my whole life I just buy the tickets on the train (unheard of for me being from London).

So a ticket inspector comes round and asks us for our tickets and she said can we buy 2 tickets to Edinburgh please and he was very upset and said we should get a fine, why didn't we buy the tickets before we got on etc. He actually said something about it being the law.

So what exactly is the law? Must you buy a ticket before boarding

 

[HSTEd]

Compulsory tickets before boarding would simplify things considerably - as you could provide station validators at every station and use it to defeat people buying tickets from ungated stations near their destination.

But shorter than that, permit to travel using QR coded permits at every station would allow some improvement on the current situation without full blown TVMs.

You could provide an ePaper display for people with smartphones to prove that they were at the station at the given time.

 

[Watershed]

I was going to ask this in the DOO thread but thought it would be far too off topic - but this thread is exactly the place.

My girlfriend is Scottish and said she never used to buy a ticket prior to travel, just used to get on and someone would sell the ticket on board. So we got a train to Dundee from Edinburgh and back and that's what happened. However, on our next trip up we were in the middle of nowhere and got a train that was an LNER service. So I'm guessing it came from England. I was adamant we should buy a ticket before boarding on my phone but she was like stop stressing, my whole life I just buy the tickets on the train (unheard of for me being from London).

So a ticket inspector comes round and asks us for our tickets and she said can we buy 2 tickets to Edinburgh please and he was very upset and said we should get a fine, why didn't we buy the tickets before we got on etc. He actually said something about it being the law.

So what exactly is the law? Must you buy a ticket before boarding

Yes, it's the law that you must buy a ticket before boarding if there are ticket buying facilities available at your starting station - Railway Byelaw 18 refers.

Whilst this law also theoretically applies in Scotland, in practice it isn't enforced - as it's generally not treated as a serious enough offence for the British Transport Police or Procurator Fiscal to get involved, and private prosecutions are rare as hen's teeth in Scotland, due to the extremely onerous prerequisites to bringing one.

In England, train companies don't need to involve the BTP or PF; they can just bring their own private prosecutions, and indeed they are prolific in doing so.

That being said, outside Scotland, the majority of breaches of Byelaw 18 are handled either by selling a new ticket (typically an Anytime Single even where an Off-Peak ticket would be valid, or the passenger wanted to make a return journey) or issuing a Penalty Fare. The Penalty Fares legislation also doesn't apply to Scotland so generally the harshest punishment there is simply selling a more expensive ticket as described above.

 

[Esker-pades]

Only if the systems work. We shouldn't force having a smartphone, or the internet because not everywhere has internet coverage. I've been in plenty of situations where the ticket I want to buy is not available online. Ticket machines don't sell all tickets. Ticket offices are not at every station, nor are they open from first to last train. At that point, the only choice is the person on-board. Even then, a big queue is still going to scupper things sometimes unless one starts having an "arrive 10 minutes before departure rule", which would be nuts for most trains.

 

[HSTEd]

Only if the systems work. We shouldn't force having a smartphone, or the internet because not everywhere has internet coverage.

I wonder what fraction of railway system entries and exits occur at stations with no internet coverage in the vicinity?

It's probably not high.

But it would probably be cheaper at this point to simply stop accepting cash, as an increasing number of establishments are doing. And indeed as Transport for London has already done.