If you make a one-time decision not to travel after having tapped in at a station you can request a refund of the charge, but this would hardly apply if you were to use the route through the station on a regular basis.
The former Warwick Road station on the Manchester Oxford Road -> Altrincham line (since renamed as Old Trafford station and now on the Metrolink system) used to charge users something like 10p to use the pedestrian subway, from one side of the line to the other, particularly on busy match days at the nearby cricket and football grounds.
I still call it Warwick Road, at least to myself, because I spent hours waiting at platform 4 at Oxford Road when there was a frequent service to Altrincham and the litany of station names from the announcer is burned into my brain irrevocably ..... "Deansgate, Old Trafford, Warwick Road, Stretford, Dane Road, Sale ......".
I didn't actually travel on the line for quite a long time, first time in the brake van of an AM4 with the guard I think, although I worked from an office in Sale for about ten years in later life starting in 1996.