Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:
MIG wrote:

Why is it more reasonable to assume that someone who forgets to touch
out of the DLR immediately heads for Amersham, having advanced
purchased a ticket from Amersham to Stoke Mandeville, just to try to
avoid paying the outer zone part of the LU journey? (Assuming there
are gates at Amersham, but if there aren't,

There are.

it's the previous
suggestion. Install gates so that there aren't any places out of zones
that someone could escape through.)

Right - so TfL should install gates across the entire GB network? Staying
entirely within the gateline the number of destinations outside London is
huge.


Well, that's the point isn't it. Anyone who didn't touch out might
have made a cross-platform (or same platform) change to a NR train and
ended up in Thurso, but is that really likely enough to justify the
penalty fares for forgetting to touch out?

I think that the bizarre possibility is just an excuse for scamming
people for a crime that only exists relative to Oyster, ie forgetting
to touch out.

It's not about clamping down on any crime that existed before Oyster.
The equivalent would have been to assume that anyone who buys a
travelcard which is recorded as going through an entry gate but doesn't
go through an exit gate should be assumed to have travelled beyond
their zones and changed to National Rail.

The principle seems to be that lack of evidence of where you went is
enough to convict you of travelling somewhere where you weren't allowed
to.

In fact, let's just go the whole hog and instantly arrest and fine
anyone as soon as they purchase any ticket, on the basis that they
can't prove that they don't intend to travel beyond its validity.