Richard M Willis wrote:

Why do you use words such as "caught" ? There are only two possibilities:
a) you are suspected of FE, in which case you should be prosecuted
b) you simply board a train without a ticket, in which case the PF is the
only ticket
available to you.

Which is why PFs are a nonsense as they are currently implemented. The
suspicion in the above is left down to the ticket staff, who (according
to recent posts in here) often go down the prosecution route even for
an obvious case of forgetting a season ticket had expired or similar.

We should either;
1. Abolish PFs and take everyone who doesn't pay to court for evasion,
perhaps allowing the normal fare to be charged for obvious non-evasion
cases.
2. Increase the PF and make it the only sanction against someone who
hasn't paid, making fare-evasion a civil matter like unauthorised
parking is. The level of the PF and frequency of checks should be such
that a profit, not a loss, is made from people "choosing" to pay the
PF.

I would strongly favour #2.

Neil

"Jonathan Morris" wrote in message

I have no problem with that. I've boarded HEX in a hurry and not only
had to pay the surcharge but also lose my railcard discount. It's still
cheeky that they PF'd you (see my comment above about a similar
situation) when you were perfectly open about it. I guess they figured
that you might do this regularly and bank on there NOT being someone.

Do you buy a ticket at your destination or consider yourself lucky when
there isn't anyone on the train doing a check? That decides if you're a
fare evader or not, especially as the conditions of travel on FCC say

On the occasions where I couldn't or didn't for whatever reason, purchase
a ticket in advance, and happen not to see a grippeur on the train, I
always seek out a member of staff to pay the PF at the destination (or
interchange if appropriate). Sometimes they tell me not to bother, or
just charge me the single or whatever.

In all cases, I have never left the network without at least attempting
to find a member of staff when I don't have sufficient ticketage.

In one case, I couldn't find a member of staff until three days later
(Watford Metro). The member of staff that I found was an RPI. I informed
him that I still owed LUL a PF from "last wednesday", and paid the PF
accordingly.

I've even paid a PF using Oyster Prepay (LUL) and using Rail vouchers (FCC)
!

I am going to have a tee-shirt made up "RPIs are nice people, p.s. the
ticket
machine wasn't taking notes today".

Richard [in SG19]



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

"Neil Williams" wrote in message

Which is why PFs are a nonsense as they are currently implemented. The
suspicion in the above is left down to the ticket staff, who (according
to recent posts in here) often go down the prosecution route even for
an obvious case of forgetting a season ticket had expired or similar.

I agree that PFs are poorly implemented. My main boeuf is that people keep
referring to them as "fines" and assume that they are a kind of "prosecution
lite". They are simply the opposite of "advance purchase" tickets.

I would be much happier if
a) PFs were renamed PostPay or whatever.
b) This implicit connexion between "not paying yet", "evading" and "penalty"
were broken.
c) Ticket checks were absolute, i.e that there was a 100% chance of having
your ticket checked at least once per journey, and in such a way that there
was a definite definition of "stealing from the railway" and a definite way
of telling whether a prosecution was appropriate. (I.e. if you've crossed
outside
a line-in-the-sand and have made no *attempt* to pay, then that is an
automatic
arrest)

Or we could go down the route of making it a legal requirement to prepay for
your whole journey. This would require all ticket offices everywhere to be
able
to issue every combination of ticket to/from/via/date/time and for unmanned
stations
to be abolished.




--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

boeuf

Your use of this word reminds me that there is a rule on French trains,
that if you are unable to buy a ticket before boarding the train (or
validate a pre-purchased ticket),
you must make yourself known to the on-train staff immediately on boarding.

This means that you are caught without a ticket having sat down, you were
intending to evade payment.

Of course this wouldn't work here on trains with DOO

--
Peter

Peter Goodland wrote:
Of course this wouldn't work here on trains with DOO

Bang on the door of the drivers cab?

Peter Goodland wrote:

Of course this wouldn't work here on trains with DOO

It does in Germany, where rural trains are often DOO. You're meant to
be able to buy a ticket off the driver, but they usually don't carry
money or a machine, so you just go and tell him, and he tells you to
sit down and that he'll inform any inspectors that board. This
normally means a free journey.

That said, I can't see the cab door being left open working on services
out of London...

Neil

Richard M Willis wrote:

b) This implicit connexion between "not paying yet", "evading" and "penalty"
were broken.

Why? The whole *idea* of a Penalty Fare is to avoid that distinction
needing to be made. If you are going to make it, you may as well be
lenient on those unable to pay before their journey and just charge
them an Open Single, just as you do in non-PF areas. Unless, of
course, the railway likes to be deliberately customer-unfriendly, in
which case it would do well to revise that thinking.

That may not be the principle on which they were sneaked through
Parliament, but it is the only good reason to have them. The PF rate
and inspection frequency can be set at a level whereby the railway does
not make a loss from ticketless travel, which itself could then be
decriminalised just as parking is in most places.

Or we could go down the route of making it a legal requirement to prepay for
your whole journey. This would require all ticket offices everywhere to be
able
to issue every combination of ticket to/from/via/date/time and for unmanned
stations
to be abolished.

Or take the Nederlandse Spoorwegen route and have ticket machines to
fulfil that purpose, and require their use. Unlike NS, however, if we
did go that route I'd like to see them accepting all types of credit
card plus all types of cash (barring perhaps 50 quid notes). The
technology exists, including to give change in notes. There is
absolutely no reason whatsoever why such a machine shouldn't issue all
tickets of all types for walk-on travel, and perhaps even (using a
Trainline-style interface) advance purchase as well.

I think that realistically we'd still need PayTrain routes and
stations, the latter to take account of places like Cheddington on main
lines that just couldn't justify a ticket office open for the full
service period. They could be clearly indicated as such, like they
were in some areas during BR days.

Neil

Richard M Willis wrote:

I would be much happier if
a) PFs were renamed PostPay or whatever.
c) Ticket checks were absolute, i.e that there was a 100% chance of having
your ticket checked at least once per journey

A and C would need to apply, as if there wasn't a 100% chance of being
stopped somewhere - changing penalty fare to 'post pay' or whatever
would be self-defeating. People happy to pay the extra, wouldn't
necessarily have to pay anything!

Or we could go down the route of making it a legal requirement to prepay for
your whole journey. This would require all ticket offices everywhere to be
able to issue every combination of ticket to/from/via/date/time and for unmanned
stations to be abolished.

That could have many other benefits of course. With so many more people
travelling, the TOCs aren't exactly struggling to make money but we
know it won't happen.

Jonathan

On 14 Jun 2006 15:48:46 -0700, "Jonathan Morris"
wrote:

What we have is a situation where fare evasion is a piece of p**s (for
want of better words), which means they gates are almost there just to
validate Oyster cards, collect tickets from the ordinary passenger and
maybe regulate the flow! We queue, while the others just double up and
get through scot free. Something is fundamentally wrong here!

So write to LUL pointing out your concerns and ask them to rectify them
or else explain why not. No good just expressing your concerns on a
newsgroup when you don't or won't really accept the explanation that has
been provided to you.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

Paul Corfield wrote:
So write to LUL pointing out your concerns and ask them to rectify them
or else explain why not. No good just expressing your concerns on a
newsgroup when you don't or won't really accept the explanation that has
been provided to you.

I accept your explanation, but still don't think it is right (not what
you're saying, but the system we've ended up with).

However, as LUL will have signed an agreement to buy X number of
barriers and for them to be installed on the network, a letter saying
they should change them is rather futile. They're not stupid - if I've
commented on such things, then they know about them too (just use one
and you can instantly see its shortcomings).

The gates would appear to make fare evasion easy (at least at certain
times, namely when a station is crowded), and I've had the highest
number of failed readings on my Oyster card since I got a prepay one on
launch day - causing the other problem of getting stuck, and the person
behind lets you through with their ticket (and either doubles up, or
gets stuck). People with paper tickets are also complaining, although -
to be fair - my season ticket always got damaged by using the old style
gates at Farringdon.

As you have explained why they work the way they do, I can at least
understand a bit more (and I am grateful) but I also hope things can be
tweaked to try and improve things in the future. We're not going to see
millions of ticket inspectors anytime soon, so it annoys me if anything
makes things easier for the people putting my fare up!

Regards,

Jonathan