Having used the new station entrance for the H&C, Circle and Met lines
at Kings Cross, I've been using the new style barriers regularly and
must question who designed them or allowed them to be put into use?

Sure, they're smaller which means more barriers, but they open so slow
that they;

a) Make you wait to pass through, which causes delays and frustration
if you're in a hurry to make a connection.

b) Take ages to close, which means I've had a guy double up with me on
two separate occasions in a week. I've never had *anyone* double up
before, and on the second time I tried to walk slowly in the hope the
barrier would close on him. However, it stays open long enough that I
bet two people could double up. The police are usually there, but don't
seem interested - after all, they're looking for terrorists.

So, along with the bendy buses problem, it seems that fare evasion
isn't difficult in London - and presumably these 'new' barriers will be
rolled out to all stations in due course.

I picked up an interesting comment in another thread about fare evasion
on buses, from Paul Corfield, which points out that with many new
measures and initiatives in place, it's quite possible that TfL believe
they no longer need to try too hard to enforce what they believe is no
longer a real issue;

"The counter argument, of course, is that pre-payment is now so high in

London and that so many forms of fraud have been removed by structural
changes you can argue just how effective a big effort would be. We have

flat fares so no over-riding, we have one bus zone so no "out of zone"
season ticket fraud, Travelcards are valid on all buses so rail zones
are irrelevant, all Oyster personalised and registered cards can be
barred from use, smartcard technology facilitates sophisticated fraud
analysis, Oyster checking helps the driver detect out of date or out of

value cards more readily and children travel free. This really only
leaves out of date passes / permits, forgeries and stolen cards, non
validated cards on cashless routes and blatant non payment - again
probably only on cashless / heritage routes to any level as drivers
check on all other routes. Many people complain about the London fare
structure but it many ways the policy is ingenious in that it has
designed out the opportunity for many frauds to be committed."

It's a very valid point. However, even if TfL aren't too concerned,
what about passengers paying high fares and watching others going for
free?

It may be considered acceptable to allow a small percentage of
fraudsters, but this is infuriating - especially on overcrowded trains
or buses that wouldn't necessarily have to BE so crowded if you could
remove the free-riders. There is almost no chance of these people being
caught and, if as another poster said, there are regular checks in
certain areas, the chances are even lower once they know to avoid them.

Barriers were supposed to address the problem, and these will be the
ones rolled out on National Rail stations in the future (e.g. First
Capital Connect) so, for the ones not paying, they'll present almost no
barrier at all.

Jonathan