On Sun, 27 May 2007 22:12:25 -0400, David of Broadway
wrote:

Neil Williams wrote:
On Sun, 27 May 2007 10:59:12 +0100, traveller
wrote:

I boarded a London Bus with an Oyster Card that had insufficient credit
for the journey. I had used it twice previously during the day and was
unaware that the credit was running low.

This is either a troll or a person who did not check for the bleep and
green light on boarding.

Probably the latter. I doubt everybody instinctively knows to wait for
a bleep and a green light.

I think almost everyone knows that the machine beeps and the lights
change. Pre-pay users tend to squint at the machine display the see
their total - I still think the displays are appalling in this respect.

For those of us who are colour blind the lights are useless given that
there is only one small "pinhole" light that changes colour. The old
trial on route 212 had a clear display and obvious illuminated segments,
like a traffic light, which were lit depending on the card status. At
least then the relative position of the lights was an aid to those who
are colour blind.

Seeing as this wasn't a bendy-bus, why didn't the driver point out
traveller's error right away? That's what the drivers here do when the
farebox gives a boop instead of a beep.

There is an awful lot of inconsistent behaviour from drivers coupled
with equipment that even now performs in a rather variable fashion.
Although total reader failures seem to be lower than before they still
happen and drivers simply have to wave people on. Other readers misread
some cards but not all - this again can result in "wave on" syndrome or
else passengers trying their cards 3-4 times. The height at which
readers recognise cards also varies which I find most odd - this should
be consistently set. I saw someone have to press their card almost
inside the reader before it read the card. Goodness knows what was going
on there. The other remaining issue is the small minority of passengers
who have no intention of paying and board with an empty PAYG card and
then allege card failure, reader failure, a sob story of having no money
to pay etc and then hoping the driver is in "wave on" mode. While I
sympathise with the drivers when the kit completely fails I think there
is a little too much discretion shown by some drivers in the more
marginal "failure" modes.

The lack of clarity from TfL was to what is or is not to be done with
failed equipment or failed cards does not help. In Hong Kong it is
clear - a failed reader (rare these days) means you pay cash on the bus
or wait for the next one. Cards can be replaced at MTR stations if your
card has failed otherwise a defective gate (a very rare occurrence) is
taken out of service. TfL really needs to get kit reliability sorted
once and for all and also to publish some clear rules on what happens
when the system does fail. At present it is open to too much
interpretation and people taking a punt on fare evasion as a result.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

Interesting answer but i had used my card twice earlier during the day so i wasn't trying to deliberately evade payment, i simply didn't know that there were insufficient funds on the card. The fact that the card reader would have registered this isn't of much use as i didn't realise that the machine had bleeped twice and obviously nor did the driver, since he made no attempt to stop me boarding the bus. Do you think that TFL will consider this a deliberate attempt to evade payment or not? I'm still curious to know why the Revenue Inspector gave me the card back and didn't issue either a notice to prosecute or a penalty fare.

On Mon, 28 May 2007 10:35:26 +0100, Paul Corfield wrote:

Seeing as this wasn't a bendy-bus, why didn't the driver point out
traveller's error right away? That's what the drivers here do when the
farebox gives a boop instead of a beep.

There is an awful lot of inconsistent behaviour from drivers coupled
with equipment that even now performs in a rather variable fashion.
Although total reader failures seem to be lower than before they still
happen and drivers simply have to wave people on. Other readers misread
some cards but not all - this again can result in "wave on" syndrome or
else passengers trying their cards 3-4 times. The height at which
readers recognise cards also varies which I find most odd - this should
be consistently set. I saw someone have to press their card almost
inside the reader before it read the card. Goodness knows what was going
on there.

Failing card?

The other remaining issue is the small minority of passengers
who have no intention of paying and board with an empty PAYG card and
then allege card failure, reader failure, a sob story of having no money
to pay etc and then hoping the driver is in "wave on" mode.

The trick I see most often is to wave the card just briefly in the
vicinity of the reader, causing it to give the error beeps and display
something like "card communication error", and then walk on. Often,
the driver doesn't bother calling the passenger back for another try,
and even if they do, they just pay the normal PAYG fare - no risk of
being kicked off and having to wait for the next bus.

While I
sympathise with the drivers when the kit completely fails I think there
is a little too much discretion shown by some drivers in the more
marginal "failure" modes.

Agreed.

The lack of clarity from TfL was to what is or is not to be done with
failed equipment or failed cards does not help. In Hong Kong it is
clear - a failed reader (rare these days) means you pay cash on the bus
or wait for the next one.

Do TfL bus ticket machines even have the ability to issue £1 singles
to Oyster card holders (for when the reader fails)?

On Mon, 28 May 2007 10:19:12 +0100, traveller wrote:

I got on the bus because i didn't hear the 'reject' sound, it's an
easy
mistake to make. There was a scrum of people crowding onto the bus,
you
have a split second to swipe your card before the person behind you
swipes theirs-

This is a different bus to the one that I last got on.

On that you stand in front of the pad and the person
behind has no chance to touch it with their card until
you get out of the way. It's your choice to do that in
'a second', not theirs.

If you think that everyone queues up, patiently waiting to touch their
card against the reader, you've obviously never travelled on a London
bus.

Are you talking about a different London? I use London buses all the
time and that's exactly what happens.

On Mon, 28 May 2007 11:32:37 +0100, traveller
wrote:


Interesting answer but i had used my card twice earlier during the day
so i wasn't trying to deliberately evade payment, i simply didn't know
that there were insufficient funds on the card.

To be fair I was not responding to your original question. I was
responding to what David of Broadway had written and I was sharing my
own observations and views.

The fact that the card
reader would have registered this isn't of much use as i didn't realise
that the machine had bleeped twice and obviously nor did the driver,
since he made no attempt to stop me boarding the bus. Do you think that
TFL will consider this a deliberate attempt to evade payment or not? I'm
still curious to know why the Revenue Inspector gave me the card back
and didn't issue either a notice to prosecute or a penalty fare.

You wouldn't get a notice to prosecute on the spot AIUI.

I really do not know where the burden of responsibility sits in a case
like yours - is it down to you, the equipment or the driver. My guess is
that the responsibility will be said to be yours.

My *guess* is that you will receive a notice of intent to prosecute for
evading your fare. This is based on the fact you were not given a
penalty fare but they did take your personal details. Is your card
registered? If it is then it will be perfectly possible to retrieve the
card balance and transaction history from the central system to
demonstrate the status of the card at the time you were checked on bus.

Please note that I do not know how fare evasion prosecutions are handled
these days with the advent of Oyster and PAYG so my comments above
should be treated with due caution. I think you should contact TfL
Buses Customer Services to find out what is happening.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

Thanks Paul, however here's what TFL's own guidelines say about Revenue Protection Inspectors:

'Revenue Protection Inspectors issue either a Penalty Fare or a prosecution notice and clear guidelines are provided for determining which sanction is appropriate. Broadly speaking, penalty fares are issued in cases of suspected passenger misunderstanding or less severe fare evasion. Prosecution notices are issued in cases of suspected intention to evade or more severe fare evasion, e.g., non-payment.'

I also believe that the card in question is always confiscated rather than being returned to the passenger. If the card isn't registered, how do they even prove that it's the one that was used, since they will obviously not be able to produce the original card?

On Mon, 28 May 2007 12:28:03 +0100, asdf
wrote:

Do TfL bus ticket machines even have the ability to issue £1 singles
to Oyster card holders (for when the reader fails)?

I'm fairly sure the original policy was that if your card couldn't be
read you had to pay full fare. However, there is the issue of
practicality surrounding that, and as such just waving people on if it
doesn't work when you try touching the second time is most likely the
most practical solution for both driver safety and for keeping
passengers moving.

Perhaps there is a need to make the display of whether a touch-in was
successful or not larger, and perhaps relocate it to be readable when
you've passed the machine?

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

On Mon, 28 May 2007 12:29:14 +0100, asdf
wrote:

Are you talking about a different London? I use London buses all the
time and that's exactly what happens.

Funnily enough I was thinking that. Indeed, I sometimes keep my card
in my wallet and touch my wallet on the reader, which seems to work
90% of times. When it hasn't, I've never felt that I would be causing
a dangerous situation, nor have I been barged by others, when taking
the few seconds to remove the card from my wallet and touch it
straight onto the machine.

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Sun, 27 May 2007 22:12:25 -0400, David of Broadway
wrote:

Neil Williams wrote:
On Sun, 27 May 2007 10:59:12 +0100, traveller
wrote:

I boarded a London Bus with an Oyster Card that had insufficient credit
for the journey. I had used it twice previously during the day and was
unaware that the credit was running low.
This is either a troll or a person who did not check for the bleep and
green light on boarding.
Probably the latter. I doubt everybody instinctively knows to wait for
a bleep and a green light.

I think almost everyone knows that the machine beeps and the lights
change. Pre-pay users tend to squint at the machine display the see
their total - I still think the displays are appalling in this respect.

People who ride the bus every day probably are as you describe.

People who ride the bus occasionally probably are not.

Tourists certainly are not.

(And we also have terrible displays in New York -- they only display a
single line at a time, so people stand and wait around to see the
balance remaining or the expiration date while the rest of the crowd is
still waiting outside in the rain.)

For those of us who are colour blind the lights are useless given that
there is only one small "pinhole" light that changes colour. The old
trial on route 212 had a clear display and obvious illuminated segments,
like a traffic light, which were lit depending on the card status. At
least then the relative position of the lights was an aid to those who
are colour blind.

Interesting point. I don't think we have colo(u)red lights -- we have
the text display and a beep or boop. We also have a display mounted on
the wall /behind/ the driver (out of view to both the driver and the
boarding passenger) indicating the type of fare paid; this is nicknamed
the beakie box and is used by supervisors to ensure that the driver is
applying the correct fares.

Seeing as this wasn't a bendy-bus, why didn't the driver point out
traveller's error right away? That's what the drivers here do when the
farebox gives a boop instead of a beep.

There is an awful lot of inconsistent behaviour from drivers coupled
with equipment that even now performs in a rather variable fashion.
Although total reader failures seem to be lower than before they still
happen and drivers simply have to wave people on. Other readers misread
some cards but not all - this again can result in "wave on" syndrome or
else passengers trying their cards 3-4 times. The height at which
readers recognise cards also varies which I find most odd - this should
be consistently set. I saw someone have to press their card almost
inside the reader before it read the card. Goodness knows what was going
on there. The other remaining issue is the small minority of passengers
who have no intention of paying and board with an empty PAYG card and
then allege card failure, reader failure, a sob story of having no money
to pay etc and then hoping the driver is in "wave on" mode. While I
sympathise with the drivers when the kit completely fails I think there
is a little too much discretion shown by some drivers in the more
marginal "failure" modes.

The lack of clarity from TfL was to what is or is not to be done with
failed equipment or failed cards does not help. In Hong Kong it is
clear - a failed reader (rare these days) means you pay cash on the bus
or wait for the next one. Cards can be replaced at MTR stations if your
card has failed otherwise a defective gate (a very rare occurrence) is
taken out of service. TfL really needs to get kit reliability sorted
once and for all and also to publish some clear rules on what happens
when the system does fail. At present it is open to too much
interpretation and people taking a punt on fare evasion as a result.

IMO, the Hong Kong policy is overly strict. The policy in New York is
that if a bus farebox is broken -- either the MetroCard slot or the coin
slot -- then everybody boards for free, at least until the end of the
run, when (IINM) a determination is made whether to keep the bus in
service or to swap it with a bus with a working farebox. If the farebox
itself is working but a MetroCard isn't, then, officially, the customer
is given an envelope (to mail in the card for a replacement or refund)
and is expected to pay by some other means (cash or a different
MetroCard); in practice, however, most drivers will simply allow the
customer to board. (Not so on the subway! I've had MetroCards die
prematurely on several occasions -- on one of those occasions it had
been killed by an errant bus farebox that morning! -- and I have always
been required to use another card to enter the system.)
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

Well pardon me but i wasn't aware that either of you were on the bus that i used. Can the holier-than-thou brigade just give it a rest? The original question i posed was about procedure carried out by Revenue Protection Officers. If you haven't got anything relevant to contribute then don't waste my time or yours posting!