Llanigraham
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Not possible!
If there are only card machines available at a station then you have to allow cash buyers the option on the train.
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Northern to introduce a Penalty fare scheme
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Not possible!
If there are only card machines available at a station then you have to allow cash buyers the option on the train.
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northwichcat
Veteran Member
What about if it's a credit card that never gets rejected at a ticket office but always gets rejected by a Parkeon TVM? (I'm not sure how bad the new ones are at rejecting credit cards but the old ones didn't like credit cards.)
How many more button presses will be required to buy a Promise to Pay Notice than a ticket? I would imagine 0.
This isn't different from the situation where there is no Promise to Pay Notice though.
If promise-to-pay makes you effectively select the ticket you plan to buy it seems like it could work quite well. If all the guard or excess fares staff have to do is scan the ticket and take the payment they should be able to get through people more quickly.
It's also beneficial to the basically-honest. It's easy at the moment while you're wasting time standing in the queue for excess fares to convince yourself that you are quite justified in short-faring, or to generally try to avoid the guard and sneak out of the station at the other end. Once you've made a decision about a ticket, got a slip to prove it and made a commitment to pay for it, you are much more likely to just follow through with the process.
It doesn't help with the tickets TVMs don't sell, or out of order TVMs, or people who are determined to dodge payment altogether. but hopefully the group of people affected by those kinds of problems becomes much smaller, so they can be handled more experienced staff and sifting out repeat offenders in particular will be easier to do.
It's also beneficial to the basically-honest. It's easy at the moment while you're wasting time standing in the queue for excess fares to convince yourself that you are quite justified in short-faring, or to generally try to avoid the guard and sneak out of the station at the other end. Once you've made a decision about a ticket, got a slip to prove it and made a commitment to pay for it, you are much more likely to just follow through with the process.
It doesn't help with the tickets TVMs don't sell, or out of order TVMs, or people who are determined to dodge payment altogether. but hopefully the group of people affected by those kinds of problems becomes much smaller, so they can be handled more experienced staff and sifting out repeat offenders in particular will be easier to do.
Kite159
Veteran Member
The "Promise to Pay" makes sense as it removes any arguments at which station you boarded at. For example boarding at Cottingley, wanting to pay cash and going to the excess fares desk at Leeds could sound alarm bells of someone attempting to short fare.
Tim R-T-C
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I think not only do they have to install ticket machines, they need them on both sides of a station.
Steeton and Silsden has a machine only on the up side, which is a long walk from the car park. Are they going to expect northbound passengers to walk out of the station, up the steps, across a bridge, down to the machine, buy their ticket, then walk back across, or will this count as a station without a machine?
Steeton and Silsden has a machine only on the up side, which is a long walk from the car park. Are they going to expect northbound passengers to walk out of the station, up the steps, across a bridge, down to the machine, buy their ticket, then walk back across, or will this count as a station without a machine?
Kite159
Veteran Member
Also at those stations where the only access between platforms is a level crossing
That's the expectation elsewhere in the network, I can't see why it would be any different in Northern Land.
For those 'in the know', what will be the situation for those with a 'PRIV', at Northern stations which are TVM only (and therefore at which a PRIV discounted ticket cannot be bought), but which will be covered by the new Penalty Fare scheme?
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I think the point is that, even if that is what's happening elsewhere, it shouldn't be. I'm reminded of the person in the disputes and prosecutions section sounding off about his daughter who got caught travelling without a ticket from Adlington where there is actually a booking office, never mind a ticket machine, but it's on the 'wrong' platform. People in many parts of the north are so used to buying on the train that to get them to buy before boarding it needs to be made as easy as possible or they just won't do it, and Northern will get a pasting in the local and regional press for their new 'unfair' penalty fair scheme that's penalising passengers just for doing what they've always done. (FWIW, I think it's a fantastic idea, as long as it's actually enforced as close to 100% of the time as possible. I'm just pointing out what I think others will say).
I was told you do not buy a Promise to Pay Notice, it is free. What I did not ask is whether you need to specify the journey (which would be sensible) or whether the Notice just shows the name of the station you got it at.
As I understand it, the approved PF schemes only require Authorized Collectors to “show discretion” towards passengers who say they have a means of payment but not one accepted by the available ticketing facilities, and offering cash when having boarded at a station with card-only TVMs isn’t a get out of jail free card, especially given Northern representatives’ average-to-poor record of showing discretion.
Of course, since all the ticket stock of the TVMs at many of the said stations will have been exhausted by local scallies printing off “promise to pay” tickets, the excuse that the TVM was out of order will be a lot more tenable.
We are a long way yet from SNCB/NMBS whose conductors’ machines will flat out refuse to issue a ticket without the on-board surcharge unless the machine has received a notification from control that the origin station’s ticketing facilities were defective or another relevant exception applies such as a disabled discount card.
Northern do currently specify how long you should not have to queue more than here: https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/news/latest-news/955-save-time-with-northern
Under the Frequently Asked Questions section, they state:
Just to emphasise the important bit "It is unreasonable for you to queue longer than five minutes in peak time and three minutes in off peak time. Where this is the case our conductors will apply discretion and sell the full range of tickets on board."
Interesting. However, the FAQ also states:
What happens if the TVM doesn’t offer the ticket I want?
Our TVMs offer a full complement of tickets that are valid for immediate travel on that particular day.
What happens if I’m delayed on my way to the station and don’t have time to buy a ticket?
If you were anticipating buying a ticket at the station on your day of travel you would only have been sold a full fare ticket. You will be required to purchase a full fare ticket on board the train.
Both 'replies' are blatantly untrue, which doesn't boost confidence.
The first statement isn't untrue - they say that the TVMs offer a full complement, not the full complement - as long as they offer more than one ticket valid for immediate travel then it is true. I agree that the second statement is a bit more worrying though.
lyndhurst25
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For a passenger using the down platform at Steeton & Silsden, who is unfamiliar with the station, it's impossible for them to know that there is a ticket machine over the bridge on the up side: it's not on the platform so you can't see it, and there are no signs to tell you that it's there either. Unless another machine is installed on the down side, you'd hope that discretion would be shown to anyone travelling north from there.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Quite, the latter case would render one liable to a Penalty Fare, not the full fare, or prosecution. And so it should in a PF area. Most of the problems Northern are causing have one root cause - on-board ticket sales. They say you can't buy on board, then they sell you a ticket on board. It simply is not good enough.
As for TVMs I really can't understand why they can't sell the same walk-up offering as a guard can on board. (ALRs, Railcards etc clearly not, but any actual ticket).
I'm sure lots of stuff will have to be rewritten if they introduce this penalty fare scheme so what applies now will not in the future.
northwichcat
Veteran Member
Northern are apparently one of the TOCs signed up a scheme where if buying from a TVM causes you to buy a more expensive ticket than you needed to purchase then they'll refund the difference. However, I'm not convinced that extends to all tickets. For instance, say you are a pensioner and you purchased a £8 off-peak day return when a TfGM Concession Wayfarer would have been valid - that's still £8, if you then need to buy a £3 Metrolink ticket you've paid £3 extra due to the Wayfarer ticket not being available from the TVM - would Northern refund the additional cost paid for the Metrolink ticket? I'm not convinced they would. (For clarity I'm presuming the said pensioner does not hold a TfGM issued ENCTS pass meaning they are not entitled to free off-peak travel on Metrolink.)
Puffing Devil
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I see this time and time again on the Crewe - Manchester line. Yesterday, the guard sold tickets to a couple boarding at Levenshulme. There is a TVM and the Ticket Office should have been open.
northwichcat
Veteran Member
Will these 'promise to pay' tickets have the date and time on them?
Someone said the TVMs can hold 1500 blank tickets, if they've just been filled up then the scallies will have RSI before they can print off enough to take the machine out-of-order! Although, them printing off 20 for fun could cause a littering issue.
Kite159
Veteran Member
Maybe design a feature into the TVM that if 5 "Promise to Pay" vouchers are printed within a short period of time, it will temporary remove that option to stop the scallies from having a field day
Leaving the sixth person standing on the platform...
So, if there is a queue of 10 people for the machine (very common at some stations) and the first 5 of them all dispense a "Promise to Pay" notice, what do the remaining people do if any of them require one?
A 5 second cooldown would probably be OK, but that wouldn't have much of an effect deterring people from emptying the machine.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
If you have to go through a process to get one they'll soon get bored, i.e. select destination and payment method. Indeed, you could have it so you selected the ticket you want and the non-accepted payment method. Then no excuse for getting a card out on board, say.
Kite159
Veteran Member
Isn't the idea of a "Promise to Pay" being for those wanting to pay by cash (or RTV) which isn't accepted by the card-only TVMs, so what are the odds of 6 random people in a row all wanting to pay cash rather than by card?
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Fairly low I'd think, particularly as cash payers tend towards being older people who in TfGM/Merseytravel land will be using passes mostly.
Similar to what has been suggested further up the thread perhaps people with cash could go through all the steps as normal until they get to the payment stage where they can be issued with a promise to pay which has all the details or even a barcode for other staff to be able to sell the ticket with ease. This could also prevent people just printing them out for fun.
Also I think the printing them for fun would probably only be an issue for a short amount of time as a similar thing was possible with parking machines here in Bristol where you could get a free ticket for 30 minutes and type in a short message (instead of a numberplate). At first when they were in place lots of school children used them to write rude messages but this soon stopped as people got bored of it.
Would it be possible to fit the Machines with a paper roll receipt printer which could be used instead for promise to pays meaning there wouldn't be an impact on normal ticket sales if they were printed out lots
Also I think the printing them for fun would probably only be an issue for a short amount of time as a similar thing was possible with parking machines here in Bristol where you could get a free ticket for 30 minutes and type in a short message (instead of a numberplate). At first when they were in place lots of school children used them to write rude messages but this soon stopped as people got bored of it.
Would it be possible to fit the Machines with a paper roll receipt printer which could be used instead for promise to pays meaning there wouldn't be an impact on normal ticket sales if they were printed out lots
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Quite a lot of TVMs already have till roll printers for receipts anyway, so I see no reason why not.
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