In the past I've been critical of people taking this sort of view, but you know what, I'm beginning to smell a rat here. It's been two days since this thread started and the last contribution by the OP was early afternoon on the first day, despite various questions being asked. It's not as though they are a newbie poster either. I wonder if the responses made so far have not been what the OP wanted to see and there is actually more to this than is being posted on here?
If I'm wrong I'll apologise, but there's a little voice asking these questions in my head, and it's getting louder by the hour.
I have a life outside of this rail forum, you know!
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
I think there's a few issues here:
(a) When do you stop needing to carry your ticket? Sure you need to have it on the train, and in a Compulsory Ticket Area (CTA). But presuming you purchased the necessary ticket to travel and it's valid, what is the soonest you can possibly discard it - I'm guessing the conditions of carriage or byelaws will dictate this. I.e., the strict liability offence, failing to have a ticket etc, when is this applicable?
Can you bin it the moment you step off the train? Is a ticket-barriered-area implicitly a CTA? If not, could you technically bin it before the barriers? On a non-barriered and non-CTA station what would happen if you binned it on the station platform and then encounter RPIs?
Obviously there's no need to retain a ticket off station premises, so therefore there can't be any ability for a RPI to ask to see one off the premises either. If stopped, you could say I binned it, jog on.
(b) What power do RPIs have on station premises - can they detain someone who they believe is committing a crime without recourse (wrongful imprisonment) if they are wrong?
(c) What power do they have
off station premises?
Judging by the fact you don't need to have a ticket whilst off the premises, and if the answer to (c) is 'the same as a lay person' - I don't see how an RPI standing outside the station asking for tickets is any different from me doing it?
This is half technicality (I wonder what the law is) and half expressing my frustration of being hassled further on my way to work!