What's the point of barriers without security

[PedroHav]

You see people, mostly kids, pushing through the barriers or going underneath in full view of station staff who can do nothing to stop them and they are as frustrated as fare paying passengers.

It's all very well having a poster campaign saying you must buy a ticket before travelling but without any back up it's pointless. Station staff and guards are helpless to do anything. Maybe it's a SWT and Southern problem but I doubt it.

I just witnessed a mother go through with a ticket but her family, all 4 of them, either climbed the fence or went under the barrier. The kids, aged up to 15, just laughed.

Spend the money on security and try and break the habit that they can travel for free.

 

[800001]

You see people, mostly kids, pushing through the barriers or going underneath in full view of station staff who can do nothing to stop them and they are as frustrated as fare paying passengers.

It's all very well having a poster campaign saying you must buy a ticket before travelling but without any back up it's pointless. Station staff and guards are helpless to do anything. Maybe it's a SWT and Southern problem but I doubt it.

I just witnessed a mother go through with a ticket but her family, all 4 of them, either climbed the fence or went under the barrier. The kids, aged up to 15, just laughed.

Spend the money on security and try and break the habit that they can travel for free.

Sadly, if they are that brazen to do it in front of station staff, they are more than likely going to do the same in front of security staff.

What actually can security staff do that station staff can’t?

 

[JonathanH]

Barriers are there to reduce the casual temptation of passengers to travel without tickets, as most passengers wouldn't countenance bumping the barriers. They are totally unsuited to preventing fare evasion from passengers who are determined to be aggressive about it.

What actually can security staff do that station staff can’t?

BTP can forcibly restrain passengers who break through the barriers. Station staff can't do that. The presence of BTP generally prevents bumping, but obviously they are more expensive to employ and we don't live in a police state.

 

[800001]

Barriers are there to reduce the casual temptation of passengers to travel without tickets, as most passengers wouldn't countenance bumping the barriers. They are totally unsuited to preventing fare evasion from passengers who are determined to be aggressive about it.


BTP can forcibly restrain passengers who break through the barriers. Station staff can't do that. The presence of BTP generally prevents bumping, but obviously they are more expensive to employ and we don't live in a police state.

I get what Btp can/cant do, but the poster asked about Security staff

 

[Urban Gateline]

Sadly, if they are that brazen to do it in front of station staff, they are more than likely going to do the same in front of security staff.

What actually can security staff do that station staff can’t?

Depends how motivated they are, back when I worked on Gateline we had some really beefy security at Clapham Jnc and a few times I managed to get them to kick out people who pushed through the gates, found them on the platform and marched them out the station, but a lot of these "STM" or other agency security are as useful as a chocolate teapot!

 

[PedroHav]

Barriers are there to reduce the casual temptation of passengers to travel without tickets, as most passengers wouldn't countenance bumping the barriers. They are totally unsuited to preventing fare evasion from passengers who are determined to be aggressive about it.


BTP can forcibly restrain passengers who break through the barriers. Station staff can't do that. The presence of BTP generally prevents bumping, but obviously they are more expensive to employ and we don't live in a police state.

I personally think that the BTP are well undermanned. I can't remember the last time I saw one - and I travel on trains quite a lot. What powers do 'revenue support officers' have?
We do need to find a solution to fare evasion - as we're all paying for it in the long run.

 

[NSEWonderer]

We regularly have security staff at our gatelines(imo it's a cheaper option than btp presence during the peaks) as some have mentioned they aren't they're to necessarily intervene but stand as an extra deterrent.

Station security are useful incase of disorderly conduct however at times that occur away from the barriers of which they can mediate in where safe.

But the main thing indeed is that outside the BTP not much can be done to directly stop a gate pusher.

 

[cool110]

What actually can security staff do that station staff can’t?

What powers do 'revenue support officers' have?

They do actually have considerable powers comparable to police that are almost never used.

If a passenger having failed either to produce, or if requested to deliver up, a ticket showing that his fare is paid, or to pay his fare, refuses or fails on request by an officer or servant of a railway company, to give his name and address, any officer of the company may detain him until he can be conveniently brought before some justice or otherwise discharged by due course of law.

Any person who is reasonably believed by an authorised person to be in breach of any of these byelaws and who fails to desist or leave when asked to do so by an authorised person may be removed from the railway by an authorised person using reasonable force. This right of removal is in addition to the imposition of any penalty for the breach of these byelaws

 

[dk1]

That’s what BTP are there for. Depends what sort of area you live/travel in I suppose. My home station is Norwich and it’s quite rare to witness such behaviour here. All trains have conductors too.

We have security late evenings at weekends for the benefit of staff.

 

[Kite159]

You can probably add to that list those stations which have unmanned barriers which are monitored remotely from the main gateline with a help point with cameras.

For example Crawley, Exeter Central, Cheltenham Spa and countless others. The ones which are easy targets for those whom think payment is optional to just barge through, knowing by the time the person on the gateline hears any sort of alert they will be long gone.

 

[Turtle]

You can probably add to that list those stations which have unmanned barriers which are monitored remotely from the main gateline with a help point with cameras.

For example Crawley, Exeter Central, Cheltenham Spa and countless others. The ones which are easy targets for those whom think payment is optional to just barge through, knowing by the time the person on the gateline hears any sort of alert they will be long gone.

And, meanwhile, honest travellers who have boarded a train without a ticket, for whatever reason, are PFd when they attempt to pay.

 

[dontteleport]

As someone who uses a lot of different regions of the network regularly, I can say this is FAR more common in the Southern and SWR areas than anywhere else I've been. A very regular occurrence at Brighton and East Croydon and I've never seen staff react.

I used to use Barking a lot, and there they had security from a company called Halo that did not mess around at all, I saw somebody push through a wide gate and get promptly walked into a corner and told "give us your ID or you're getting arrested" presumably meaning they'd either want proof of your details for a RoRA prosecution or go through BTP.

I've seen a member of Gate line staff and Leicester physically block someone trying to slide under a barrier and direct them towards the excess fares desk.

Nobody in their right mind would vault a barrier with BTP present, but that seems to be the only strong deterrent in most cases in the Southern and SWR areas. They need to consider that private security personnel employed on behalf of TOCs can in fact physically intervene in such situations, as mentioned before under RoRA - security staff at nightlife venues are usually very confident using their powers of force under S24a of PACE, so why not on the railways too?

 

[ExRes]

and we don't live in a police state.

No we don't, we live in a thieves and thugs state, which do you prefer?

 

[jayah]

I personally think that the BTP are well undermanned. I can't remember the last time I saw one - and I travel on trains quite a lot. What powers do 'revenue support officers' have?
We do need to find a solution to fare evasion - as we're all paying for it in the long run.

There are around 350 small
/ medium stations of category A-C2 in the UK, including Scotland, and the BTP has around 3,500 officers and PCSOs to cover just England and Wales.

Category C2 is already down at the level of Tamworth and Burgess Hill.

 

[JonathanH]

No we don't, we live in a thieves and thugs state, which do you prefer?

Ticket barriers that are more fit for purpose would be a start.

 

[Starmill]

Even if they didn't make a difference, which they absolutely do, the ticket gates make it a separate offence to barge through them or similar. But mainly ticket gates are there to be a visual barrier first and a lawful barrier second. They aren't a practical barrier, but they aren't designed to be. That would create too much risk for the train operator.

Depends how motivated they are, back when I worked on Gateline we had some really beefy security at Clapham Jnc and a few times I managed to get them to kick out people who pushed through the gates, found them on the platform and marched them out the station, but a lot of these "STM" or other agency security are as useful as a chocolate teapot!

On Southeastern also the security staff can use their power to remove people from the station if they personally see them going through the ticket gates incorrectly. They certainly do it occasionally.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Even if they didn't make a difference, which they absolutely do, the ticket gates make it a separate offence to barge through them or similar. But mainly ticket gates are there to be a visual barrier first and a lawful barrier second. They aren't a practical barrier, but they aren't designed to be. That would create too much risk for the train operator.

Hasn't it been said before that there is already a Bylaw requirement to use automatic gates in a 'proper manner' or some such?

 

[Sonic1234]

Hasn't it been said before that there is already a Bylaw requirement to use automatic gates in a 'proper manner' or some such?

As I remember a radio ad for a game saying "What makes someone a criminal? Getting caught". Even if you stop these people, they won't be compliant. Removal from the station is the only possible punishment (unless police are around).

A lot of the time the barrier staff either are too demotivated or scared of the sort of people who do this. Better to let them jump the barrier, or even open it for them, let the "yoof" walk out and become someone else's problem and write off the £2.50 Oyster fare they've dodged.

 

[Horizon22]

This is sort of behaviour is more societal than anything. It's a symptom of a lack of facilities for young people (and the offenders are generally young), a lack of order and discpline on other anti-social activites that they might carry out and sometimes the wrong (if any) authority figures in their lives. These spill out into relatively low-level offences like skipping fares although it's not a completely new phenomenomn.

This coupled with the relatively high train fares, the BTP not having the resourcing to assist, limited revenue protection staff and most staff being actively told to avoid physical confrontation and it's no surprise such activities happen.

The vast majority of travellers do of course abide by the rules.

 

[Starmill]

Hasn't it been said before that there is already a Bylaw requirement to use automatic gates in a 'proper manner' or some such?

Yes precisely that.

As I remember a radio ad for a game saying "What makes someone a criminal? Getting caught". Even if you stop these people, they won't be compliant. Removal from the station is the only possible punishment (unless police are around).

A lot of the time the barrier staff either are too demotivated or scared of the sort of people who do this. Better to let them jump the barrier, or even open it for them, let the "yoof" walk out and become someone else's problem and write off the £2.50 Oyster fare they've dodged.

The repeat offenders will come unstuck in the end, as with most things!

 

[Parham Wood]

It does make a mockery of things when security fail to detain/take details of persons crossing barriers etc without tickets or in the wrong way yet someone who makes a genuine ticket error or an error whilst travelling or accidently catching the wrong train is pounced upon and issued a penalty or taken to court. Easy pickings I suppose.

 

[Mugby]

Forgive me for asking: I can visualise jumping the barriers although I've never actually seen it done, I've seen tailgating, in fact I've had it done to me but bumping or barging through barriers, is it even possible to do that? All the barriers I've seen appear to have very strong and hefty mechanisms, I can't imagine anyone of average build being able to force through them?

 

[Starmill]

Forgive me for asking: I can visualise jumping the barriers although I've never actually seen it done, I've seen tailgating, in fact I've had it done to me but bumping or barging through barriers, is it even possible to do that? All the barriers I've seen appear to have very strong and hefty mechanisms, I can't imagine anyone of average build being able to force through them?

They are designed to appear sturdy, but in fact they are very easy to push through for most people of typical strength. The wide gate barely even needs a push. Usually they do have an alarm at least when they detect being forced open.

The flexible criminal elements can also slide underneath them without too much trouble.

 

[JLH4AC]

Sadly, if they are that brazen to do it in front of station staff, they are more than likely going to do the same in front of security staff.

What actually can security staff do that station staff can’t?

Partly due to businesses and other organisations preventing their non-security staff from using the enforcement powers they are lawfully empowered with for various reasons (Many of which are well meaning attempts to prevent harm to staff.) security officers are falsely believed by many members of the public to have more sufficiently more enforcement powers than any other member of the public. Security officers also should be more likely to intervene as they tend to have few if any duties outside of security/enforcement.

 

[NSEWonderer]

Before people mention gates need to return to the days of air-powered forcefulness, the reason the gates offer low resistance when pushed on with enough force is that, in the case of a real emergency, passengers of relatively average strength should be able to push through if in a panic (assuming the gates haven't automatically opened in the case of an emergency evacuation).

The railway isn't only suffering from such unruly behavior; quite a few of those individuals who push through will then head to family-run shops or local businesses and clear the shelves off before walking out with the rewards, mostly unchallenged.

It's really a case of a lack of enforcement resources and a fear of challenging such behavior may lead to more issues than solution.

 

[Kilopylae]

This is sort of behaviour is more societal than anything.

I agree, once something becomes a "social crime", i.e. perceived within a popular subculture as criminalised but not wrong, it's an unwinnable cat-and-mouse game to try to prevent it, and it's hard to do without resorting to heavy-handedness. It's also beyond the railway's resources. If you want less fare evasion, you have to find a way to challenge the meme that it's not that deep (or even a more or less principled anarchist-type response to high fares).

The railway isn't only suffering from such unruly behavior; quite a few of those individuals who push through will then head to family-run shops or local businesses and clear the shelves off before walking out with the rewards, mostly unchallenged.

Shoplifting falls into the same bracket of social crime - I know you've mentioned local businesses here, but I think it sheds light on a wider attitude amongst many young people to look at how common the idea is that it's not immoral to steal from (say) Tesco's because it's a large corporation.

No level of enforcement that the railway can afford is going to put a real dent in that sort of behaviour without changing the "it's not that deep/they shouldn't make the trains so expensive then" narrative.

 

[bramling]

As someone who uses a lot of different regions of the network regularly, I can say this is FAR more common in the Southern and SWR areas than anywhere else I've been. A very regular occurrence at Brighton and East Croydon and I've never seen staff react.

I used to use Barking a lot, and there they had security from a company called Halo that did not mess around at all, I saw somebody push through a wide gate and get promptly walked into a corner and told "give us your ID or you're getting arrested" presumably meaning they'd either want proof of your details for a RoRA prosecution or go through BTP.

I've seen a member of Gate line staff and Leicester physically block someone trying to slide under a barrier and direct them towards the excess fares desk.

Nobody in their right mind would vault a barrier with BTP present, but that seems to be the only strong deterrent in most cases in the Southern and SWR areas. They need to consider that private security personnel employed on behalf of TOCs can in fact physically intervene in such situations, as mentioned before under RoRA - security staff at nightlife venues are usually very confident using their powers of force under S24a of PACE, so why not on the railways too?

I wouldn’t be so sure that there aren’t people who wouldn’t jump a gateline with BTP present. Sure a good proportion wouldn’t, but there’s certainly people who would. There are people who have zero respect for the police.

The real problem with the BTP isn’t so much their numbers, but the fact that when they do make an arrest it takes the arresting officer out of commission for some time. Hence a reluctance to make arrests, something the more hardened elements of society are only too aware of.

 

[renegademaster]

In new york you have barriers that go upto the ceiling so you can't jump them. Don't think they abide by our disability regs though

 

[AlterEgo]

No we don't, we live in a thieves and thugs state, which do you prefer?

It isn’t a binary choice.

 

[nap666]

It does make a mockery of things when security fail to detain/take details of persons crossing barriers etc without tickets or in the wrong way yet someone who makes a genuine ticket error or an error whilst travelling or accidently catching the wrong train is pounced upon and issued a penalty or taken to court. Easy pickings I suppose.

Security staff have limited powers, really not much more than anyone else, unlawful detention is another hazard, citizens arrest only really applies to offences that can result in a 12 month+ sentence.
A lot of security only have an SIA licence as the job centre paid for it, have had staff who "must work together as they translate for each other" usually off site quicker than they arrive, lots of jacket fillers. You learn quickly who you can trust, ever seen the magic search at old Tottenham ground!