Continuation Exits

Hi,

I was reading about Continuation Exits, and it really, really surprised me that they even exist.

It seems to me that this must lead to rampant levels of fare evasion, since it (uniquely) leaves an Oyster/Contactless Card in a truly odd situation where it is considered both touched-in and touched-out at the same time.

If using a Contactless Card rather than Oyster (where there is no live record of touch history for RPIs to review), an unscrupulous traveller could touch "out" at a Continuation Exit in an early zone, and then continue their journey on paper tickets purchased from the end of the Oyster boundary (which may in fact be a long way beyond Zone 6). Unlike most forms of evasion where a regular traveller/commuter would be caught out sooner or later, this actually seems like a gaping hole whereby an RPI would never be able to tell (without a retrospective review of the Oyster account) exactly what had happened.

Does anyone know why the rail companies tolerate this situation? I imagine guards/RPIs could be on the lookout for it, since there are presumably not many genuine reasons for wanting to split tickets between Contactless PAYG and paper so far into the journey, but it still feels like a bit of a gaping hole and would need an investigation started based solely on 'hunch' rather than actual evidence to prove one way or the other.

Admittedly, I can't think off the top of my head which trains and routes integrated into the Oyster this could apply to, but there must be many (I would imagine).

Thanks!

If they were checked between them touching out and where the paper tickets start then they'd be maximum fared as they hadn't touched in.

That's if I've understood your post right because it doesn't make much sense.

roversfan2001 said:

If they were checked between them touching out and where the paper tickets start then they'd be maximum fared as they hadn't touched in.

That's if I've understood your post right because it doesn't make much sense.

Click to expand...

OK, I understand how the OP's "fare evasion idea" would work, but I don't want to spell it out to avoid giving people ideas if they can't work it out for themselves.

joshdavey said:

I was reading about Continuation Exits, and it really, really surprised me that they even exist.

Click to expand...

I was going to counter this, but after thinking on it for a bit, you are right.

The easy solution would have been to do something like in Denmark with green touch in readers and red touch out readers, then there would be no need for continuation exits. If you make a mistake and touch out prematurely, you can just touch in again on a green reader.

On the Oyster system using an Oyster card, if you touch out prematurely at a continuation exit station which has no ticket barriers, there is no way to touch back in unless you wait until the continuation exit expires, or take a futile bus journey (which costs money if you have no travelcard or have not reached the bus / lower zones cap). Furthermore, this makes it possible to do everything correctly yet be accused of fare evasion at certain stations - I remember reading several threads, not sure on RF or elsewhere, of cases where people were severely inconvenienced by RPIs and even BTP due to this poor design i.e. unable to touch in on the second leg of journey because the bidirectional reader is still setting a continuation exit - so the card appears touched out - but all is fine at the final destination.

Denmark has no ticket barriers so all readers must clearly be directional. Oyster was launched nearly 10 years before Rejsekort so perhaps somewhat forgiveable but not really.

Does anyone know why the rail companies tolerate this situation?

Click to expand...

Well the rail companies never really wanted to accept Oyster. TfL probably tolerates it because it saves money overall.

Anyway, it's trivial to evade fares with contactless, continuation exits or no. As you say, "an RPI would never be able to tell (without a retrospective review of the Oyster [sic - you mean the contactless account] account) exactly what had happened" even when travelling between unbarriered stations (e.g. short SWR/SET journeys in Z3-6) without touching in.

joshdavey said:

Hi,

I was reading about Continuation Exits, and it really, really surprised me that they even exist.

It seems to me that this must lead to rampant levels of fare evasion, since it (uniquely) leaves an Oyster/Contactless Card in a truly odd situation where it is considered both touched-in and touched-out at the same time.

If using a Contactless Card rather than Oyster (where there is no live record of touch history for RPIs to review), an unscrupulous traveller could touch "out" at a Continuation Exit in an early zone, and then continue their journey on paper tickets purchased from the end of the Oyster boundary (which may in fact be a long way beyond Zone 6). Unlike most forms of evasion where a regular traveller/commuter would be caught out sooner or later, this actually seems like a gaping hole whereby an RPI would never be able to tell (without a retrospective review of the Oyster account) exactly what had happened.

Does anyone know why the rail companies tolerate this situation? I imagine guards/RPIs could be on the lookout for it, since there are presumably not many genuine reasons for wanting to split tickets between Contactless PAYG and paper so far into the journey, but it still feels like a bit of a gaping hole and would need an investigation started based solely on 'hunch' rather than actual evidence to prove one way or the other.

Admittedly, I can't think off the top of my head which trains and routes integrated into the Oyster this could apply to, but there must be many (I would imagine).

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Looking at oyster-rail it seems like you're correct. (I'm sure Mike will be along soon to clarify.)
I think the only way it could be found is if they knew you'd been on a train as it passed through the last Oyster available station, although as it says it is rather risky beyond the place you did it because there isn't a maximum fare on your account. I'd have thought they don't do anything about it because it isn't that big an issue.

Easy answer, passengers may only commence their journey if they hold a physical token showing the intended destination.

The could be printed on a small piece of card and obtained from a machine at the station or even purchased from a human agent. The only problem is to think of a nice snappy name.

Very few people would realise these even exist and then consider the scenario described.

Many revenue protection officers don't even know they exist!

PeterC said:

Easy answer, passengers may only commence their journey if they hold a physical token showing the intended destination.

The could be printed on a small piece of card and obtained from a machine at the station or even purchased from a human agent. The only problem is to think of a nice snappy name.

Click to expand...

Is there a winking smiley missing from the above post? Got to be a joke surely? If so, very good!

In case it is serious my answer is;

This negates many of the benefits of PAYG; you effectively want people to purchase a paper ticket.

Using a payment card to obtain a price of paper with your destination on it is called a paper train ticket

RDG/DfT are keen to move away from paper tickets (but that's a whole different subject being discussed in another thread)

OK, leaving aside the joke about paper tickets, here are some facts.

The reason they exist is that it avoids potential issues where an already out card tries to open exit gates at the same station. Undoubtedly there are other ways of dealing with the issue, but each has different implications for the bigger picture. The concept almost certainly predates NR joining Oyster as many of the stations are Underground ones.

On the issue with contactless cards, although the RPI can't see touch history, the enquiry is logged and analysed by the central system. If no further touch out appears after the RPI check then a maximum fare will be charged to the card. Get that 3 times and the card will be blocked by TfL.

There are only 22 stations with this setting so I don't believe the issue is as big as you make out. Far more important is the flawed use at Elmers End where there are no gates.

Interesting responses. I guess the strongest defence is the fact that the system has the intelligence to review for a further touch-out after an RPI check. I guess at that point it depends entirely on the route and the frequency of RPI checks (if they’re infrequent, I can still see a commuter ‘taking the chance’, and exiting at their station only if checked).

Although there are only 22 stations, many of them are in Central London or major interchanges. So it seems like quite a big risk to me. The suggestions above about making touch pads directional would solve the problem, or doing what happens at Limehouse where you have a touch pad and a set of barriers immediately facing each other (weird the first time, but makes sense). I think Southwark has a similar arrangement actually.

I think the other aspect is that the three-strikes method of contactless takes away a lot of the deterrent of potential prosecution for deliberate evasion (and anyone doing this most certainly should have the book thrown at them). In practice, they’ll be charged the RPI Fee by an automated system with no clue as to intent, chuckle to themselves as to how long they got away with it, and toss the card into the bin.

I imagine that most "normals" believe that the Oyster system will detect a pattern of asymetric journeys which would itself be a deterrent to regular fraud. I don't think that the legacy Oyster system did, I would hope that back office processing will do.

When you have a system that doesn't require you to declare your destination on entry there will always be scope for frauds of this nature unless the system is 100% closed and barriered, neither of which is the case with Oyster. Making, for example, GE passengers changing at Stratford exit to Westfield and walk to a different entrance to access TfL services would be a PR disaster.

joshdavey said:

Does anyone know why the rail companies tolerate this situation?

Click to expand...

I don't think they do necessarily... but will never pursue it because it could (potentially) lead to a court deciding their current practices are unfair.

For example, the places where passengers are most likely to change between paper (mostly season) and 'touch' tickets are Z5/6 boundary stations - but very few of these have platform-level readers so a customer needing to do this has to go up to the station exit to touch out/in before running back towards the train and probably missing it. If the next train is 15/30 mins later, the train company is forcing people either to take a delay to their journeys or effectively to pay double by buying another ticket from their origin station for the entire journey. This would make a very interesting defence in court - particularly in any cases where the customer could prove they did not intend to evade a fare (e.g. they had already reached a daily cap so touching out 'properly' wouldn't apply any additional payment). Remember that the TOCs are obligated to help customers pay the best fare for their journeys and are frequently being pulled up on this over TVMs, etc. Hope that makes sense.