Solent&Wessex
Established Member
- Joined
- 9 Jul 2009
- Messages
- 2,683
Personally as a smaller enthusiast of trains I think myself & the general population would find all of this easier if you could pay (card, cash, digital payments like Apple/Google Pay) for a ticket via any method (TVM, booking office, mobile app, PTE-cards or on the train.) at any time of day or week.
The issue shouldn't be how you purchased your ticket. It's the fact you have one at all. Penalties should only apply to those that outright refuse to purchase one if caught or challenged.
You will never have 100% of travelling passengers paying for tickets so you just have to accept that and work towards minimising the people who refuse to pay for one. Just like you never have 100% people in a shop pay for items, some stuff gets stolen and each store is likely to have a permitted (very tiny) percentage of 'loss' that is an accepted risk within the business.
I commute to/from work using a WYCA M-Card. My trips on the West Yorkshire network aren't even counted unless I tap in/out at Leeds (if I've been dropped off there or want to go into Leeds for something), or whenever the barriers in Huddersfield work. How can a ToC differentiate lost revenue from people not paying tickets, against my style of season card that doesn't have defined station start/end points?
I have to say I tend to agree with most of this.
Penalty fares are only really going to work properly on an urban network, with frequent stops, simple ticketing, lots of barriered stations, and no regular on board ticket sales.
Save the enforcement for people who are deliverately avoiding paying the correct fare - i.e. adults buying themselves Child tickets, travelling over distance, point blank not buying one for whatever reason (no money for example), hiding in toilets, and there are plenty of other scenarios.