Not rea,ly because decisions to try and manage fare collection through penalties is mostly post bid acceptance. The DfT seems to have just one measure, I.e. the lowest hit on their budget, so the effect of poor customer service at the point of fare collection is below their radar. The courts have to pick up the pieces.
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Paying only when challenged – cash vs card
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Dai Corner
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Bletchleyite
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A debit card on a no-overdraft basic bank account[1] is not anything to do with that, unless you are just on an anti-bank tirade (in which case some credit unions offer them too).
I'm not suggesting people should get credit cards if they don't want them.
[1] Monzo isn't a basic bank account, but its default setting heavily reduces the risk of an overdraft by declining transactions if there's an authorisation there suggesting the money has been spent, so it acts more like one if you want it to.
Never heard of online and plastic card crime? If not I'm surprised because the figures involved are much higher.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Much higher than crime involving cash? I very much doubt it. Most cash based crime is not discovered, I'd venture. Not to mention the low-level cash crime of "cash in hand" payment which must run to millions if not billions a year.
Card fraud exists but is largely not that much of an issue for an individual acting prudently as once reported the bank sorts it. Chip and PIN heavily reduced the classic cloning fraud to near zero, and contactless is only an issue if you don't treat your card as you would fifty quid of cash, say.
Debit cards enable what limited cash some have to be spent too easily, (or in some cases stolen by others). I didn't mention credit cards.
Anyway, moaning about cash payments here won't change the law, - cash is both legal for train fares and the choice to use it is the customer's alone, so that's fine by me, (even though I haven't paid for any rail fares other than by cards for years).
Bletchleyite
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Eh? It's as easy, in a shop, to spend cash or card. It takes the same amount of time and effort.
Dai Corner
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I'm sure that if the DfT could invite bids assuming cash was only accepted at ticket offices they'd be lower than ones requiring TVMs and guards to accept cash.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Precisely. This is an easy cost the railway could cut - cash processing is hugely, hugely time consuming and expensive, and also renders the guards more liable to assault by someone looking to steal the not considerable sum they often have on their person.
I'd love to see what the stats would be on savings (including from evasion reduction if PFs could basically become absolute) were a franchise like Northern to abolish cash payment (a) at non-staffed stations, or (b) entirely, and what that money could be spent on instead in terms of the service.
An option (c) could be added of what it would cost to offer to those wanting it a Northern branded prepayment debit card without any fees. Those wanting to pay cash per journey could simply go to a newsagent or other PayPoint/PayZone and load it with the fare before going to the TVM with it. There are people who use Oyster in that way. People with that kind of "closed horizons" are not typically going to be tearing all over the network, they will be making known local journeys with a mostly known fare.
For some it’s much easier to budget with physical cash. If they’ve got their £100 budget for the week in a purse/wallet then they can see that handing over £50 of that in a shop (or perhaps more realistically between multiple shops) is half their money spent, but making the same payment(s) by card doesn’t give them that realisation so it’s easy to overspend.
The likes of Monzo make it easier to manage/track card spending, but these are relatively new accounts and the high street banks that most of us use aren’t offering the same level of technology yet.
Cashless will happen but now isn’t the time for it, we’re getting there but the technology and society needs to catch up first. Sweden has gone cashless a bit too quickly and that’s resulted in some exclusion for the elderly and vulnerable.
Killingworth
Established Member
Let's be clear, cash is a valid means of payment.
Payment is required to travel on a train (unless holding a valid pass).
There's a practical difficulty in collecting all fares for all journeys at the departing station, on the train or at the alighting station on the day of travel. Most journeys nowadays are paid for in advance, either by using a season ticket or by ordering online, the latter increasingly becoming held electronically.
Whilst we may think there is a small proportion who deliberately avoid payment there are a significant number who take advantage of the systems not to pay. There is a difference.
The issue is those who could and do pay with whatever means they have available at the earliest opportunity, against some who will use the various legal options to travel until challenged, in the full knowledge that this will mean they regularly aren't asked to pay.
The merits of cash v. cards generally needs to be a different discussion. It's featured in other threads before.
Whether public transport should be free for all users would make another discussion. It would certainly speed up buses when making stops.
Payment is required to travel on a train (unless holding a valid pass).
There's a practical difficulty in collecting all fares for all journeys at the departing station, on the train or at the alighting station on the day of travel. Most journeys nowadays are paid for in advance, either by using a season ticket or by ordering online, the latter increasingly becoming held electronically.
Whilst we may think there is a small proportion who deliberately avoid payment there are a significant number who take advantage of the systems not to pay. There is a difference.
The issue is those who could and do pay with whatever means they have available at the earliest opportunity, against some who will use the various legal options to travel until challenged, in the full knowledge that this will mean they regularly aren't asked to pay.
The merits of cash v. cards generally needs to be a different discussion. It's featured in other threads before.
Whether public transport should be free for all users would make another discussion. It would certainly speed up buses when making stops.
To be clear, Northern specifically state that if you wish to pay by cash you can do so.
Anyone complying with this cannot possibly be considered to be "deliberately avoiding payment"
Fare evasion is an inalienable term and cannot be redefined by you.
Only a change in the law could redefine it.
xotGD
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And the existence of 'Promise to Pay' rather than having ticket machines that take cash facilitates the latter group.
exesoundtech
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On numbers I can make an educated observation. From what I understand there are something like 600 card only ticket machines on the Northern network, and a card only machine is roughly £10,000 cheaper to buy than a cash and card one. Therefore, you're looking at a something like £6 million saving by installing card only machines, and implementing a scheme like "Promise to Pay". And that's before you get on to the increased operational costs of collecting cash and dealing with the inevitable attempts (successful or otherwise) to steal that cash, which invariably result in costly damage.
So, based on the pure economics, I can make my own "armchair expert" observation that there must be an awful lot of other helpful things Northern could spend £6 million of capital expenditure on... Answers on a postcard please
As to Promise to Pay itself, I suspect this was a well-intended effort to accommodate users wishing to pay with cash while freeing that £6 million to spend on something else (or not take as subsidy from the tax payer). I suspect there are many opinions here on how well Promise to Pay has been implemented operationally (I've plenty of my own), the fundamental concept seems sound to me. Specifically, giving the honest passenger a means of proving where and when they boarded, and giving the TOC a means of challenging the dishonest passenger. It's far from perfect, but it's a start. A lot of the challenges seem to be in the operational implementation of the associated revenue protection "catching" people who fully intended to pay and therefore didn't really need "catching", rather giving their opportunity to pay the best value fare.
The existence of promise to pay doesn't facilitate anything; most TOCs have no such option and you just board the train without anything.
It's an additional burden northern created for people that wish to pay cash but customers are not legally bound to obtain one.
The fact is that many train companies set their machines to be card only and specifically state anyone wishing to pay by cash is entitled to board the train.
Anyone doing that is NOT fare evading by definition.
However some people want the rules and the law to be changed. but unless and until those changes happen, those people have to accept reality.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
So, based on the pure economics, I can make my own "armchair expert" observation that there must be an awful lot of other helpful things Northern could spend £6 million of capital expenditure on... Answers on a postcard please
How much do DMUs cost, isn't it about £1m per coach?
That's 6 x 2-car 195s extended to 3, then. That is worth far, far more than cash payment.
And there wouldn't be the capex saving alone, there would also be the opex saving - for instance of the time of guards who no longer had to cash up, and the reduced cost of secure cash transport. Potentially also the cost of maintaining ticket machines for on-board staff because they would no longer need to sell tickets because everyone could pay before they boarded - a PF pad would do for the rest, and for a broken TVM the Metrolink approach of a phone call for a free trip as far as any interchange could apply.
It would save a packet.
So the TOCs themselves are effectively condoning “pay only if challenged”. I’m not surprised then that so many people take the ‘mick’.
Something like this may be a compromise way ahead, like Italy where you can buy local tickets at local shops near the station using cash. Or pay by card at the station.
Exactly. It's the same as when banks issued contactless cards for small transactions - they're basically saying that they're not bothered about fraudulent transactions up to the value of £30, even if there are lots of them. The TOCs also clearly consider the losses they incur on local journeys where the passenger can't or won't use a card, and the guard doesn't get round to sell them a ticket on the train, aren't worth bothering about given the cost of staffing stations or accepting cash at ticket machines. Contributors shouldn't get het up about this when it's a considered decision by the rail industry.
Depositing cash on to a card, either at a Post Office or bank ATM is a task in itself. Thanks to the banks shutting their village branches there's no bank or ATM nearby me that can do that task. The railway station is nowhere near the post office either. I'd have had to find my bank's local branch or ATM in an unfamiliar town centre, my destination that day. The train was slightly cheaper off peak versus the bus, but the bus won as there was one coming shortly and it could accept my cash.
Dai Corner
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But in another thread you were saying how convenient card payments were?
They certainly are. I didn't want to risk being overdrawn on the day in question.
Sorry, I appreciate this was posted a couple of days ago but I did mean to ask, just how do you propose to buy a ticket then?
Wallsendmag
Established Member
Season ticket or staff pass?
The TOCs, the conditions, and the law all allow people to choose to pay with cash. If the opportunity to pay is not presented because the company does not provide that facility and the customer is following the instructions issued by the company, the customer cannot be accused of any wrongdoing.
If you wish to lobby for the law to be changed you can do so.
PayPal? Rail Travel Voucher? All sorts of possibilities
I learned recently you can buy National Express coach tickets at the Post Office (the caveat being you need to know which coaches you wish to travel on beforehand). The technology is out there if the DfT wants to do this.
Wallsendmag
Established Member
Really bad example. This is the kind of proposition that people come up with without knowing what's involved in Railway ticketing. If you wanted to do this for one TOC without using any other TOCs it would be fine. Does the Post Office sell a ticket that can be used on National Express of Megabus depending on how the customer feels?
Very good point, but what other options or avenues are there for cash payment, other than what we have now?
Llanigraham
On Moderation
Can you provide evidence that cash drives crime, especially taking into account the amount of cyber crime/scams there is?
And I still cannot see how a market trader, or a village fete is going to be able to function without cash; perhaps you coluld explain?
They have't and I doubt they will soon, so get used to what we've got.
So, with all this 'let's ban cash payments for rail travel and stop ticketless travel' rhetoric, just how much is being lost due to theft, not necessarily an absolute figure but an estimate from and authoritative source? Given that much of the discussion seems to be about Northern, and we have a 'educated guess' figure of how many card only TVMs there are on that network, there can then be a 'semi-informed' discussion of just how bad the problem is - rather than irrelevant asides about how much a DMU coach costs compared versus the cost of providing for cash on that suggested number of machines.
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