Out of date railcards: what should the policy be, and what measures could be taken to avoid problems in future?

redreni said:

I quite like zero's idea of allowing the option of a retrospective renewal which would cost more than the normal railcard fee, for passengers found to be travelling on an expired railcard. I doubt many would go for it if it cost £70 extra, though? It might be cheaper to just say you didn't have a railcard and get fined, mightn't it? It's also far too punitive for those who were just forgetful. I wouldn't object to a reasonable admin fee (£10?) for an on-the-spot renewal, plus the disadvantage of having to backdate it to the day after the old one expired when the customer may not have travelled on a discounted ticket in that period. If dishonesty is evident just do the normal thing for fare evasion. There should always be a good reason for suspecting dishonesty, though - not just that the RPI is in a bad mood and/or doesn't like the look of the person.

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Another option would be to make this something that can specifically only be dealt with by way of a Penalty Fare (plus the cost of a new Railcard, dated retrospectively).

If it was possible for a PF to be issued retrospectively, most administrative reasons for offering settlements and prosecuting just go away.

I think most people would accept (even if they didn't particularly like) the idea of a fifty quid fine being proportionate for having forgotten to renew their Railcard. It's when the railway starts throwing around the Fraud Act in cases where odds on there's been no intent to deceive that is just grossly disproportionate and abuse of process.

Mind you, in practice (because getting a Fraud Act charge to stick in such cases is very unlikely) this is one of the many things that would be solved pretty much entirely by removing the Railway Byelaws and RoRA provisions for prosecution for non-payment of fares, leaving only civil claims of Penalty Fares as the mechanism (or the similarly effective option of an outright ban on private prosecutions in England and Wales, as it's not just the railway that grossly abuses them, and Scotland appears not to suffer from their absence). Thus perhaps I should simply state my strong preference for that to be the case. In Scotland where private prosecutions are near enough not possible this sort of problem just doesn't really occur.

redreni said:

They should address it by doing their very best to distinguish between forgetfulness and dishonesty, dealing with each in a proportionate way.

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Surely the current system does just that. If you are caught travelling with an out of date or invalid Railcard, you are charged the full fare that you should have paid. If it was an honest mistake, you can get your money back.

redreni said:

I quite like zero's idea of allowing the option of a retrospective renewal which would cost more than the normal railcard fee, for passengers found to be travelling on an expired railcard. I doubt many would go for it if it cost £70 extra, though? It might be cheaper to just say you didn't have a railcard and get fined, mightn't it? It's also far too punitive for those who were just forgetful. I wouldn't object to a reasonable admin fee (£10?)

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That all depends on the cost of the tickets, and therefore the saving that you have falsely made. If you have saved a couple of hundred pounds by claiming to have a Railcard, is £10 going to be much deterrent? Again, with the current system, the deterrent cost is based on the ticket price, so is proportionate.

Also, how is a guard or TTI going to do an on the spot renewal for a physical Railcard?

I do agree with you though that more could be done to remind Railcard holders that they need to renew, using text messages perhaps as well as emails. And making opting out of such reminders separate to opting out of marketing messages, and making it clear to users that if they do opt out, then it is up to them to remember.

The messages that come with the tickets does remind users that they must have their railcard. But I agree that there needs to be a step in the ticket buying process where, if they have selected a Railcard discount, they have to positively confirm one of two options that either their railcard is valid and in date, or they will have obtained one that is before they travel. Even so, I suspect that after 3 years, people will be automatically ticking the box without thinking about it, and still get caught out.

Belperpete said:

Surely the current system does just that. If you are caught travelling with an out of date or invalid Railcard, you are charged the full fare that you should have paid.

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But you're not. You're charged that plus whatever "admin fee" the TOC sees fit, and if you don't agree with it you go to Court.

You're only charged that if the staff are nice to you or if you notice before boarding and buy that.

I've no first-hand experience of what happens if you travel on an expired railcard. I doubt we'd have this thread if it was always just an excess fare, though.

I can get on board with the fee for a retrospective on-the-spot renewal being the greater of £10 or the value of the discount that the person wasn't entitled to.

In the case of physical railcards, it's not ideal but maybe the on-board staff could take the person's details, sell them a rail travel voucher to the value of the renewal price (and also charge the fee), then issue a chitty requiring the person to send in proof that they had, in fact, renewed the railcard to the TOC by a certain date on pain of being issued a Penalty Fare by post? Wouldn't work if they can't sell Rail Travel Vouchers, of course, in which case another way would need to be found to allow them to take payment and issue something that can be spent on a railcard subsequently.

Belperpete said:

Also, how is a guard or TTI going to do an on the spot renewal for a physical Railcard?

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Some class of voucher printed from their ticket machine to be exchanged at a ticket office within 14 days would do the job.

How about (only if the expired railcard is produced on the spot):
First time: full walkup fare.
If it is paid on the spot, personal details are taken and held on file (for 12 months?). So not the same as a PF, though maybe a PF element could be charged, not sure.

If there is a second occasion, or if the passenger refuses to pay, or if they cannot produce the railcard*, full investigation takes place as now.

*I don't think I'd allow "within 15 days."

30907 said:

How about (only if the expired railcard is produced on the spot):
First time: full walkup fare.
If it is paid on the spot, personal details are taken and held on file (for 12 months?). So not the same as a PF, though maybe a PF element could be charged, not sure.

If there is a second occasion, or if the passenger refuses to pay, or if they cannot produce the railcard*, full investigation takes place as now.

*I don't think I'd allow "within 15 days."

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Yeah, there are various options.

Could even issue the fare but advise the passenger to renew the Railcard asap, send in proof with an explanatory letter and see what happens. Obviously it would be inadvisable for on-board staff to make any promises, but there could be a policy of cancelling the penalty fare in that case if it looks to be an honest mistake.

Not helped by TOCs' insistence on contracting out penalty fare appeals to companies that give every impression of being mindless goons who just reject appeals without reading them, but it might be workable. I don't know enough of the details of how it works to be sure.

30907 said:

How about (only if the expired railcard is produced on the spot):
First time: full walkup fare.
If it is paid on the spot, personal details are taken and held on file (for 12 months?). So not the same as a PF, though maybe a PF element could be charged, not sure.

If there is a second occasion, or if the passenger refuses to pay, or if they cannot produce the railcard*, full investigation takes place as now.

*I don't think I'd allow "within 15 days."

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Depending on the journey, charging the full walk-up fare (particularly if you mean charging for an entirely new ticket rather than excessing) could be a really severe penalty when it's an honest mistake. The kind of thing that leaves a bitter taste in people's mouth and may to lead to them not renewing their Railcard and driving everywhere. I appreciate TOCs and the DfT don't care, but I think that's bad. If it's £100s then it could easily be written up in the press causing wider reputational harm.

Because the point is if somebody has a Railcard and just overlooked the renewal, then provided they're still eligible for the Railcard (so not in the case of an expired Young Person's where it can't be renewed as the passenger is no longer young enough, for example), the railway really should take the charitable view that they're entitled to the discount. They should be allowed to have it if they renew their railcard at the earliest opportunity, backdated to the expiry of the old one. The fact they haven't bought a significantly more expensive walk-up ticket costing £100s that they were never willingly going to buy anyway is not a real loss that the railway ought to be seeking to recover imho.

Bletchleyite said:

.....and Scotland appears not to suffer from their absence). Thus perhaps I should simply state my strong preference for that to be the case. In Scotland where private prosecutions are near enough not possible this sort of problem just doesn't really occur.

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In certain parts of Scotland fair evasion is rife. Our new revenue protection officers have been instructed not to stop passengers without tickets from boarding trains in case it hurts their feelings.

I rarely work a train without two or three "refusniks" and other associated scammers. I had five the other day between Glasgow & Uddingston (NB Glasgow Central is allegedly barriered).

I've had it on good authority that our political masters do not want to be seen to be persecuting our underclasses and criminal fraternities. If you don't investigate crime you don't discover crime, and if you don't discover crime you don't record crime, non recorded crime doesn't really exist so that probably results in crime appearing to go down. And it's the same with fare evasion. We have no effective reporting system to gauge the actual loss. The typical railway mantra is "money we've never had is money we can not lose". Yet woe betide the staff member who is over or short by a few pounds - a veritable avalanche of paperwork ensues. The system is corrupt to the core.

We're losing hundreds of pounds on certain individual trains, thousands on lines of route, and millions overall.

I used to do one door working at terminal stations to gauge how much we were losing - on one occasion we lifted almost £400 for one train to North Berwick (peak summer season) - if I'd waited until after departure I would be lucky to lift £70 - £100.

I'm not saying private prosecutions would be a good thing but the lack of them is not a panacea.

reb0118 said:

I'm not saying private prosecutions would be a good thing but the lack of them is not a panacea.

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I think you might benefit from Penalty Fares, though. Which could be recovered, if unpaid, by civil means.

I have a problem with the railway having the ability to prosecute, I'm all for PFs.

redreni said:

Yeah, there are various options.

Could even issue the fare but advise the passenger to renew the Railcard asap, send in proof with an explanatory letter and see what happens. Obviously it would be inadvisable for on-board staff to make any promises, but there could be a policy of cancelling the penalty fare in that case if it looks to be an honest mistake.

Because the point is if somebody has a Railcard and just overlooked the renewal, then provided they're still eligible for the Railcard (so not in the case of an expired Young Person's where it can't be renewed as the passenger is no longer young enough, for example), the railway really should take the charitable view that they're entitled to the discount. They should be allowed to have it if they renew their railcard at the earliest opportunity, backdated to the expiry of the old one. The fact they haven't bought a significantly more expensive walk-up ticket costing £100s that they were never willingly going to buy anyway is not a real loss that the railway ought to be seeking to recover imho.

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Agreed that the system should not over penalise those who have genuinely overlooked the renewal, but on the other hand it must be sufficiently punitive for those deliberately abusing the system that they don't repeat offend.

I was veering to the option of selling a voucher for the cost of a Railcard (or perhaps slightly more to give a punitive element to dissuade doing it again), that could be traded for the new Railcard. However, there would likely be many cases where that might cost less than the saving made by fraudulently using the expired Railcard, in which case why not just carry on using the expired Railcard - particularly if you are no longer entitled to one. Even if you charged the full difference between discounted and full fare, that is little disincentive to someone deliberately evading - what have they lost? If they get away with it next time, they are winners.

And the problem with selling anything is what happens if the person checking the ticket has no means of selling anything? Not all revenue inspectors are able to sell, are they? Or if the passenger is unable to pay (perhaps their credit card refuses to work) or refuses to pay in a fit of pique because they have had a bad day.

If a system is going to be fair, it has to be consistent. I therefore see little alternative to someone travelling without a valid Railcard being reported. If they then provide proof that they have renewed their railcard, let them off with a reasonable charge to cover the admin costs. And if they don't they should be treated in the same way as anyone else travelling without a valid ticket.

However, I still feel that prevention is better than cure, and more effort needs to go into reminding people that their Railcard is about to expire. If you have a system that makes it impossible for someone to forget, then by definition anyone travelling with an expired Railcard is doing so deliberately. Admittedly there is little incentive for TOCs and other vendors to put the effort into doing so, but that is why we have a regulator to force good practice.

Yes, I broadly agree. If a passenger is found travelling on an expired railcard details should be taken and the system needs to be designed so it can go either way. If they don't renew it or they can't renew it because they are no longer eligible for it then it should be a Penalty Fare at the very least.

If they could have renewed it but just forgot and they renew it on the spot or at the earliest opportunity thereafter, then you let them off with just a reasonable admin fee. I wouldn't be pursuing those people for any difference in fare to the non-discounted or walk-up fare because I think that's liable to be grossly excessive for an honest mistake, it's not pursuing a real loss as they weren't ever willingly going to buy that ticket and it's unnecessary because they were eligible for the railcard and they believed they were eligible for the discount (which they would have been but for an honest mistake).

I don't particularly agree that a deterrent against making honest mistakes is required, nor do I consider it passengers' fault or passengers' problem if the weakness or absence of checks on railcards (particularly on commuter services) makes it attractive for dishonest passengers to game the system in some cases. The answer to that is to check tickets and railcards properly rather than impose deterrents that catch out honest passengers while probably still failing to deter the dishonest ones. Edit: I'm conscious there are railway staff on this thread and I just want to clarify I'm not suggesting for a moment that frontline staff are to blame for weaknesses in checking tickets. Most of them are doing a great job, it's just that in many places there are far too few of them and there are organisational problems.

redreni said:

Yes, I broadly agree. If a passenger is found travelling on an expired railcard details should be taken and the system needs to be designed so it can go either way. If they don't renew it or they can't renew it because they are no longer eligible for it then it should be a Penalty Fare at the very least.

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It's this "at the very least" I have a problem with. It should be a Penalty Fare, end of. As should all situations where there is any reasonable possibility the error was genuine (i.e. where wilful fraud could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt).

Prosecutions should be used exclusively for cases of wilful deception*, and for that the Fraud Act should be used, and the BTP and CPS should be involved in order to ensure the public interest test for the prosecution is correctly met.

* e.g. short faring, falsification/editing of tickets, 50** year olds using child tickets and the likes - basically cases where the passenger could not possibly not have known they were acting in an illegal and immoral manner - cases of moral turpitude, if we will.
** But not a 16 year old having purchased one without thinking; there's a reasonable chance that was not intentional and thus a Penalty Fare is appropriate. Better to have ten people get away with it than one person wrongly prosecuted.

Bletchleyite said:

I think most people would accept (even if they didn't particularly like) the idea of a fifty quid fine being proportionate for having forgotten to renew their Railcard. It's when the railway starts throwing around the Fraud Act in cases where odds on there's been no intent to deceive that is just grossly disproportionate and abuse of process.

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That really isn’t what happens, though. The vast majority of those prosecuted have engaged in a sustained period of use of an invalid railcard (or other blatant activity) - and even then it’s usually under bylaws or RORA rather than fraud. The genuine “innocent mistake” scenarios invariably end in either discretion or a penalty fare.

The idea that people are regularly prosecuted for “innocent mistakes” is a complete myth, as a review of the disputes and prosecutions sections will reveal. Even the slam dunk cases often end up with an out of court settlement, and neither is there any evidence that anyone outside of this forum really sees this as a major issue. Prosecutions are almost invariably either where the case is sustained and deliberate, ie where the person has failed to engage with the system.

Bletchleyite said:

as it's not just the railway that grossly abuses them

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It doesn’t abuse them, though. The system largely works as it’s intended to. You might not like it, but that doesn’t mean it’s in any way being “abused”.

I’d like to see some evidence that the leakage of revenue from the system wouldn’t be increased by any proposals to decriminalise evasion.

43066 said:

It doesn’t abuse them, though. The system largely works as it’s intended to. You might not like it, but that doesn’t mean it’s in any way being “abused”.

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Every single settlement the railway offers is in my most strongly-held view abuse of the legal system - it's extortion (one way) and bribery (the other).

It should be contempt of Court and carry a prison sentence to offer or receive money in order to discontinue a criminal prosecution or drop charges in all contexts - I am most strongly of that view. If you want civil compensation, sue in the civil Court, that is the proper mechanism for that.

43066 said:

I’d like to see some evidence that the leakage of revenue from the system wouldn’t be increased by any proposals to decriminalise evasion.

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I'd be more interested in ensuring fairness than that. However the railway could reduce leakage by such things as getting south WCML guards off their backsides, out of the cabs and checking tickets on every single train, for instance. It's so culturally different to my formative years in the North West where Merseyrail ticket office staff would come out and collect tickets, and on regionals a guard would manage to keep fully on top of a 2 car set with ticket sales (scanning is much faster!)

Most evasion is "pay when challenged", and that's prevented by ensuring that on every single train there is always a challenge - exactly how it was in my youth.

43066 said:

I’d like to see some evidence that the leakage of revenue from the system wouldn’t be increased by any proposals to decriminalise evasion.

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I think you may have the burden of proving what may happen to losses back to front. We should only have criminal offences (especially strict liability offences) where there's a proven need.

Fermiboson said:

Yes. The system simply notes that the railcard will be expired and shows a warning, but does not prevent the purchaser from getting the ticket. Possibly, the tickets bought could then be flagged for barriers to reject (I imagine this would be easier to implement on e-tickets than paper tickets).

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The idea of making it cause the barriers not to open is an interesting one. I think there's a risk of potentially annoying too many pax/staff if this sort of logic isn't used sparingly (and staff would need to be trained to actually check the Railcard under these circumstances) but it's a nice workaround whilst still allowing tickets to be sold without knowledge of whether the Railcard will be valid or not.

Hell, maybe that's something you could generally offer. "enter your Railcard number and let us check it, otherwise we'll still sell tickets to you but you'll need to endure a manual ticket check at the gateline every time you use them"

I think you're right that this would probably be more difficult with ToD, if it indeed is possible at all.

Fermiboson said:

- Yes, yes, and yes

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This would require an adjustment in behaviour, I think. It's not an area I have the best understanding of, but in a corporate context we do see book-on-behalf workflows. It may be that a B2C approach for Railcard validation at the outset is the better initial approach to avoid causing too much hassle here.

Fermiboson said:

Same as if any product you bought from anywhere doesn’t work for any reason - customer support of the TOC/retailer that you bought the railcard from.

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I don't think it's currently the case that ticket offices are well equipped to lookup data / resolve these sorts of problems for a customer at the counter.

Fermiboson said:

Check codes could still be implemented for railcards

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These already exist but obviously it's trivial to brute force permutations of check character(s) until the system lets you proceed if that's all you're relying on, assuming you know how the number is structured.

Check digits guard against typos, not malicious actors.

Fermiboson said:

what sorts of reasons are those?

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There are lots of geographical Railcards / local schemes where there simply isn't the desire on the part of the sponsoring TOC to maintain a database of railcard holders. I'm not sure what the situation is with the HM Forces railcard or if it's even that sophisticated: One of the other threads sort of implied that serving individuals basically just wrote their own name into the physical card in order to "issue" it, so it's perhaps still quite primitive.

Fermiboson said:

if there is actually no database or possible check at all applicable to said railcard, then how can staff verify the card is legit on the actual train?

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I'm not sure if you've had a railcard inspected on the train lately but 90% of the time they don't even bother scanning barcodes in my experience. For plastic / physical railcards it really is just a case of looking at the card and inspecting the photo printed on it. There's nothing else to the process.

Fermiboson said:

Ideally yes, but clearly TVMs already have trouble doing the basic job of printing tickets all over the network; so it may be a technical impossibility at present

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The friction should really be equivalent no matter which sales channel a customer purchases from, or else online retailers are left at a disadvantage.

Adam Williams said:

There are lots of geographical Railcards / local schemes where there simply isn't the desire on the part of the sponsoring TOC to maintain a database of railcard holders. I'm not sure what the situation is with the HM Forces railcard or if it's even that sophisticated: One of the other threads sort of implied that serving individuals basically just wrote their own name into the physical card in order to "issue" it, so it's perhaps still quite primitive.

I'm not sure if you've had a railcard inspected on the train lately but 90% of the time they don't even bother scanning barcodes in my experience. For plastic / physical railcards it really is just a case of looking at the card and inspecting the photo printed on it. There's nothing else to the process.

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What's stopping someone from just grabbing a screenshot of a e-railcard, then? Clearly they have something they can do to stop it, since there are threads here where people have been caught out doing that. But I don't see how you could say that such a screenshot was a fake railcard with any degree of confidence unless you had a database you can scan it in.

You are correct that nobody has even bothered to check my railcard for the past three months. The way staff inspect railcards does seem like a flaw to the way things currently work, rather than some inherent systemic limitation.

Adam Williams said:

The friction should really be equivalent no matter which sales channel a customer purchases from, or else online retailers are left at a disadvantage.

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Except that things are already much worse when trying to purchase via a TVM! For one, you cannot (or at least, I have failed to figure out how after standing in front of the machine for half an hour and almost missing my train) buy a ticket originating from a station other than the one the TVM is at. We've also all seen the videos of the Northern and TfW TVMs simply refusing to work.

Ideally what you say is true, but I'm not sure TVMs are reliable enough as is for it to matter. I've seldom seen anyone who is not a tourist use the TVM at Oxford.

Fermiboson said:

Except that things are already much worse when trying to purchase via a TVM! For one, you cannot (or at least, I have failed to figure out how after standing in front of the machine for half an hour and almost missing my train) buy a ticket originating from a station other than the one the TVM is at. We've also all seen the videos of the Northern and TfW TVMs simply refusing to work.

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Some TOCs allow that and some don't. I think it depends on whether they think it'll be used for short faring.

I think if checking the date on a railcard once in a while is deemed too much responsibility then it's not a suitable product to use on a personal level. Then that's one less way to come unstuck for travelling on an invalid ticket. I've always had one discount card or another and if one is out of date or not in my possession I just pay the public rate. No big deal.

People try it on all the time, people come to the ticket office with their finger over the date or with the date faded then take exception and insist on still having the discount when they're told the railcard is out of date. I heard of a case where a person presented one with a faded date which just so happened to have expired two months before, the railcard was withdrawn then the passenger insisted on having it back. They got it back with a CANCELLED stamp adorning it then said they didn't want it anymore.

I think there will not be a hurry to permit use of railcards beyond their expiry date. The railcards themselves are actually pretty good value, especially if you can get one for £10. Most can also be renewed easily at a person's fingertips or at a station so where's the argument for being permitted to use them once they've expired?

Bletchleyite said:

Every single settlement the railway offers is in my most strongly-held view abuse of the legal system - it's extortion (one way) and bribery (the other).

It should be contempt of Court and carry a prison sentence to offer or receive money in order to discontinue a criminal prosecution - I am most strongly of that view

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Okay, but that still sounds like the system working as intended, albeit in a way you passionately disagree with, rather than being misused. Another view would be that penalty fares and formal out of court settlements (arguably penalty fares are variation on the same theme) claw back some much needed revenue, provide a deterrent factor, and give those caught out a chance to avoid a fine and a criminal record.

There are similar examples elsewhere in the legal system, also involving strict liability offences; speeding fixed penalties being an obvious one I can speak about from bitter experience (and I was glad of the opportunity to pay a penalty, rather than an appearance before a magistrates’ court). You may adopt the same view towards these, but it doesn’t appear to be an issue that exercises enough people to drive any widespread desire for change; for instance, it isn’t generally discussed in the media, or something politicians seem to take much interest in.

Bletchleyite said:

I'd be more interested in ensuring fairness than that. However the railway could reduce leakage by such things as getting south WCML guards off their backsides, out of the cabs and checking tickets on every single train, for instance. It's so culturally different to my formative years in the North West where Merseyrail ticket office staff would come out and collect tickets, and on regionals a guard would manage to keep fully on top of a 2 car set with ticket sales (scanning is much faster!)

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Guards needing to be proactive is a valid point, absolutely, but lax management isn’t an argument for changing the system. If there’s no criminal sanction it’s a little hard to imagine that current evasion activities will yield more rather than less revenue.

Incidentally, patrols do seem to have increased recently, even on the “lawless” SE Metro system.

redreni said:

I think you may have the burden of proving what may happen to losses back to front. We should only have criminal offences (especially strict liability offences) where there's a proven need.

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The “need” is that the railway is subsidised, so fare evasion is cheating the taxpayer/farepayer, and that the open nature of the railway also makes it unusually open to abuse. My point is that, if the proposal is to change the status quo by decriminalising fare evasion, the people making that proposal should be able to:

A. Point to a real problem with the existing system beyond them them simply not liking it eg evidence of significant miscarriages of justice, or widespread wrongful prosecutions/convictions; and
B. Tell us what the effect on revenue will be, and whether that effect is proportionate to solving the problem they have identified.

RJ said:

I think if checking the date on a railcard once in a while is deemed too much responsibility then it's probably better not to use one. Then that's one less way to come unstuck for travelling on an invalid ticket.

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I quite agree. There’s no obligation on anyone to use a railcard if they find doing so correctly is too onerous.

Fermiboson said:

For one, you cannot (or at least, I have failed to figure out how after standing in front of the machine for half an hour and almost missing my train) buy a ticket originating from a station other than the one the TVM is at. We've also all seen the videos of the Northern and TfW TVMs simply refusing to work.

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Relatively shortly all TVMs will have this function.

43066 said:

There are similar examples elsewhere in the legal system, also involving strict liability offences; speeding fixed penalties being an obvious one I can speak about from bitter experience (and I was glad of the opportunity to pay a penalty, rather than an appearance before a magistrates’ court). You may adopt the same view towards these, but it doesn’t appear to be an issue that exercises enough people to drive any widespread desire for change; for instance, it isn’t generally discussed in the media, or something politicians seem to take much interest in.

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I think most people would understand that offences relating to the safe driving of a motor vehicle (with which you can kill someone) are very different from those relating to failure to pay a train fare (which isn't even theft*, it's lesser than that, and just harms the TOC's pocket). It's also not the same in that the accuser (the police, mostly) don't get to keep that money.

The equivalent is failure to correctly pay for a Council-operated parking space, and that is dealt with using something remarkably similar to a Penalty Fare (which to me demonstrates that aside from cases of proper fraud and falsification, the Penalty Fare is the correct mechanism for dealing with all fares infringements). A few things need fixing about PFs, though, most notably it needs to be possible to issue one retrospectively by post.

* See also the Business Software Alliance's false statement that "piracy is theft", er, it's not, no, it's civil copyright infringement.

43066 said:

The “need” is that the railway is subsidised, so fare evasion is cheating the taxpayer/farepayer, and that the open nature of the railway also makes it unusually open to abuse. My point is that, if the proposal is to change the status quo by decriminalising fare evasion, the people making that proposal should be able to:

A. Point to a real problem with the existing system beyond them them simply not liking it eg evidence of significant miscarriages of justice, or widespread wrongful prosecutions/convictions; and
B. Tell us what the effect on revenue will be, and whether that effect is proportionate to solving the problem they have identified.

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That is one way of looking at it but, respectfully, I disagree.

The view that we should only have criminal offences on the books if they are needed is incompatible with the view that once they are on the books, anyone wanting rid of them has the burden of proving that we don't need them. That's how you end up with ridiculous offences remaining in statute long after they cease to be needed.

The mere fact respectable people want rid of the offence and assert that we don't need it should, in my view, trigger the ongoing duty on those who advocate for it to say why it is needed and provide evidence. That might be different where the need is self-evident or obvious, but that's not the case here. It's not a criminal matter if you trade and don't pay your VAT on time, for example - and public money is at stake there, too.

For travelling on an expired Railcard it is not at all obvious why you can't issue a charge notice (similar to a Parking Charge Notice you might get for parking on private land when you shouldn't) which can be pursued as a civil matter if it isn't paid, settled or dropped by the train company.

Fermiboson said:

What's stopping someone from just grabbing a screenshot of a e-railcard, then? Clearly they have something they can do to stop it, since there are threads here where people have been caught out doing that. But I don't see how you could say that such a screenshot was a fake railcard with any degree of confidence unless you had a database you can scan it in.

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Genuine Digital Railcards should have an “electronic hologram” logo which changes slightly when the phone is tilted. Inspectors can also ask the passenger to close and reopen their Railcard whilst they watch and verify that the app they open is a valid app and not the images app.

Unlike the (former) leaders of the Post Office, I wonder if the MDs of TOCs realise that their organisations prosecute their customers for ticketing transgressions?

island said:

Genuine Digital Railcards should have an “electronic hologram” logo which changes slightly when the phone is tilted. Inspectors can also ask the passenger to close and reopen their Railcard whilst they watch and verify that the app they open is a valid app and not the images app.

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They also have a scannable barcode.

Wallsendmag said:

They also have a scannable barcode.

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They do, but the premise of the post I was responding to assumed an inability to scan.

Adam Williams said:

The friction should really be equivalent no matter which sales channel a customer purchases from, or else online retailers are left at a disadvantage.

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In the scenario at the start of the thread:

Justice4Elliot said:

As seen below I booked a trip from London to Lincoln. I did not realise my railcard was expired.

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TVMs currently offer significantly greater friction, because you have to select the railcard discount at every purchase, whereas apps "helpfully" remember it for you. The issue here is not that TVMs are offering too little friction, it's that apps are.

Brissle Girl said:

I think waiting for (if not relying on) someone else to point it out rather than making sure yourself is exactly a lack of responsibility. I guess you’re probably in the camp that when people turn up at an airport with invalid documents to travel it’s everyone else’s fault but the person themselves?

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These things can happen, and to think that it's a "lack of responsibility" demonstrates lack of understanding that other people's minds might work differently. I don't see why people should be threatened with legal action for honest mistakes; that seems a very authoritarian way of running society.

Asking the customer to pay the outstanding balance for the under-paid fares during the period of invalidity where there is evidence of such fares being under-paid, however, would be quite acceptable and the right thing for the railway to do. A Penalty Fare or other non-criminal fixed charge on top of that would probably be acceptable. But starting criminal proceedings? Absolutely not.

I would also say that the system needs to be designed so that it is impossible to buy a railcard-discounted ticket without presenting (either in-person or electronically) a railcard valid on the intended day of travel. Do that, and the whole problem goes away.

nw1 said:

[...]
I would also say that the system needs to be designed so that it is impossible to buy a railcard-discounted ticket without presenting (either in-person or electronically) a railcard valid on the intended day of travel. Do that, and the whole problem goes away.

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That would make it impossible to buy a Railcard-discounted cheap Advance ticket for travel say some weeks or months ahead and leave buying the Railcard until closer to the date of travel.