Lost third appeal - Greater Anglia/Stansted Express fines

[Royston Vasey]

1) The train companies have made pursuing people over minor and dubious fare technicalities into an art so they don't really have a leg to stand on there.

2) We've debated the wording at length before, so let's not repeat this all here, but in summary the regulations are very specific about the precise words, and the replacement words provide "misinformation" by exaggerating the minimum penalty - they should say £50 not £100. (Side note: London Victoria has lots of notices with the old minimum of £20, but at least that is not wrong - £50 is still more than £20.) On the other side, people like the OP don't read the notices when they travel, or if they do, they ignore them, so what difference does it make?

Is the aim here though to make meaningful change so that small print on notices is corrected, or help a few people with lots of spare time to get themselves off a justified penalty fare. Or otherwise fight the imposition of penalty fare schemes altogether.?

To the OP and countless others, it would have made no difference what the small print said on a sign at the station entrance, because they can't even read a massive red banner with pictures and red Xs, repeated above, below and on the barrier on which they are tapping through, and on the train before departure, or hear the announcements at Tottenham Hale that contactless isn't valid beyond there.

And that's ignoring the personae who will tap through and think, "it's fine because I know I've got them on a technicality and will get off the PF" because I don't think there are many of these people at all. Maybe the OP was secretly one of them, since they're apparently a legal expert, but that's not how they've represented the incident or their intent.

So what's the goal here? It can't be to make the system fairer because making the small print nobody reads slightly different won't change anything, it will only get fewer people a technical get-out of a PF.

If the PF is incorrectly issued, information falsified, or issued when the law does not allow their issue like an excess being appropriate instead, then that is different and an abuse of power and process. But this is just making a highly technical case to excuse an essentially justified penalty for someone who should know better, isn't it?

 

[furlong]

You are drifting off topic, but the law tells the train companies what to do. If they don't like the form of words they have to use or the large numbers of notices they are required to place at every station (often in places where advertising is currently sold) they should try to get the law amended, but until such time as they succeed in that, they must abide by the current law. We're already seeing what happens when some (not all) train companies extended the rules about fast-track prosecution beyond breaking point (up to 75000 wrongful convictions for fare evasion expected to be overturned this week). There remains a risk that at some point in the future the courts might rule that almost every Penalty Fare issued in the last few years was invalid and then they'll all have to be repaid. Even if they think that prospect is unlikely, why wouldn't they make the easy changes to wording and siting to eliminate the risk almost entirely?

The evidence of the high numbers of Penalty Fares issued at Stansted confirms that the SRA got it right when it advised that airports should not belong to Penalty Fares schemes. It should be abundantly clear now that, in the case of airport journeys, no amount of signage actually works sufficiently well! Given the inexcusable failure to get touching out at Stansted implemented, people should be sold normal tickets. Touch a fixed reader with your contactless card and you'll be charged a fixed single fare from London. For anything else, have ticket machines and/or staff. Victoria found a solution using different readers for its more expensive airport trains, but Liverpool St would struggle implementing anything like that. I'm sure they must have considered an option where any unterminated contactless journey involving a touch at Liverpool St or Tottenham Hale is resolved automatically by charging an airport fare. Or they could presumably just use portable revenue inspection devices at the airport set up to trigger the same thing. Or put readers on the airport trains!

The bottom line is that uninformed people EXPECT contactless to work on this journey - they are surprised when it doesn't - and train companies have clearly lost the battle of finding a way to change that perception amongst certain categories of travellers. The airport train is in front of me through this gate. I touch the gate with my card and it opens. Ergo everything seems OK! (The main problem with all this ad hoc signage is that it all negative - it only tries to express what not to do rather than instructing you what you actually need to do instead, and what you need to do is very complicated in comparison to just touching your card.)

 

[island]

As ever, I remind you that we are here to advise people on the rules as they currently stand and if you want to discuss what you think the rules should be, you need to make a separate thread.

 

[Royston Vasey]

You are drifting off topic

I'm not at all, I'm asking why you're going to such lengths to get a stranger on the Internet, who really should have known better, off a particularly silly mistake and essentially justified fare, on a technicality. What's the end goal? Just to get our lawyer friend here out of a £73 payment out of the goodness of your heart, or as you allude, the abolition of PFs on this airport route, or something else.

Clearly contactless to Stansted is urgently needed, I think we all agree on that.

 

[furlong]

I'm asking why you're going to such lengths to get a stranger on the Internet, who really should have known better, off a particularly silly mistake and essentially justified fare, on a technicality. What's the end goal? Just to get our lawyer friend here out of a £73 payment out of the goodness of your heart, or as you allude, the abolition of PFs on this airport route, or something else.

Because I don't believe that blanket Penalty Fares can be justified at Stansted when passengers are not expecting contactless not to be allowed and the train company encourages this false belief at the start of their journey when people tap their card before boarding a Stansted train and the gate opens for them? Penalty Fares reverse the burden of proof. The latest regulations provide only a bare and in my view inadequate minimum level of protection for honest uninformed passengers and this should mean that train companies are meticulous in keeping their side of the bargain and adhering both to the letter and the spirit of all the regulations.

Clearly contactless to Stansted is urgently needed, I think we all agree on that.

And until it is implemented there should be no PFs there for people who touched in. (Treat the touch in as similar to a Permit to Travel.)

 

[jon0844]

Should this be the case at King's Cross for people boarding trains that go a fair bit beyond WGC? Like the highlands of Scotland?

The signage couldn't be clearer and why is there an assumption that a tourist will assume they can use contactless to anywhere, airport or any other town or city? When I go abroad, I don't assume I can just tap and go everywhere as contactless isn't implemented everywhere and often has similar restrictions.

It's quite common for zonal systems to sell tickets to tourists that exclude an airport, for example.

That's what penalty fares are for, surely? Discretion can and should be down, but with such signs, posters, and almost certainly more warnings onboard both visual and audible, there has to be a limit.

As I've also said elsewhere, I'd imagine most tourists going to Stansted are returning to Stansted having arrived there before. If they took the train (it's possible they didn't - coach, taxi, lift or came to another airport entirely) then they'd have had to buy a ticket towards London, so why assume it would be different going back?

 

[furlong]

Should this be the case at King's Cross for people boarding trains that go a fair bit beyond WGC? Like the highlands of Scotland?

What is your evidence that there is a problem with this in the highlands of Scotland?

There is plenty of evidence of a real problem at Stansted. I hope the custom signs help some people to avoid getting caught in the trap, but they are still not enough.

That's what penalty fares are for, surely?

Penalty Fares are a quick and simple way to deal with dishonest passengers who try to get away with travelling without paying their fare. When someone arrives at Stansted having touched in, it is surely more likely that they didn't understand the system than they thought they could get away with avoiding ticket checks arriving at a major airport! They've already had to go through one ticket barrier to enter the system - they aren't going to think there'll be no checks at the other end (and of course there are).

 

[jon0844]

Speak to LNER onboard staff for their examples. Or if you want to stay a bit more local, ask staff at Cambridge about how many people go there with Oyster and contactless.

The fact is, people can tap in with a card and travel wherever they like - possibly even changing trains to zig zag all over the country. It happens all the time.

 

[talldave]

I'm not at all, I'm asking why you're going to such lengths to get a stranger on the Internet, who really should have known better, off a particularly silly mistake and essentially justified fare, on a technicality. What's the end goal? Just to get our lawyer friend here out of a £73 payment out of the goodness of your heart, or as you allude, the abolition of PFs on this airport route, or something else.

Clearly contactless to Stansted is urgently needed, I think we all agree on that.

Regardless of whether the OP can/should pay up, they're appealing and the rules for appeals aren't being adhered to. Perhaps if train companies weren't so trigger happy at threatening their customers with court, those customers might not feel so aggrieved at legal process not being correctly followed.

I'd say the amount is irrelevant, it's the principle of not adhering to the rules that's important here. If irregularities aren't called out, we end up with SJP style disasters, because "we've always done it that way".

 

[Haywain]

I'm asking why you're going to such lengths to get a stranger on the Internet, who really should have known better, off a particularly silly mistake and essentially justified fare, on a technicality.

Because this is an advice forum. If you don't wish to offer helpful advice then don't post on the thread.

 

[Falcon1200]

the train company encourages this false belief at the start of their journey when people tap their card before boarding a Stansted train and the gate opens for them?

How could that be prevented though? Unless Stansted Express trains have dedicated platforms and barriers, physically separated from all other platforms, and stop nowhere in the contactless zone, neither of which I think is the case.

 

[MotCO]

How could that be prevented though? Unless Stansted Express trains have dedicated platforms and barriers, physically separated from all other platforms, and stop nowhere in the contactless zone, neither of which I think is the case.

Can the Liverpool Street barriers be set up to charge by default a single to Stanstead, unless the card is tapped out elsewhere? You then don't need barriers st Stanstead, and no penalty fares would need to be issued. Or would that result in too great a loss of income ( through a reduction in penalty fares issued)?

 

[island]

the train company encourages this false belief at the start of their journey when people tap their card before boarding a Stansted train and the gate opens for them

Do you also think that GWR "encourages the false belief" that someone entering at Reading, where there are far fewer signs, can travel on their contactless card to Bournemouth, Swansea, Truro, Birmingham, Cheltenham, Stafford etc.?

 

[30907]

Penalty Fares are a quick and simple way to deal with dishonest passengers who try to get away with travelling without paying their fare. ....

and with people who make an honest error, as a PF does not imply dishonesty.

 

[furlong]

and with people who make an honest error, as a PF does not imply dishonesty.

Oh yes it does! The clue is in the name - 'Penalty'. Penalty Fares represented a settlement between the railway and society that reversed the burden of proof and allowed the railway to assume someone is guilty of deliberate fare evasion and to impose a civil penalty on them (but not a criminal one) in return for adhering to a tightly regulated and monitored regime with safeguards (including an appeals system) in which it was deemed that no honest traveller could be unaware that what they were doing was wrong and could trigger a penalty. Crucial to this was the provision of plentiful signage, adequate monitored ticketing facilities (with no penalties issued when there were significant queues) and not acting in ways that undermine the regime (such as selling tickets on board without clearly warning passengers every time that they were lucky not to have been penalised). Bit by bit the railway has been reneging on its side of the bargain. Instead of the blanket signage envisaged, in many cases we just have puny posters lost amongst all the advertising that even misrepresent the details of the scheme using inaccurate words. (Challenge: find all the Penalty Fares signage at London Bridge and compare this with the requirements(*).) We have anecdotes of tickets being sold on board for days on end without any verbal warnings until one day penalties are imposed in identical circumstances. Penalties imposed when machines aren't working - and plenty more.

(*) "Where any entrance onto a platform at the station is not the entrance to, or situated within, a compulsory ticket area, a notice complying with the requirements of paragraph 1 of Part 1 of Schedule 1 (“a standard notice”) must be displayed at that entrance. ... Standard notices ... must also be displayed at sufficient locations around the station so that at least one notice is readily visible to passengers prior to boarding a train at the station, including passengers changing from one train to another train."

 

[CyrusWuff]

Can the Liverpool Street barriers be set up to charge by default a single to Stanstead, unless the card is tapped out elsewhere?

Only if they reverted to having two platforms dedicated to Stansted Express and had a dedicated gateline (as per the Gatwick and Heathrow Express.)

Otherwise the maximum fare for journeys starting at a station in Zones 1-9 is defined by TfL. (Currently £9.90 Peak, £6.70 Off-Peak if there's no discount applied.)

 

[Taunton]

Government announce Stansted is to be included in Contactless :

Stansted Express to go contactless after passengers handed ‘unfair’ £100 penalty:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/ne...1&cvid=0044b672c16341b497a915f9cccbfcac&ei=61

Under the codename Project Oval, the contactless payment project was supposed to have reached 233 stations by May this year including Stansted. Transport for London said earlier this year that Project Oval’s budget had overrun by £38 million.

It does seem unreasonable to fine passengers for what the rail industry intended to be valid all along, and I believe were given the money by the DfT to do it, but mismanaged their budgets.

 

[crablab]

Anecdotally Greater Anglia are doing a lot of manual ticket checking at Stansted, in both directions.

Unfortunately the people checking the tickets don't understand permitted routes or BoJ so I almost missed my service on a detour to the ticket office to establish that yes, my ticket was indeed valid despite not having the words "Stansted Airport" on it.
Rather concerning, but at least the people actually issuing PFs seem to understand the rules.

I would be interested in the number of PFs being issued; it's a shame that's not FoIable.

 

[signed]

Government announce Stansted is to be included in Contactless :

Finally something logical, that exclusion was definitely very weird

 

[jfollows]

Unfortunately the people checking the tickets don't understand permitted routes or BoJ so I almost missed my service on a detour to the ticket office to establish that yes, my ticket was indeed valid despite not having the words "Stansted Airport" on it.
Rather concerning, but at least the people actually issuing PFs seem to understand the rules.

As in London to Cambridge, which is valid via Stansted Airport despite the misapprehension of some staff. For example, see https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...stansted-gatwick-express.266721/#post-6744753 and https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...lid-via-stansted-airport.253417/#post-6374191

 

[Mag_seven]

Can posts in this thread be confined to providing the OP with advice on what to do next after losing their third appeal please.

If anyone wants to discuss anything else then please can they start a new thread.

thanks