Penalty fare increase to £100

[AdamWW]

Sorry, I meant you'll probably only get a generic 'we'll pass this on' type response.

Fair enough. Yes I'd expect that.

 

[ainsworth74]

New signs at Middlesbrough last night but no sign of new signs at my origin station this morning but RPIs are on board and I would assume issue a PF which would then be technically invalid.

 

[Watershed]

New signs at Middlesbrough last night but no sign of new signs at my origin station this morning but RPIs are on board and I would assume issue a PF which would then be technically invalid.

Absolutely - and nothing really technical about it as compliant signage is one of the key prerequisites of a Penalty Fares scheme. Being charitable, perhaps they are "only" issuing warnings for now.

 

[ainsworth74]

Absolutely - and nothing really technical about it as compliant signage is one of the key prerequisites of a Penalty Fares scheme. Being charitable, perhaps they are "only" issuing warnings for now.

They certainly issued at least one PF but for a passenger from a different station so I'm not sure whether the signage was compliant or not (but I'd be surprised if it was as they're hardly likely to do one station but not the other!)!

 

[ainsworth74]

Well the posters had appeared by Saturday morning when I was at the station:



Which is progress! However it's rather undermined by this plaque being shown, still, at the entrance to the platform:



Which isn't ideal. Particularly as I think it's quite a lot more obvious than the poster which is in the row of posters here:



Not invisible but certainly nowhere near as obvious as the plaque! It's somewhat more galling as they clearly have the design available as at Redcar Central this is bolted to the wall:



The industry really does need to get a grip of the itty bitty bits like this. There some stuff which I think is somewhat slapdash but you can live with (out of date engineering work posters, old Covid posters, etc etc) but it really isn't good enough that they cannot get important information like this deployed to stations and done so clearly without the contradicting posters being left lying around! I assume in this case it's because it was given to a third party contractor who was told to change the posters in the poster cabinets but no-one has been engaged to go and remove the old plaques.

 

[jon0844]

There must be loads of places that have a mention of £20, including gatelines and onboard some trains. I think the majority of trains just mention penalty fares without saying an amount, but I wonder how many exceptions there are?

Likewise, I am pretty sure tube trains have/had signs saying £80 and given TfL is going to raise this to £100 at some point in the near future, they're going to have a lot more work to do - although will quite likely do this with small cut out stickers to put over the amount.

Northern could probably cover the hard fixed signs with stickers, but until then should simply cover the signs completely.

 

[skyhigh]

Northern could probably cover the hard fixed signs with stickers, but until then should simply cover the signs completely.

I wonder if there's a regional thing going on. All the PF signs at stations around Leeds were replaced before the change over date.

 

[Hadders]

There must be loads of places that have a mention of £20, including gatelines and onboard some trains. I think the majority of trains just mention penalty fares without saying an amount, but I wonder how many exceptions there are?

Likewise, I am pretty sure tube trains have/had signs saying £80 and given TfL is going to raise this to £100 at some point in the near future, they're going to have a lot more work to do - although will quite likely do this with small cut out stickers to put over the amount.

Northern could probably cover the hard fixed signs with stickers, but until then should simply cover the signs completely.

Didn't the signs on the Underground change to say you might have to ay a Penalty Fare without specifying the amount? Presumably so thatr they don't have to update the signage when the price of the penalty fare changes.

 

[janb]

The industry really does need to get a grip of the itty bitty bits like this. There some stuff which I think is somewhat slapdash but you can live with (out of date engineering work posters, old Covid posters, etc etc) but it really isn't good enough that they cannot get important information like this deployed to stations and done so clearly without the contradicting posters being left lying around! I assume in this case it's because it was given to a third party contractor who was told to change the posters in the poster cabinets but no-one has been engaged to go and remove the old plaques.

I can only say that at my West region Northern station the (important from legal compliance standpoint) plaque was swapped out weeks before the change. The posters are left to ISS cleaners/station staff, the "from 23 January..." poster should have been displayed prior to the change and replaced with effectively the same poster minus the "from 23 January..." bit on the 23rd.

Your station feels like a bit of an outlier. Longbeck looks like, I can report.

 

[Runningaround]

Perhaps the university/colleges should include in their Welcome Pack a specific warning that fare evasion may be serious enough to negate their expensive education. This would be addressed to both domestic and overseas students, along with a brief description as to how Railcards work.
Or maybe they already do this?

Or perhaps a twelve month course in how to understand the complexities of rail ticketing, its hard enough for experienced staff to figure it out what chance has someone arriving from a place with a simplified and straightforward system got or one from where railways don't exist. Perhaps a college could hold the courses and sell places to TOC's for there own staff.

I'd like to see penalties and significant compensation for those wrongly charged with offences or penalised but as we see the railway makes it as difficult as possible to fight back and holds all the cards.

 

[AdamWW]

Or perhaps a twelve month course in how to understand the complexities of rail ticketing, its hard enough for experienced staff to figure it out what chance has someone arriving from a place with a simplified and straightforward system got or one from where railways don't exist. Perhaps a college could hold the courses and sell places to TOC's for there own staff.

I'd like to see penalties and significant compensation for those wrongly charged with offences or penalised but as we see the railway makes it as difficult as possible to fight back and holds all the cards.

Personally I'd like to see an appropriately sized penalty every time a ToC employee gives out incorrect information on ticketing rules. (Hard to enforce when it's given verbally, but I've seen plenty of wrong statements on twitter and in customer service email responses).

Yes, sure, everyone makes mistakes. But - in my view - you can't rationally argue that passengers should be penalised for a misunderstanding and then claim that you can't expect staff to get things right all the time.

 

[ainsworth74]

Your station feels like a bit of an outlier. Longbeck looks like, I can report.

Perhaps! Though observation from the train whilst passing through suggests that Redcar East has gone from having a poster advising of the PF scheme at the entrance to the Middlesbrough bound to not having a poster at all as this has been replaced by a poster advising about strike action (but this was from a passing trains so I could have missed something!).

Whilst at Middlesbrough I saw when I parked in the car park yesterday still had an old plaque on the footpath from the car park to the station. This is the only PF signage you pass getting to platform 2 (for trains to York/Darlington/etc).

 

[ainsworth74]

Just went through Redcar East and couldn't actually spot any PF signage at all at the entrance to or on the Saltburn bound platform. Will happily admit though that a moving train isn't the best place to observe from!

 

[janb]

Just went through Redcar East and couldn't actually spot any PF signage at all at the entrance to or on the Saltburn bound platform. Will happily admit though that a moving train isn't the best place to observe from!

Looking at the October 2021 survey images on Google Maps the permanent hard signs (the ones that matter for legal compliance) are positioned on the fence and wouldn't be visible from the train. What particularly concerned me about Longbeck was that sign had not been updated.

The posters are an important eye grabbing reinforcement especially when the change is new but you are always going to be dependent on the abilities of individual staff members how effectively displayed they are.

 

[Titfield]

The posters are an important eye grabbing reinforcement especially when the change is new but you are always going to be dependent on the abilities of individual staff members how effectively displayed they are.

One would like to think that every station had been surveyed, the optimum location and number of PF signs had been established, and when updated those doing the updating were required to provide photographic evidence that each sign location had indeed been updated.

 

[janb]

One would like to think that every station had been surveyed, the optimum location and number of PF signs had been established, and when updated those doing the updating were required to provide photographic evidence that each sign location had indeed been updated.

Again I would distinguish in the language between PF "signs" and PF "posters". My comment was concerning the posters not the signs. The signs are positioned with thought and were updated in many locations (although seemingly not Longbeck) weeks before the change. You can justifiably argue that the posters should be held to a high standard as well, but they are an informational extra distinct from the legal situation in most Northern locations.

 

[ainsworth74]

The signs are positioned with thought and were updated in many locations (although seemingly not Longbeck) weeks before the change.

And Middlesbrough seeing as the sign from the car park also hasn't been updated

 

[Titfield]

Again I would distinguish in the language between PF "signs" and PF "posters". My comment was concerning the posters not the signs. The signs are positioned with thought and were updated in many locations (although seemingly not Longbeck) weeks before the change. You can justifiably argue that the posters should be held to a high standard as well, but they are an informational extra distinct from the legal situation in most Northern locations.

The posters may be "informational extra distinct from the legal situation" but in the event of a dispute arising, any ambiguity / contradiction between the two, would almost certainly be to the advantage of the passenger.

I do not think it would be reasonable to expect the "man on the clapham omnibus" to be able to distinguish between what is a legal sign and what is an informational poster.

 

[RPI]

Looking at the October 2021 survey images on Google Maps the permanent hard signs (the ones that matter for legal compliance) are positioned on the fence and wouldn't be visible from the train. What particularly concerned me about Longbeck was that sign had not been updated.

The posters are an important eye grabbing reinforcement especially when the change is new but you are always going to be dependent on the abilities of individual staff members how effectively displayed they are.

There is no legal difference between metal signs and posters, as long as they are in the correct locations.

GWR have replaced all the metal signs with dedicated poster cases for PF posters now as the metal signs are expensive and more difficult to replace whenever the wording etc is changed and usually require contractors to replace them, whereas posters can be changed by station staff.

In the locations where old signs are still displayed i would agree that any benefit of the doubt must go towards the customer.

We had one station where one of the PF poster cases had managed to corrode so that it couldn't be opened, still with a £20 poster in, as a temporary measure the old poster has been covered over so that it can't be seen (a few rolls of yellow and black tape!) And a new poster temporarily displayed in an adjacent case until the faulty one is replaced.

 

[ainsworth74]

Better late than never but the old signs have been taken down and replaced with current ones in the optimal location. Why this couldn't have been done promptly is anyone's guess...

 

[Sonic1234]

Better late than never but the old signs have been taken down and replaced with current ones in the optimal location. Why this couldn't have been done promptly is anyone's guess...

Changing signs costs money, and I imagine the number of technical appeals on signage is small. Most will simply pay up.

It's like when you hear about councils giving out non-compliant parking tickets for years on end.

 

[Haywain]

Changing signs costs money,

It also takes time when there are hundreds of locations involved, and with such things the odd one might get missed at the first go.

 

[Watershed]

It also takes time when there are hundreds of locations involved, and with such things the odd one might get missed at the first go.

That's fine as long as operators suspend issuing Penalty Fares until they're confident that they have compliant signage in place at all stations. But, quite predictably, the evidence suggests that this wasn't the case, and that some operators have nevertheless continued to issue Penalty Fares despite having old signage in place.

 

[Haywain]

That's fine as long as operators suspend issuing Penalty Fares until they're confident that they have compliant signage in place at all stations.

I don't disagree with that.

 

[Sultan]

Signage at the top of the stairs at Brookwood on Saturday still clearly said £20. And that's for a station with not far off a million passengers throughput (although admittedly most people travel towards London and the sign is on the downside)

 

[johntea]

I noticed Northern have some new posters up based on their 'cartoon design' depicting a passenger telling the guard their phone is dead resulting in the £100 penalty fare along with the strapline 'Buy before you board' (which is slightly mixed messaging, the passenger may have indeed bought the ticket before their battery went dead!)

Something I've always wondered if indeed a phone is dead when the ticket inspection comes round but the passenger has the facility to charge their phone on board (i.e. a cable and charging sockets) is there any official guidance as to if they're 'allowed' to present their ticket later in the journey to avoid the penalty being issued? I'm guessing it would be more discretion based

 

[RPI]

I noticed Northern have some new posters up based on their 'cartoon design' depicting a passenger telling the guard their phone is dead resulting in the £100 penalty fare along with the strapline 'Buy before you board' (which is slightly mixed messaging, the passenger may have indeed bought the ticket before their battery went dead!)

Something I've always wondered if indeed a phone is dead when the ticket inspection comes round but the passenger has the facility to charge their phone on board (i.e. a cable and charging sockets) is there any official guidance as to if they're 'allowed' to present their ticket later in the journey to avoid the penalty being issued? I'm guessing it would be more discretion based

Its the responsibility of the passenger to keep the device charged and a ticket must be shown when requested.

In the real world, I carry a battery pack and a multi device charging wire, though most of the trains I work on (150, 158, 165 and 166) all have USB charging sockets at almost every seat.

Its usually quite easy to tell the ones who are genuine and the ones extracting the urine, but the old "dead phone" is the new "hiding in the toilet".

 

[Class800]

Problem is smartphones often only have 2 to 3 hours battery life using internet, so on a longer journey it's not very practical

 

[RPI]

Problem is smartphones often only have 2 to 3 hours battery life using internet, so on a longer journey it's not very practical

In such circumstances I would suggest using paper tickets or bringing a power bank, people manage to keep their devices charged all day somehow so I'm not sure why on a train should be any different, the vast majority of honest travellers manage to keep their devices charged throughout their journeys.

 

[AlterEgo]

Problem is smartphones often only have 2 to 3 hours battery life using internet, so on a longer journey it's not very practical

Bring a power bank then.

My phone retains charge all day and I’m a heavy user.