DynamicSpirit
Established Member
From the SE perspective it has maximised revenue as efficiently as it thinks it can, and the rest is not worth the trouble and expense.
But from a passenger perspective, every time we see fare dodging it is a qualitative example of petty crime paying off and of unfairness.
I suspect that's correct. But there is an issue that SouthEastern's perspective is not necessarily the same as the 'public interest' perspective. Most obviously, SouthEastern have no guarantee of keeping the franchise for many more months. Investing in tackling fare dodging means some upfront cost in - for example, installing barriers, training new staff, etc. which may take some years to pay off. It may well be in the long term public interest (and the long term financial interest of the railways) to do that, while still not being in SouthEastern's interest because they can't be sure of keeping the franchise long enough to recoup the investment. And of course, discouraging petty crime has benefits to wider society that accrue outside the railways. I guess those issues strongly suggest that the Government perhaps needs to be more pro-active on this issue.