Will after-the-event e-ticket database checking be a risk to passengers?

[bakerstreet]

Re this thread:

Stopping short on Advance if Season is held.

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/stopping-short-on-advance-if-season-is-held.230762/

And this post which I think raises an interesting issue.

This sort of thing will become easier to police with e-tickets and automatic reporting of irregularities (ie where a advance ticket is bought as an e-ticket to a station with a gateline and not touched out at that station) but we aren't there yet.

Am I the only one concerned about the effect of this if the industry goes down this path?

A requirement to get off a through train would be an unnecessary and frustrating feature of e tickets if this ever became necessary.

I would find it disappointing too if e tickets are already or were going to be used by the industry to monitor trace and prosecute individuals simply going about their business in a way which should cause the railway no issues.

If I felt there was a risk of my ticket being checked by a database ‘just in case’ then this would reduce my use of the railway once paper has been scrapped because it will make the journey experience poorer.

I would have thought the major revenue loss was ticketless travel, doughnutting, short faring and the like.

Not by passengers who have valid tickets for their entire journey.

We also know from reading these forums that even the industry itself cannot retain a thorough working understanding of its own rules.

Very worrying if after-the-event inquiries will take place into a passenger’s lawful travel by an industry which has previous of making up rules, disregarding contracted travel and threatening prosecution when the passenger has followed all the rules in place.

Would this sort of policing (should this come to pass) prevent someone doing what I used to do many years ago?

Advance from midlands to Watford Junction.
Already held ticket season Watford J to Harrow & Wealdstone. Stayed on the same train throughout. Completely used my Advance, as prescribed, properly used my existing ticket. Frictionless journey.

Now at any major station going all the way to the concourse just to touch out is a faff - it is with Oyster - especially as it was the case in those days the local trains only ran about every half hour.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Cloud cuckoo fantasy land and part of my role involves managing gates

 

[bakerstreet]

Cloud cuckoo fantasy land and part of my role involves managing gates

Good.

 

[alistairlees]

There are no plans to do this. It is just forum paranoia. It wouldn't work anyway (there might be no gates, the gates might be left open, the gate might be manually opened, the scanning might not work, etc.)

 

[Bletchleyite]

I consider it a valid concern but it is not happening at present.

 

[RPI]

In order for a TOC to request booking history there has to have been reasonable suspicion in the first place, ie they can't just go "fishing" peoples booking history randomly.

 

[Haywain]

Scan history is of little use in this way as it doesn't provide any evidence of who might have been using a ticket, other than a season ticket.

 

[Starmill]

Scan history is also largely incomplete still. That is to say that you have no certainty that just because you can't see the scan, it wasn't scanned. Even at the same station, there are different gate arrays using different servers right beside one another. I don't know if this is improving.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Scan history is also largely incomplete still. That is to say that you have no certainty that just because you can't see the scan, it wasn't scanned. Even at the same station, there are different gate arrays using different servers right beside one another. I don't know if this is improving.

Ours is very reliable, may be a problem with the largest gate supplier though as we use the superior German product.

 

[STINT47]

Thankfully our courts still work on inocenttill proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

There are any number of reasons why a ticket might not be scanned when starting, finishing or during the journey. I very much doubt that an absence of a scan would be sufficient to meet the requirement of proving guilt.

Of course a lot of TOCs and some of their staff think it's guilty till you can provide a ton of evidence showing your innocent. I wouldn't put it past some to go fishing then start issuing letters offering out of court settlements. If this happens I would politely refer them to the reply given in Arkell versus Pressdram.

 

[Mikw]

Hard to police this one. I used an eticket last week. No gates on the origin station, and the gates were left open at the desitination station.

 

[AlterEgo]

Scan history is of little use in this way as it doesn't provide any evidence of who might have been using a ticket, other than a season ticket.

And in any case it’s very easy to leave stations without scanning your ticket.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Apr 2022 ==

Thankfully our courts still work on inocenttill proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

There are any number of reasons why a ticket might not be scanned when starting, finishing or during the journey. I very much doubt that an absence of a scan would be sufficient to meet the requirement of proving guilt.

Of course a lot of TOCs and some of their staff think it's guilty till you can provide a ton of evidence showing your innocent. I wouldn't put it past some to go fishing then start issuing letters offering out of court settlements. If this happens I would politely refer them to the reply given in Arkell versus Pressdram.

I’m intrigued to know what sort of offence people think someone stopping short on an Advance is.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

I’m intrigued to know what sort of offence people think someone stopping short on an Advance is.

Train operating company might try to assert it's travelling without a valid ticket (i.e. the ticket is invalid as it hasn't used in accordance with the terms and conditions associated with it).

 

[AlterEgo]

Train operating company might try to assert it's travelling without a valid ticket (i.e. the ticket is invalid as it hasn't used in accordance with the terms and conditions associated with it).

The ticket is valid up until the point you alight, and provision is made in the NRCoT and TnCs for what should happen if you do break your journey on a ticket which doesn’t allow it.

In no way could a “fail to scan” ever be seen as proof of a broken journey or stopping short.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

The ticket is valid up until the point you alight, and provision is made in the NRCoT and TnCs for what should happen if you do break your journey on a ticket which doesn’t allow it.

In no way could a “fail to scan” ever be seen as proof of a broken journey or stopping short.

That's as may be, but you were asking what sort of offence stopping short on an Advance is, weren't you?

 

[AlterEgo]

That's as may be, but you were asking what sort of offence stopping short on an Advance is, weren't you?

“Travelling without a valid ticket” isn’t an offence though.

Here are the two “don’t have a valid ticket” offences.

(1) In any area not designated as a compulsory ticket area, no person shall enter any train for the purpose of travelling on the railway unless he has with him a valid ticket entitling him to travel.
(2) A person shall hand over his ticket for inspection and verification of validity when asked to do so by an authorised person.

The first is defendable because the passenger does enter the train with a valid ticket. The second merely requires “handing the ticket over” for inspection.

 

[Starmill]

That's as may be, but you were asking what sort of offence stopping short on an Advance is, weren't you?

It sounds like you're thinking of trying to avoid paying the correct fare, which is different to what you said (not having a valid ticket).

It's unlikely that this action will be sufficient to put it beyond reasonable doubt that there was an attempt to avoid paying the correct fare.

 

[Aljanah]

I’m intrigued to know what sort of offence people think someone stopping short on an Advance is.

Has anyone said it is an offence?

It is just a breach of the ticket conditions:

"(nrcot)9.5 Where you:
<snip>
9.5.3 break your journey when you are not permitted to do so;
you will be charged the difference between the fare that you have paid and
the lowest price Ticket that is valid for the train you are using."

We don't really want to start getting invoices in the post because of a "fail to scan" at the destination. Well I don't anyway.

 

[trover]

Has anyone said it is an offence?

It is just a breach of the ticket conditions:

"(nrcot)9.5 Where you:
<snip>
9.5.3 break your journey when you are not permitted to do so;
you will be charged the difference between the fare that you have paid and
the lowest price Ticket that is valid for the train you are using."

We don't really want to start getting invoices in the post because of a "fail to scan" at the destination. Well I don't anyway.

Being recognised and demanded to pay the difference but refuse to do so is an offence isn’t it? As in that case it’ll be avoiding to pay the correct fare. However they can’t prove somebody has travel short just because the ticket isn’t scanned!

 

[Haywain]

Being recognised and demanded to pay the difference but refuse to do so is an offence isn’t it? As in that case it’ll be avoiding to pay the correct fare. However they can’t prove somebody has travel short just because the ticket isn’t scanned!

Well, there will obviously be CCTV footage of the person not scanning a ticket so that the railway knows who to prosecute.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Being recognised and demanded to pay the difference but refuse to do so is an offence isn’t it? As in that case it’ll be avoiding to pay the correct fare. However they can’t prove somebody has travel short just because the ticket isn’t scanned!

I think it is probably the case that scanning and gating isn't good enough at the moment to do much with the data - but it is improving over time, and so while this isn't likely to be an issue now it could well be in future.

One situation that came up in my mind was where you get into questionable validities. The example I was thinking of was Bletchley to Warwick which I did late last year. This is sold for travel via Birmingham but isn't intended to be valid that way as it's cheaper than Bletchley to Birmingham. It comes up because most planners (if not all) treat the rule "for a ticket routed via a place, if there are no through Permitted Routes via that place, separately generate Permitted Routes to that place and from it" as "the set of Permitted Routes is those via that place PLUS a combination of all those to and from it". Obviously an itinerary is itself by definition valid, but arguably not that same route an hour (or whatever) later, so you could certainly start doing things with data like the failed scans I had in both directions at Moor St and New St (let through by staff).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Apr 2022 ==

Being recognised and demanded to pay the difference but refuse to do so is an offence isn’t it? As in that case it’ll be avoiding to pay the correct fare. However they can’t prove somebody has travel short just because the ticket isn’t scanned!

More of concern would be the ticket being scanned to get out of the "short" station, with staff letting people through once it has failed. It could also be used to discipline staff for letting people through with invalid tickets.

I think it's quite naive to suggest there won't be people thinking about how to do this sort of thing right now even if we aren't likely to see it happen for maybe 5-10 years.

 

[JonathanH]

However they can’t prove somebody has travel short just because the ticket isn’t scanned!

They can if it becomes compulsory to scan an e-ticket for an advance fare at the origin and destination of the ticket.

You could see why this idea might be attractive to the operators / DfT for making splitting tickets more difficult.

 

[Wallsendmag]

They can if it becomes compulsory to scan an e-ticket for an advance fare at the origin and destination of the ticket.

You could see why this idea might be attractive to the operators / DfT for making splitting tickets more difficult.

Scan it on what?

 

[trover]

Well, there will obviously be CCTV footage of the person not scanning a ticket so that the railway knows who to prosecute.

Being scanned or not isn’t important on its own as I’ve said, it needs to be accompanied with other evidences. It’s easier to identify the cases at the station when it’s happening if the gates are operating. Efforts to pick up suspicious cases filter out some investigation, and the difficulty to match those footage filter out further more.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Scan it on what?

A scanner?

I believe the OP is suggesting compostage, i.e. the requirement to validate a ticket immediately before use as has been practiced in France for years and would wipe out splitting other than at change points.

 

[yorkie]

They can if it becomes compulsory to scan an e-ticket for an advance fare at the origin and destination of the ticket.

You could see why this idea might be attractive to the operators / DfT for making splitting tickets more difficult.

Scan it on what?

Quite; I wonder how people think this would work at (say) York? Readers at every possible exit from the station and staff there warning people that if they do not scan their used ticket they will face a retrospective bill?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Apr 2022 ==

I believe the OP is suggesting compostage, i.e. the requirement to validate a ticket immediately before use as has been practiced in France for years and would wipe out splitting other than at change points.

But do France require used/expire tickets to be de-compostaged? I think not! This is a pie in the sky idea.

In any case, do France actually require Advance fares to be compstaged? There is surely no point in requiring this for tickets that are only valid on one specific train/itinerary.

 

[PG]

I think it's quite naive to suggest there won't be people thinking about how to do this sort of thing right now even if we aren't likely to see it happen for maybe 5-10 years.

1984...

 

[JonathanH]

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not advocating any of these ideas. I agree they would be undesirable to passengers but the original thread came from someone asking whether it was reasonable to travel from A to C on an advance ticket from A to D, holding another valid ticket from B to C, and I was trying to indicate what would have to happen for it to be detectable.

 

[trover]

I think it is probably the case that scanning and gating isn't good enough at the moment to do much with the data - but it is improving over time, and so while this isn't likely to be an issue now it could well be in future.

One situation that came up in my mind was where you get into questionable validities. The example I was thinking of was Bletchley to Warwick which I did late last year. This is sold for travel via Birmingham but isn't intended to be valid that way as it's cheaper than Bletchley to Birmingham. It comes up because most planners (if not all) treat the rule "for a ticket routed via a place, if there are no through Permitted Routes via that place, separately generate Permitted Routes to that place and from it" as "the set of Permitted Routes is those via that place PLUS a combination of all those to and from it". Obviously an itinerary is itself by definition valid, but arguably not that same route an hour (or whatever) later, so you could certainly start doing things with data like the failed scans I had in both directions at Moor St and New St (let through by staff).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Apr 2022 ==



More of concern would be the ticket being scanned to get out of the "short" station, with staff letting people through once it has failed. It could also be used to discipline staff for letting people through with invalid tickets.

I think it's quite naive to suggest there won't be people thinking about how to do this sort of thing right now even if we aren't likely to see it happen for maybe 5-10 years.

That’s why I’m all for magstripe tickets until the day it’s no longer an option In your case it’d just be a “faulty” paper card which doesn’t open the gate with a valid itinerary, gate line staff have a glance at your ticket, perhaps one or two questions asked, presenting the itinerary, everything sorted with no records saved or arguments.

The downside is (a pile of if splitting tickets) paper cards needed to be kept securely throughout the journey and up to weeks if there’s delays.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Quite; I wonder how people think this would work at (say) York? Readers at every possible exit from the station and staff there warning people that if they do not scan their used ticket they will face a retrospective bill?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Apr 2022 ==


But do France require used/expire tickets to be de-compostaged? I think not! This is a pie in the sky idea.

No, decompostage isn't a thing. I'm actually in favour of compostage because it would allow for things like open-dated singles/the outward part of returns having longer validity and would remove the issue of people refunding used e-tickets, or a proper solution to carnets/flexi seasons without all the faff surrounding them. But I'd not be in favour of it as a means of disallowing splitting; if you had multiple tickets for one journey doing the scan of all of them at the origin should be accepted.

In any case, do France actually require Advance fares to be compstaged? There is surely no point in requiring this for tickets that are only valid on one specific train/itinerary.

I don't think so.