On Tuesday, April 3, 2012 4:26:12 PM UTC+1, Paul Corfield wrote:
However you need to place yourself in the shoes of the ticket
inspectors that Abigail encountered. They cannot know what journey was
going to be undertaken and whether it was wholly within the zones on
the card or would involve a PAYG extension fare.

They can't, so is this just a procedural rule to enforce the convention of touching in in order to make their jobs easier? Note that they weren't doing a proper ticket inspection, they just seemed to be enforcing using the readers. Because I can't see there would be actual fare evasion I could more easily carry out if touching in were not mandatory in this situation.

Certainly I could not touch in, catch a train, and then sneak out at some ungated station outside my zones. But that would be completely possible if I had touched in, as the touch-in does not deduct the deposit, and there would be the risk of being ticket-inspected either on the train or at the other end. So if I were trying to fare-evade, I'd touch in, not worry about getting gripped en route, and then make the decision about whether to touch out at the other end. (Travel *from* outside my zones is another matter, of course).

In fact, I've been bitten the time I did go the other way, by forgetting to touch in, travelling to zone 4 and then facing a gateline and ending up with an unresolved journey. So for now I'm going to touch in, as it's not a bad habit.

--
Abi