Mizter T wrote:
Dave Arquati wrote:
Alan OBrien wrote:
There are posters on the Underground which say that people should always
swipe in and out so as to get the best fare.
If by 'best' they mean cheapest they are wrong.
Surely if you have the chance you should either not swipe in or swipe out,
or both.
If you do neither, then you do not have a valid ticket and are
deliberately trying to avoid the fare, rendering you liable for either a
penalty fare or prosecution. If you deliberately don't touch in or out,
then the same presumably applies.

With Oyster there is this new scenario that hasn't as far as I can see
occured before in transport ticketing - to have a valid ticket fore the
whole journey a passenger must perform the correct action at the end of
that journey i.e. touching out. Obviously when a stations automatic
gates are in operation enforcing this is easy, but otherwise it relies
on the passenger doing the right thing.

There are ways to encourage this to happen: having inspectors at the
exit station checking that people have touched out; the daily cap only
working if a user touches in and out for every journey: and the
possibility of a financial penalty if a user doesn't touch in and out
each time (so far only implemented on journeys through National Rail
mainline stations).

These are problems that will come to the fore when Oyster is
implemented across National Rail in London, given that number of
ungated stations.

Indeed. I imagine the solution will be to make sure that touching in and
out is always in the user's best interest, and this will probably be
achieved by combining "refund-at-exit" as you mention (i.e. charging a
higher fare at entry and refunding if necessary at exit) with the
lock-ups of users' cards if too many unresolved journeys occur (as
mentioned below).

Additionally, if you only do one, then you incur an unresolved journey
which may be charged at a high rate (e.g. exiting mainline gates at
London rail terminals), may prevent you from using your card (thus
losing your deposit if you don't top up) and will definitely prevent
capping from working (thus resulting in more expense).

I wonder if there are any plans to penalise those with unresolved
journeys (other than in the case of NR terminals). It would make the
system less open to abuse especially once it's been implemented across
NR in London, though I'm sure it would cause a fuss as well.

Fuss could probably be avoided if TfL improved the publicity and signage
regarding when to touch in and out, and provided explicitly clear
instructions and examples on how the damn system works! At the moment,
most of the Oyster knowledge on the group is a combination of collected
experience, inside knowledge and educated guesswork. As well as the
easy-to-understand "guides to Oyster" at stations, there should be a
detailed resource available.

Dave - where you say above if you don't touch in/out this "may prevent
you from using your card (thus losing your deposit if you don't top
up)" what do you mean? From what I've seen unresolved journeys don't
lock up someones card, not yet at least.

This is just from hearsay, but I think *multiple* unresolved journeys
prevent the card from working.

The cheapest fare is the cheapest valid ticket for your journey. If you
don't have a valid ticket at all and don't intend to obtain one, you are
essentially a thief!

You could equally accuse Tesco of false advertising for saying that
their baked beans are cheaper than any other place's - Sainsbury's baked
beans are "free" if you shoplift them.

A strong point that essentially deals with the original question -
though the original poster was welcome in pondering on the language
used by LU and sharing his thoughts here.

True, it was just that the original poster's language implied that
fare-dodging was the desirable course of action, rather than merely a
possible one ("you should not swipe in..." rather than "you *could*
avoid swiping in"...). Probably just my over-reaction!

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London