John B wrote:

On Mar 6, 1:00 pm, "Andrea" wrote:
I have travelled several times on the Silverlink Gospel Oak to Barking
service in the past fortnight. What has shocked me is the apparent
large-scale fare evasion on this route.

I imagine most legitimate travellers will have period tickets, and
therefore it will be pretty hard to judge whether or not they are
evading fares.

There is always a guard present on the train but he/she never
materialises to check tickets.

It isn't feasible for guards to do ticket inspections on lines like
the NLL/Goblin, where loadings are tight and stops are only a few
minutes apart - indeed AIUI Silverlink Metro guards aren't even
revenue trained. I'm hoping London Overground will adopt the DOO route
and redeploy surplus guards into revenue protection (given that LO
trains have much the same passenger characteristics as LU, where DOO
works just fine). But RPIs aren't much use when a train is full-and-
standing.


Goblin is different though John. Unless things have changed very
recently it is not part of Silverlink's penalty fare scheme. I'm not
sure what the current situation is regarding ticket issuing facilities
at Goblin stations, which are largely unmanned, but I believe in the
past some stations didn't have ticket machines.

I'm no expert on Gospel Oak - Barking line, but I have used it a
number of times - there are conductors/guards on board who check and
sell tickets, but I think I've been on board Goblin trains where there
hasn't been a conductor. I don't know if the line is capable of DOO or
not though.


I have heard dozens of people say that
they never buy tickets as there is no deterrent factor (many stations
are open and unstaffed, e.g. Leytonstone High Road).

Dozens? Did you carry out a survey or something?

Access from the
overground to the underground at Blackhorse Road os open, so anybody
can access the underground without a ticket.

...which is useful if they want to go to Finsbury Park, but otherwise
not much help, since every other plausible destination is barriered
during the day (OK, possibly you could go to Chigwell or Chesham).

It really annoys me when Silverlink seems to be doing nothing about
this. Talking to several fare-paying regulars on this line,
ticketless travel is rife.

Silverlink recently imposed a penalty fare scheme, which sounds rather
unlike "doing nothing about this".


Silverlink Metro bizarrely didn't even operate a Penalty Fares scheme
until January or February 2006! I think I've read that perhaps they
used to operate one, perhaps in their previous guise as North London
Railways (the immediate post-privatisation franchise), but stopped for
some reason.

Anyway Silverlink Metro's idea of revenue protection is pretty shabby.
I use the NLL fairly often and I've never had my ticket checked on
board, nor at any ungated station. Willesden Junction is the one
exception - there's often a team of RPIs in the passage checking
tickets of those interchanging between the high level (NLL and WLL)
platforms and the low level DC (Bakerloo and Euston-Watford)
platforms.


Northbound trains in the morning also tend
to be cancelled, leaving many customers unable to board at
imtermediate stations, such as Leytonstone, due to the 2 carriage
train being full.

Northbound? I'd tend to say "westbound" myself... anyway, yes, this
sucks [both the short trains and the relative unreliability] and is a
common problem on NLL/GOBLIN services. I'm deeply sceptical that
better revenue protection would make much of a difference to # of pax
though - how many people genuinely travel in the peak just for the
hell of it?


TfL hopes to provide more trains on Goblin, and longer term plans
include electrifying the line, though as this would require loot from
central government I'd advise you not to hold your breath!


I hope tFL will take a hard line on the revenut side of things when
they take over this line later this year.

I hope they take a hard line on the revenue issue off-peak, because of
the knock-on security implications (ie antisocialists tend to travel
without tickets, and there are too many of them on the GOBLIN and NLL
- although they wisely avoid peak services). If it's cost-effective to
provide gates etc to enforce payment on-peak, I hope they do that too;
if it isn't then I'd rather they spent our money on improving the
service...


Antisocialists - what a word!
Yes I broadly agree with your notions above. Gates aren't going to be
practical anyway at a good number of locations where there isn't a
station building.