MIG wrote:

much snippage

The 'max cash fare' wasn't part of the system originally, but PAYG users
quickly discovered the benefits of only touching in at one end of a journey,
so that loophole got closed pretty quickly...

Paul S

The "benefit" for me was that I paid the correct fare without having
to get off the train and touch in/out at the point where I crossed
into the area covered by my paper travelcard. �Now I get ripped off if
I don't go through that ridiculous exercise.

I have to say that if I regularly travelled outside the zones of my
Travelcard (on Oyster PAYG routes) I would just get my Travelcard on
Oyster.

It's still not the easiest thing in the world if you are south of the
Thames. I noticed recently that a major station like Lewisham has
only just started offering Oyster in the last few weeks, despite being
on the DLR (apart from a single machine that was often out of order).
In the period referred to, Oyster was even less available than it is
now.

When the machine is out of order, one doesn't want to spend fifteen
minutes finding a shop and missing trains, one just goes to the
counter for a paper ticket. Oyster stops are not always on the way to
the station.


I'll address these points in a reply to your post upthread in which
you raise similar points so as to avoid duplication (sorry, yesterday
evening I hadn't noticed this post hence I raised some similar points
in another branch of the thread).


My main point was that the extent of not touching in/out, before the
punitive rates were brought in, is inferred to be proof of fraud,
which is a totally false assumption.


I never intended to infer that this was a proof of fraud. However nor
do I think it is OK to make the counter-assumption - i.e. that all
those who failed to touch-in *and* touch-out were all acting in a
legitimate and honest manner.


I never touched in/out at boundary stations, but I always paid the
correct fare. For example, I got on at Acton Town when I had a zone 1
-2 travelcard and didn't choose to jump out at Turnham Green. No
fraud was committed and the correct revenue was collected.


(Incidentally I've looked up the appropriate fares for 2006 for the
examples I shall give, as it was in November 2006 that the 'max cash
fare' began to be applied - you can see the relevant fares PDF here -
http://snipurl.com/tfl_fares_1july_2006 )

In the particular example you gave there wouldn't have been a problem
- if you merely touched-in at Acton Town (zone 4) and then failed to
touch out, the fare charged would have been the minimum from that
station, so £1 (at any time) - and the zones 3&4 fare was also £1 (at
any time). So, as a holder of a Travelcard covering zones 1&2 you
certainly weren't leaving TfL out of pocket, and at no point in that
journey could you have been accused of travelling without a valid
ticket (though the Oyster T&Cs do clearly state that users must touch-
in and touch-out so technically you weren't complying with them).

But let's extend this logic a bit - if someone, holding a z1&2 paper
Travelcard, had started their journey from Heathrow using Oyster PAYG
then their card would have been debited £1 upfront on entry, which is
the minimum fare from a zone 6 station. However, during weekday
daytimes (7am-7pm) the zones 3-6 fare was £1.80 - thus if that person
had travelled into central London and then exited the network using
their paper z1&2 Travelcard they would not have paid the correct fare
and would have left TfL 80p out of pocket. Of course the problem for
TfL is that it would have been virtually impossible to catch someone
doing this, as if they were checked en-route outside z1&2 they could
simply present a validated Oyster and that would be fine - hence the
need to provide an incentive to users to touch-out, and a 'penalty'
for those who don't.

One last example, going back to Acton Town - literally. If someone did
the reverse of the Acton Town example you gave above, i.e. travelled
from central London to Acton Town whilst holding a z1&2 paper
Travelcard then that person would *undoubtedly* have been breaking the
rules, *even* if they intended to pay the extra using their Oyster
card. On the District line the z1&2 Travelcard would cover them up to
Turnham Green, but from Turnham Green to Acton Town they would have
been travelling without a valid ticket - and thus if ticket checked by
an RPI would have been liable to a Penalty Fare or prosecution. They
could even have been checked as they exited the ticket gates at Acton
Town - I saw RPIs who were very specifically only checking those who
had used Oysters to exit the gates from the SSL platforms at KXSP, and
then 'doing' those who hadn't touched-in before they began their
journey (perhaps on the extremities of the Met line).

(The same situation of course applies if they had travelling on a
westbound Piccadilly line train beyond Hammersmith - the last zone 2
station on the Pic - unless it was one of the few Pic line trains that
stopped at Turnham Green.)

The above provides a few ideas about the clues I'm sure the revenue
protection people would have been looking out for when trying to
identify people who were travelling fraudulently, before the max cash
fare 'penalty' was introduced.

Just to be absolutely clear, I wish to make it very plain that I am
not attempting to accuse you of any wrongdoing whatsoever, nor do I
want my comments to be taken as an inference to that effect. And I do
mean that.


(The stuff about surveillance is interesting and worthy of a longer
read and separate thread, because I've referred to it in the past, but
it wasn't in my bonnet at this point.)


I've expanded a bit on it elsewhere on this thread, but as you say it
is an interesting issue and one that shouldn't be dismissed out of
hand, but one that is worthy of a more level-headed approach than the
black helicopter conspiracy crowd provides.