Conductor 119466 on the 15H made no use of his ticket machine on Monday
from Tower Hill c1830 to Charing Cross. Oyster Cards were merely looked
at, so no idea if these were valid and no stored value debited. On the
plus side at least 8 people boarded between stops showing what are/were
truly the most accessible buses in London.

Chris Read wrote:
In simple terms, the power
of the engine and efficiency of the brakes seem light years removed from the
RM.


Why, Chris, do you regard this as an improvement?

Marc.

On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 22:10:26 +0100, Paul Corfield wrote:

The counter argument, of course, is that pre-payment is now so high in
London and that so many forms of fraud have been removed by structural
changes you can argue just how effective a big effort would be. We have
flat fares so no over-riding, we have one bus zone so no "out of zone"
season ticket fraud, Travelcards are valid on all buses so rail zones
are irrelevant, all Oyster personalised and registered cards can be
barred from use, smartcard technology facilitates sophisticated fraud
analysis, Oyster checking helps the driver detect out of date or out of
value cards more readily and children travel free. This really only
leaves out of date passes / permits, forgeries and stolen cards, non
validated cards on cashless routes and blatant non payment - again
probably only on cashless / heritage routes to any level as drivers
check on all other routes. Many people complain about the London fare
structure but it many ways the policy is ingenious in that it has
designed out the opportunity for many frauds to be committed.

Is it not possible to board a bendy with only a PAYG Oyster, but not
touch in unless/until you see revenue inspectors boarding, thus
getting lots of free rides with almost no chance of getting caught?

asdf wrote:

Is it not possible to board a bendy with only a PAYG Oyster, but not
touch in unless/until you see revenue inspectors boarding, thus
getting lots of free rides with almost no chance of getting caught?

They might see you do that. It'd be tremendously suspicious if, on
boarding, there was a queue at the machine.

Neil

On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 02:44:10 +0100, asdf wrote:

On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 22:10:26 +0100, Paul Corfield wrote:

The counter argument, of course, is that pre-payment is now so high in
London and that so many forms of fraud have been removed by structural
changes you can argue just how effective a big effort would be. We have
flat fares so no over-riding, we have one bus zone so no "out of zone"
season ticket fraud, Travelcards are valid on all buses so rail zones
are irrelevant, all Oyster personalised and registered cards can be
barred from use, smartcard technology facilitates sophisticated fraud
analysis, Oyster checking helps the driver detect out of date or out of
value cards more readily and children travel free. This really only
leaves out of date passes / permits, forgeries and stolen cards, non
validated cards on cashless routes and blatant non payment - again
probably only on cashless / heritage routes to any level as drivers
check on all other routes. Many people complain about the London fare
structure but it many ways the policy is ingenious in that it has
designed out the opportunity for many frauds to be committed.

Is it not possible to board a bendy with only a PAYG Oyster, but not
touch in unless/until you see revenue inspectors boarding, thus
getting lots of free rides with almost no chance of getting caught?

I presume that the touch pads are deactivated before the bus stops for
inspectors. If not, they should be.
--
Chris Hansen | chrishansenhome at btinternet dot com
|http://www.hansenhome.demon.co.uk or
|http://www.livejournal.com/users/chrishansenhome/

On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 20:13:50 +0100, "Chris Read"
wrote:

"Paul Corfield" wrote:

There will now follow a torrent of posts telling me I'm talking out of
the top of my head and that TfL is the evil empire and should be nuked
by George Dubya.

I reckon that, were the Routemaster to be re-introduced to oust the bendies,
there would be a torrent of complaints - not least from those who fought the
scrapping of the RM so vociferously over the last couple of years.

In terms of fare evasion, I am a semi-regular on the Heritage 15, and there
have been several occasions where the Conductor has not ventured upstairs
for the entire journey, despite only having to 'look after' about 20
passengers in total. Of course, this was widespread when the Routemaster was
in normal service.

However, to my mind, the Bendies should be heavily targetted by Inspectors.
I rather suspect that, as is human nature, the Inspectors go for 'easy
targets' - ie nice quiet suburban routes - wherever possible. I'm willing to
be proven wrong here, however. I use bendies maybe twice a week, and have
never been asked to produce my ticket since the Red Arrow 507 went over in
2002(?).

At the 453 stop just before the E&C roundabout, I see a squad of inspectors
and police around once a week or more, targeting the bendies coming from
Peckham. They almost always have a miscreant or two in tow after a bus stops.

I've also noted that the inspectors have a new Oyster reader that's about the
same size (if a bit thicker) as a 4-banger calculator. Very nifty and much
better than the huge readers they started out with.
--
Chris Hansen | chrishansenhome at btinternet dot com
|http://www.hansenhome.demon.co.uk or
|http://www.livejournal.com/users/chrishansenhome/

"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
...
On 13 Jun 2006 08:30:45 -0700, "CJB"
wrote:
There will now follow a torrent of posts telling me I'm talking out of
the top of my head and that TfL is the evil empire and should be nuked
by George Dubya.

Not at all, Paul. I think you always have something interesting and
informative to say about transport in London.

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

Why 'admits'? You're not ashamed of LU, are you?

EZ

E. Zackatackali wrote:
"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
...
On 13 Jun 2006 08:30:45 -0700, "CJB"
wrote:
There will now follow a torrent of posts telling me I'm talking out of
the top of my head and that TfL is the evil empire and should be nuked
by George Dubya.

Not at all, Paul. I think you always have something interesting and
informative to say about transport in London.

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

Why 'admits'? You're not ashamed of LU, are you?

Because there's usually some fool who wants to have a rant at someone
who works for LU about their crappy journey, and just as Paul provides
useful information to this group, he sometimes gets a battering too!

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

On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:53:46 +0100, Dave Arquati wrote:

E. Zackatackali wrote:
"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
...
On 13 Jun 2006 08:30:45 -0700, "CJB"
wrote:
There will now follow a torrent of posts telling me I'm talking out of
the top of my head and that TfL is the evil empire and should be nuked
by George Dubya.

Not at all, Paul. I think you always have something interesting and
informative to say about transport in London.

Thanks.

Admits to working for London Underground!

Why 'admits'? You're not ashamed of LU, are you?

No I'm not. We are not perfect but we do get a lot of people moved
around London with assets that are not necessarily the best. If in a few
years time when lots of assets have been improved and processes changed
to make things run more efficiently the public are still having delays
inflicted on them then I think public outrage about how had LU is will
be justified.

Whether we like it or not we are not the same railway and do not have
the same culture as say the Hong Kong MTR, Tokyo Subway or Singapore
MRT. Therefore we cannot (yet) produce the same service quality or
reliability. Hopefully one day we will run to those levels of service
quality and reliability.

Because there's usually some fool who wants to have a rant at someone
who works for LU about their crappy journey, and just as Paul provides
useful information to this group, he sometimes gets a battering too!

While the above is a true statement it is not an explanation of the
comment. The explanation is that I decided I would say I worked for LU
and not hide behind a pseudonym. I'm not criticising those who do use
such things but I think it's better to be open about who you work for
when posting to a group like this when "expert" or "inside" knowledge
will quickly be detected.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

"CJB" wrote in message

their bendy buses. All they have to do is to restrict boarding to the
front doors only. CJB.

I hope that TfL don't do this. I'd rather have a bus that's
quick to board and suffer a certain percentage of fare evaders.

Having to show your ticket to the driver is going to slow things down.
At the moment, I can present my Oyster Card to a reader after the bus
has been moving a few seconds. I wouldn't want to have to do this
serially with other people.

Anyway, if you did have to board at the front, how are you going to
enforce it ? If a driver sees someone entering through the exit doors,
what's he going to do ? Call the BTP ? Walk down the bus and remove
them ?

I'd rather bus DRIVERS do just that: battle through London's traffic
and have bus conductors (maybe one per three buses) who check tickets
at random, so that people have say a 40% chance of getting checked some
where along the jny.

Richard [in SG19]



--
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