Newcastle Metro

[Brugel]

I recently spent a holiday in Newcastle and travelled about on the Metro quite a bit. The total amount spent on this was in the region of �8 and yet there were no ticket barriers and nobody ever checked whether I actually had a ticket. Is this lack of ticket inspection normal for Newcastle and, if it is, does this mean that lots of people travel about for free?

[K99]

I'm not a metro user anymore, but I never used to get a ticket when I travelled on the metro and nobody that I knew of did either. I thought they were supposedly cracking down on fare dodgers but they obviously havn't.

[Toffee]

Try Berlin. Everything taken on trust. Millions saved on ticket barriers but woe betide anyone caught without a valid ticket. I've witnessed it and it's not a pretty sight.

[Headtime]

It used to shock me too when I lived in Newcastle. An entire underground network built on trust! And as a smelly student I did regularly bunk the metro. I never had my tickets checked. I regret doing that now. The ticket prices were a pittance then anyway. A friend of mine did get caught, and was held for 45mins, until he was issued with a fine. Not worth the effort in retrospect. Mind you, the fine was only a fiver, so you could quite reasonably weigh the cost of a fine against never buying a ticket. But as I'm older now, that's just plain wrong! Mind you nicking blocks of Chedder from the blind-spot in the Presto supermarket in Byker was priceless.

[Hippy]

There are crowds of ticket checkers buzzing about in clouds that descend on trains. They have you trapped if you are a fare dodger and the fines have gone right up. I think it's �30 now and off to court for repeat offenders. At weekends this seems to be backed up by police patrols.

Just after the extension to Sunderland opened, I don't think more than 20% of the travellers on the nearly always full trains to Wearside paid. The ticket checkers have increased this proportion, but I still have the impression that ticket holders on the Sunderland branch only number 50-60%.

NEXUS, the Metro operator are supposed to be always in a cash crisis and say they can't afford to employ ticket inspectors, and the ticket barriers were considered a health and safety hazard. If the barriers did not let non-ticket holders out they would be fried in a fire! I think that NEXUS would soon recoup the inspectors' salaries in increased fares revenue. This was proved hands down on the buses before bus de-regulation in 1980s.