"free" Train Travel

[kenjonbro]

I'm new to Train travel but it seems to me that at smaller stations you kind of travel for "free" since there are no ticket offices ?

[pusskin]

Free? Travel free till you get caught ken.

[Maydup]

You kind of pay the conductor when travelling from a small station. Or buy a ticket from the machine if there is one.

[marval]

There always used to be a man on the train who you got your ticket from.

[Buenchico]

The railway byelaws require you to be in possession of a valid ticket before boarding any train except when you're unable to buy a ticket at the station where you commence your journey.

If there's no facility to buy a ticket (or, for example, there's a ticket machine that you can't use because you've not got enough notes or change) then, where there's a machine offering you a 'permit to travel' you must use it. (You pay as much as you can toward your fare and then pay the rest either on the train or, more usually, at the 'excess fares' desk at the end of your journey).

If there are no ticket-selling facilities and no 'permit to travel' machine then you can buy your ticket on the train. (The full range of tickets that you could have bought at a staffed station will then be available to you. However if you boarded a train without a ticket when you could have purchased one, you can only buy 'full fare' tickets on the train; you might also have to pay a 'penalty fare').

However if you can complete your journey without being offered the opportunity to buy a ticket (e.g. because the stations at both ends of your journey are unstaffed and no conductor comes round on the train) you won't be committing an offence by travelling without a ticket.

[kenjonbro]

I have no intention of avoiding tickets - as my employer pays - but it seems entirely possible to travel to from one small station to the next small station without buying a ticket because there simply is no facility to buy one.No machines, no conductors
Thing is if you arrive at a station with pay facilities -the charge will be the same from that station as it would be from the earlier small stations

[baza]

As Chris explained the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 and the Penalty Fare Act above, the choice is yours. Buy a ticket or fiddle your fare.
Speaking as a retired Revenue Protection Inspector and Authorised Person under the PFA. I know what I would do. There is no such thing as free ride.

[Buenchico]

Around here (in Suffolk) the majority of stations are unstaffed but all of the rural lines have conductors on the trains. (Some mainline services are 'driver only' trains but all of the stations they serve have ticket facilities). It is, of course, fairly easy to do a 'short hop' before the conductor comes round (even if you're not trying to avoid paying your fare) but the train company must have calculated that the cost of putting ticket machines in at the small stations (and then servicing them) would be greater than the additional revenue that they'd bring in.

In practice, most passengers make return journeys and will see the conductor on at least one leg of their journey. Since the return fare is often only slightly more than the single one, the loss to the rail company (from only receiving payment in one direction) is actually fairly minimal. For example, when I go to the pub on a Sunday evening I should pay £2.85 return. I often don't see the conductor on the outbound journey (so I don't have to pay) but it still costs me £2.60 to get home again, so the loss to the rail company is only 25p.

The National Fares Manual (which is the 'bible' for rail ticket sales) groups stations together for longer journeys. So, for example, if you were travelling from a rural station near to Swansea to a rural station near to Ipswich, you'd be charged the Swansea to Ipswich fare. However local journeys have their own fare tables, so you should be charged different fares for different journeys within a local area.

[Buenchico]

Crossed posts, Baza.

Neither I nor Kenjonbro are actually advocating fare dodging but, as I'm sure you'll be the first to agree (given that you used to chase fare dodgers for a living!) it is NOT an offence to travel without payment on a train when you've genuinely not been offered any facility to pay your fare.

So if you travel from one unstaffed station (with no ticket machine or permit-to-travel machine) to another similar station, without seeing a conductor (or revenue protection officer) and without changing at a station where you could have purchased a ticket, you haven't done anything wrong.

[Mosaic]

Recently had a big rail adventure - my favourite kind of holiday - through Britain and Europe. Made some major trips through Germany including Dusseldorf-Amsterdam, and never had my ticket looked at once. Made me think, if I weren't such an honest person, I'd be well ahead.

[Old_Geezer]

Wish it was free. It's all about the service providers unwilling to pay to provide the service they are supposed to and happy to cut corners and make folk feel uncomfortable instead. It's the modern way. Blow the public, the saving is justified by our accountants and that's all that matters.

[mushroom25]

at an unstaffed local station near where i live, between 40 and 50 students board the train to travel one stop to the town where their college is located. only a handful ever buy a ticket. when the train arrives, the door indicators announce the location of the conductor (his position light "flashes" before the doors open), the students then join the part of the train furthest from him; he rarely if ever gets to them before they alight, those he does catch have their fares shared amongst the group.

[Maydup]

^^^^ and who wouldn't have done the same as a student!

[fiction-factory]

>"It's all about the service providers unwilling to pay to provide the service they are supposed to and happy to cut corners and make folk feel uncomfortable instead. It's the modern way. Blow the public, the saving is justified by our accountants and that's all that matters."

Or it could be that it's keeping costs and fares down. Although it may be that the staff savings are outweighed by money lost through additional evasion

[puzzled54]

Actually, I wondered about the docklands light railway in London. There were no barriers to go through like on the underground, and being an occasional visitor, I thought it would be easy to use the trains without paying.

[Cathyhuns]

Which is why on the DLR, the PSO on the train regularly comes round to check tickets. Since the concession changed the frequency of checks has increased significantly.

[puzzled54]

I had a day travel card, but realised when I was on the train that I had not been through a barrier. I didn't see anyone doing checks, but how would they know if you had used a contactless card?

[Jonathan-Joe]

(On DLR) "how would they know if you had used a contactless card? "
They wouldn't know immediately, but scroll down on this link http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/contactless-fare-evasion.html to see how you could be caught out.

[ichkeria]

In some countries they have the revolutionary idea of allowing you to buy a ticket in a shop. Which would be so simple. But presumably it would not work in this country with its ludicrously overcomplicated fare system