Fare dodging in 2012

  Amaan Ali

 In the Olympic Summer of 2012  many tourists will notice the ticket inspectors that work across the Tube, Overground and Buses while travelling between hotels, sites and Stratford. The inspectors' presence will disturb them only in that they will have to register the fact that they are meant to take out their commemorative Olympic Oysters and make contact with the card reader. The role of hopping on and off the tubes, buses and trains of the London transport network to catch fare-dodgers and deter others from attempting is covered by the noble job title of ‘Revenue Protection Officer’. There are currently somewhere in the region of 350 of these RPOs on the Bus Network, alone; with a recruitment drive starting in September according to the one I last encountered. On this occasion, I was not required to try to imagine up a fake name & D.O.B and attach it to a fake address as a job has made a £19.90 weekly bus pass viable recently and hopefully put my faredodging days to rest. The RPO, when quizzed on numbers and payscales, was filled with glee at such a positive response, so unusual in her line of work; and was keen to stress how easy the job was for the rate of pay, before rushing off when she needed to regroup with the officer covering downstairs, to hop on the next bus of the afternoon. The rate of pay that she mentioned was somewhere in the region of £40k, having not needed any qualifications and not having paid for any specialist training course. The last wisdom that she bestowed on me and my fellow £6.08/h colleague was that there was a fresh recruitment drive slated for September.


         Speaking from experience, there are a variety of different means and techniques to decrease one’s travel expenditure in a week that might render someone liable to paying a fine or facing court prosecution if not being in possession of adequate funds to pay it. These fines vary across the sprawling transport network which comprises of London Underground, the bus network; in addition to several overland rail routes, managed by different operators with policies outside of the regulatory influence of the TfL body, despite the fact that these routes were integrated into the Oyster transport network 2 and a half years ago. Passenger Focus, the independent watchdog, headed by Anthony Smith has noted cases of backdoor fair rises by operators such as South-Western and First Capital Connect. Reports of individuals being fined, and even prosecuted for honest mistakes even when there was evidence that they had paid their fares are rife and have been outlined by the body as an apparent need for a clear set of procedures and regulations for revenue protection teams.*



            Oyster fares rose by an average of 7.5% in January of 2011 and 2012. A single Oyster bus journey as of 2012 costs £1.35. While Boris Johnson defended these hikes as necessary investment in the transport network for Londoners, his mayoral opponent built a campaign almost entirely on reversing these changes. Although Ken’s bid failed; the small margin by which he was defeated and the gains by Labour in the GLA speak of the pain of transport prices felt by Londoners. The 32% turnout is indicative of the extent of political apathy felt by disenfranchised Londoners. Boris was reelected by the same more affluent boroughs that he won with his 2008 pledge to reverse the controversial Western Extension of the C-charge, the value of which TfL rated in 2010 as £55 million. The TfL website currently estimates the cost of fare-dodging as £63 million. Google searches just for the term “faredodging” rose steadily in the UK through January 2011 and spiked again in Christmas-time of the same year as commuters began to dread January more than usual.
When January 2013 comes upon us, the likelihood is higher fares as well as higher penalties for those without present evidence for having paid theirs upon encountering the ticket inspectors, of whom there will definitely be more. The amount of media attention surrounding parking attendants and associated fines is incredible in contrast with that about ticket inspectors and the Revenue Protection Offices of the various companies that provide Londoners with a means to get to work, or get into work.


Surely the money used on these RPOs could be used to keep fares down, or maybe the scrapping of the Western Extension has proved disastrous for a cash-strapped City Hall? In either case, there should be more attention paid to suffering commuters especially the un and under-employed than to those who want to park their cars in the West End on a night out, a far fetched dream for many Londoners.





*http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/22/train-fare-dodging-innocent-passengers