Great Western Coffee Shop

I've recently started travelling on the network and have also worked in the rail industry for a number of years.
The Great Western franchise really does have the potential to be a great railway again and i think it's quite exciting all the plans that lie ahead.
In someways though I think the basics that are quite evidently not being 'got right' need to be addressed - such as poor communication with passengers, a real lack of revenue protection, messy trains - especially away from London, inconsistent attitudes of staff - some are great but some are awful and lazy!!!

Out of the above the one thing that does dismay me is the poor revenue protection - almost entirely focussed on ticket gates. I haven't had a ticket checked properly in months!!!

Does anyone know why this is? Dont they have RPI depots anymore?

Hello Rob, welcome aboard and thanks for diving straight in with such an open and honest post. You'll find this board tends to have often quite polarised opinions. I think we're broadly in agreement across the board though that revenue protection could indeed be far better than it actually is - but the concensus tends to be that the technology needs to catch up a little (smart tickets, Oyster-type cards, etc etc) rather than it being any fault of either the train staff or revenue protection officers.

Govt concentrating on gate installations. Means TOCs need gate attendants & RPIs come second

Hello, Rob, and welcome to the forum!  :)

Revenue protection is indeed an ongoing issue for FGW, and the various Community Rail Partnerships are working with them to try to address this.

After the ticket machines at Montpelier and Redland on the Severn Beach Line were damaged, there was a review of their effectiveness. From the minutes of the Severn Beach Line PACT meeting on 23 June 2011 (paraphrased):

There is significant support for RPI's to be deployed, rather than TVMs. Devon & Cornwall pursued similar revenue projects and have moved away from TVM due to security and vandalism issues, employing additional RPI instead. The DfT are in support of RPI on trains and changes within the Revenue Protection team in Bristol over the next six months will largely reflect this.

I hope this helps to reassure you that this matter is being addressed, at least on a local level!

CfN.  :-X

Hi Rob - I came to this area of the forum to introduce myself - which I will do in a minute but I noticed your introduction and couldn't agree more - particulary in the area of revenue protection. If you see my intro - which I am about to do - you will see my experiences!

Come on down to the proper West me 'andsome.  We love checking tickets  ;D

Thanks for the welcome to the forum guys!

It's interesting to hear your views on Revenue Protection; I'm wondering if any of you can tell me how the system actually works?

I'm interested to hear about where these depots actually are, and how the team operates.

Many moons ago I used to be an RPI in North London and in those days for all the services out of Kings Cross we had 3 depots, about 40 inspectors and a small but very effective fraud team. Only two ticket barriers (at Cambridge and Hitchin) in those days though!

I'm also constantly annoyed at the lack of revenue protection on LTV services, especially between Reading and Paddington. There must be thousands of people each day that don't pay for travel - I know of several people who do it on a regular basis becuase the risk of getting caught is so minimal. If you know what you are doing it is too easy to get round the barriers at Paddington - the barriers were put in very badly in my opinion. Surely the cost of a RPI can't be more than ^30 an hour - I'm pretty confident on almost every Reading - Paddington Turbo at the moment you'd take at least ^100 in fares or penalty fares.

Yes ... but if it's going to cost FGW 30 pounds an hour to provide the staff to collect penalty fares, they need quite a lot more than 100 pounds an hour (150 pounds in fact) in extra revenue just in order to break even on the deal. An old article explains why:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/may/24/rail-operators-government-spending  ... to my knowledge, the situation described is still the case and it severly stifles commercially justified developments as the farebox income can only be partially offset against the cost of provideing the service / regime that brings that increase.

When a TOC is on a "Cap and Collar" arrangement it does not exactly encourage the TOC to maximise revenue. If the net additional income to the TOC after Cap and Collar calculations is less than the cost of collecting that extra income, what TOC is going to try too much?