'No ticket' Ken escapes train fine

[whole diary]

[super tm]

'Five years ago I offered the company enough money to install new ticket barriers that would allow their system to be compatible with London's Oyster^▸ (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services) card system. First Great Western refused to do this because it would dramatically reduce income from their ^20 penalty charge regime.'

A spokesman for First Great Western said: 'We don't know where Mr Livingstone is coming from as First Great Western didn't issue him with a penalty fare. Our approach in such cases is to give our customers the benefit of the doubt and our staff were happy to accept that Mr Livingstone's mistake was genuine

The above is taken from the Mail on Sunday article.  Basically it is a load of rubbish and bordering on a untruth.  He did not offer FGW^▸ (First Great Western) enough money to install new ticket barriers so the oyster card system would be compatible with FGW.  To have done so would mean oyster readers from Paddington to Penzance.

What he did offer was money to make the system compatible in London.  As Slough is outside London it never would have worked at Slough even if they had taken the money. Oyster is a London system and does not work outside !!!!

I can see why the FGW spokesperson does not see where he is coming from.

Also do we really believe the statement that they did not accept the money as they would lose too many penalty fares.  If it is true then it must be written down somewhere so lets have the letter published. 

By the way the FGW system in London has been compatible with oyster for about 12 months now.

[devon_metro]

If I didn't buy car tax, i'd get fined.

Same principle 

I'm sure Ken could cough up ^20 whatever happens.

[inspector_blakey]

The enigmatic Mr Livingstone strike again. Perhaps someone ought to remind him that under BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) you still had to pitch up and buy a ticket (and indeed they started introducing penalty fares to certain areas in the very early 1990s).

I'm a bit puzzled by the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) line on this issue though: the press office says "we give customers the benefit of the doubt" and yet stations are plastered with posters threatening penalty fares or prosecution for travelling without a ticket.

I have never been charged a penalty fare (they're easy to avoid, I find, by buying a ticket) and on the one occasion when I was charged a standard open fare on board successfully challenged it and was subsequently refunded (suffice it to say that I had started my journey horribly early in the morning from Oxford in the days before the S&B ticket machines when the ticket office was closed and the old Quickfare machines did not sell appropriate tickets. I had purchased a permit to travel, but the offending train manager did not seem to have heard of the NRCoC^▸ (National Rail Conditions of Carriage)). However on my regular travels in and around the Thames Valley I have not noticed many RPIs^▸ (Revenue Protection Inspector (or Retail Price Index, depending on the context)) giving passengers the benefit of the doubt, and as I have posted elsewhere consider some of the examples of revenue protection I have witnessed to be very close to threatening behaviour or intimidation. FGW does itself no favours by sending out inconsistent messages in this regard.

[Btline]

...they're easy to avoid, I find, by buying a ticket...

[paul7575]

What he did offer was money to make the system compatible in London.  As Slough is outside London it never would have worked at Slough even if they had taken the money. Oyster^▸ (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services) is a London system and does not work outside !!!!

Call me a cynic, but I think this is an intentional stunt on Livingstones behalf. What he is trying to do is keep positioning himself as public transport's only possible saviour, but mainly to keep one major issue bubbling away, which is this...

Whenever Oyster PAYG^▸ (Pay as you go) is finally rolled out with all the London TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company), there will still be all these 'edge cases' where it can't be used, that are the homes of millions of London commuters.  Think of Gerrards Cross, High Wycombe, Slough, Windsor, Weybridge, Epsom etc, and that is just to the west...

But you can't just keep expanding the zonal area across the country concentric to London, at some stage there has to be a stop, and then an interface with other zonal fare systems.  The big political question is where do those natural boundaries lie.  In any case 'orbital zones' aren't necessarily correct for everywhere else, but work for London because they've realised the vast majority of tube journeys are radial. Buses are different with TfL^» (Transport for London - about), you pay per journey.

Of course if places such as Slough could be sucked into Greater London, just to make fare simplification possible, they'd bring all the relevant local authority's income into the GLA's accounts, where it could be spent in Ken's heartland...

Paul

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the Press Gazette:

PCC^▸ (Police and Crime Commissioner) rejects Livingstone complaint over rail fare 'dodge'

The Press Complaints Commission has rejected a complaint by former London mayor Ken Livingstone made over a series of Daily Mail articles claiming he had "dodged" a rail fare.

Livingstone lodged his complaint over articles published in March which suggested despite his not purchasing a ticket for a train journey from Paddington to Slough, he was not forced to pay a penalty fare.

The Mail said the incident contrasted with his "zero tolerance" policy on fare dodging when he was Mayor of London.

In the complaint Livingstone said he had been unable to buy a ticket as a tube delay meant he arrived at the station just minutes before his train departed and like many other passengers he approached station staff at his destination where no-one received a fine.

Making its ruling the PCC said that while the account bore the interpretation of the freelance reporter who had witnessed the event, there appeared to be nothing inaccurate about it and therefore the paper was under no obligation to obtain Livingstone's version of events.

The PCC stated: "The freelance reporter was an eyewitness to the fact that the complainant [Livingstone] did not have a ticket, which was the substance of the story, so there was no need to contact the complainant to find out whether it was true. The statements regarding the complainant being warned were attributed to a spokesman for First Great Western, and the suggestion that the complainant had looked embarrassed was attributed to a witness. Whether or not it was technically correct that the complainant had ^admitted his error^ was not significant given that he had accepted that he had approached station staff to tell them that he did not have a ticket."

The PCC failed to uphold the complaint as it said it did not consider the coverage misleading.