No, scrapping the system would be a huge shot in the foot. You can't expect ticket inspectors to force their way through congested Central line trains during peak hours, for example. The ticket barriers are far more efficient at making people pay for public transport than proof-of-payment systems: here's one study from Budapest, a city that does use PoP, where 9% of people self-reported to sometimes travel without a ticket or a travel pass: https://bkk.hu/hirek/2024/03/egyre-nagyobb-ciki-a-blicceles.12393/). That's double the figure that you quote in your piece, even if it is self-reported. Here's a Guardian article from 2012 that puts the figure at 6% for Berlin: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/02/german-fare-dodgers-public-transport.
The larger issue is that London public transport is far more expensive than any continental counterparts because this country has an aversion to subsidising accessible transportation: I have an inkling that the people who fare dodge don't do it out of preference but out of necessity. Your entire piece has huge Laffer curve energy. Any amount you save by not having to have ticket barriers is extinguished by the HR costs of having people go through trains with a member of the BTP. London't ticketing system, as expensive it is, remains one of the better ones. Fare dodging is not the issue: TfL being underfunded is.
I think it is entirely fare that the Tube should have to pay its way (as it does – the Tube is profitable, and subsidises the buses). I am pretty anti subsidies in general, for a variety of reasons that I’ll write about at some point. Of course I apply the same logic to road users, who should certainly have to pay their way.
Thanks for the figures (although I would say that ‘9% of people sometimes travel without a ticket’ is v very different from my interpretation of the TfL figures, which is that ‘4.7% of revenue is lost to fare evasion’); I’ve updated my prior in the direction of my conjecture being wrong.
I'm not sure how you can reconcile the contradiction of being pro-public transport and anti-subsidies.
I reached out to various sources in the German public transport space who tell me that 3% of people at spot checks turn out to travel without a ticket. Moreover, you gloss over the fact that Germany has the Deutschlandticket, which decimated fare dodging. It's a heavily subsidised programme but one that got people out of cars and into trains, which I'm sure you can agree is a positive outcome.
What Londoners are blind to is how extortionately expensive public transport is compared to other European capitals. The Oyster system is one of the few positives about it. One wise friend suggested that a key improvement that could be made is reducing the time it takes to scan payment cards - it's something like 400ms in London, four times as much as Japan's 100ms.
Montpellier, France - they ditched paying for public transport all together. Public transport can never pay for itself, so it makes sense to cut costs, rather than increase revenue. And besides, free public transport will encourage more people to use it.
They do have a mechanism to verify pay-as-you go "tickets", I think - they record your card and if it doesn't detect taps in/taps out when the overnight reconciliation is done you're charged a fine. Though without ticket barriers you'd still need somewhere to place contactless readers so people can reliably use them.
This is how the Manchester trams work. You tap in and tap off, then occasionally ticket inspectors come on and tap everyone’s cards in order to verify that they’ve paid.
This seems like wishful thinking to me, but even if there were compliance, the effort involved in ticketing would go through the roof. The Oyster/contactless model, where TfL does the calculation for the traveller (to the point of calculating if a weekly ticket is better value than a daily one), is so much more convenient than the alternatives, for both Londoners and tourists. The fact there is no longer a real need for ticket offices is testament to that.
Like others, I suspect the dodging on the DLR is extremely high, but it doesn’t have to cope with the volume of the Underground. It’s nice making comparisons to these other European cities, but they’re nothing in size compared to London. New York, Tokyo, etc (generally) have ticket barriers because it’s far more efficient for dealing with throughput. Try checking the tickets on my Central Line journey this morning, where no one could move. I don’t know the percentage of travellers during the peak periods, but I suspect it’s high. Opening those times to fare avoidance would surely cost the system more than a bit of extra construction.
In Toronto, we have tap on, and the POP inspectors have been accused of bias. "A review by University of Toronto researchers found Black and Indigenous riders were more likely to be formally charged or cautioned by TTC fare inspectors than white riders, and Black males were particularly overrepresented. Though Black residents make up 8.8% of Toronto’s population, they accounted for 19.2% of enforcement incidents; Indigenous people make up less than 1% of the population but accounted for 3% of incidents" Turnstiles are not racist, but POP inspectors can be.
Great piece but I think you can keep touch and pay. We already have this system on the DLR - no barriers just touch points at places like Canary Wharf and Shadwell. Someone comes and checks your card has been touched in - don’t recall transport police either, but perhaps this is because it’s established system.
I’d be interested in a piece on the DLR as a model for wider mass transit - apart from cheap to build and no barriers, the other obvious feature is automation/ driverless. Why can’t we roll it out when they do in France?
I disliked the POP system when I lived in Berlin. Currently, on TFL, it's impossible to pay the wrong fare as long as you touch in and out. With POP, if you make an honest mistake at the ticket machine, you don't find out until they check your ticket and fine you. It's pretty rough for tourists and newcomers – lots of people who visit Berlin end up getting fined at least once, which isn't true of London. I'm all for personal responsibility but train tickets can be complicated!
You are missing the fact that we already have an (expensive) barrier system to support the oyster payment system
While you wouldn't necessarily start from here, the costs of changing massively outweigh the benefits of not requiring wide ticket halls in the few new stations that we build
The problem is that the people most likely to fare dodge will be the people who will escalate the conflict. Therefore the ticket inspectors will not want to enforce the law: particularly if they might get in trouble for inspecting certain... demographics.
Two comments. 1) you don't factor in the costs of employing ticket inspectors (and seeing through the succesful proscution of those caught without tickets and who could not/would not pay any fines levied by inspectors)
2) as well as inspecting tickets these officers would have an additional benefit of providing reassurance to passengers particular during the evenings
On the first point, something I cut out of the original draft was that POP is substituting opex for capex. If capex (big stations) is v expensive, and wages are in relative terms low (as is the case in Britain today) it makes sense to swap capex for opex.
No, scrapping the system would be a huge shot in the foot. You can't expect ticket inspectors to force their way through congested Central line trains during peak hours, for example. The ticket barriers are far more efficient at making people pay for public transport than proof-of-payment systems: here's one study from Budapest, a city that does use PoP, where 9% of people self-reported to sometimes travel without a ticket or a travel pass: https://bkk.hu/hirek/2024/03/egyre-nagyobb-ciki-a-blicceles.12393/). That's double the figure that you quote in your piece, even if it is self-reported. Here's a Guardian article from 2012 that puts the figure at 6% for Berlin: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/02/german-fare-dodgers-public-transport.
The larger issue is that London public transport is far more expensive than any continental counterparts because this country has an aversion to subsidising accessible transportation: I have an inkling that the people who fare dodge don't do it out of preference but out of necessity. Your entire piece has huge Laffer curve energy. Any amount you save by not having to have ticket barriers is extinguished by the HR costs of having people go through trains with a member of the BTP. London't ticketing system, as expensive it is, remains one of the better ones. Fare dodging is not the issue: TfL being underfunded is.
I think it is entirely fare that the Tube should have to pay its way (as it does – the Tube is profitable, and subsidises the buses). I am pretty anti subsidies in general, for a variety of reasons that I’ll write about at some point. Of course I apply the same logic to road users, who should certainly have to pay their way.
Thanks for the figures (although I would say that ‘9% of people sometimes travel without a ticket’ is v very different from my interpretation of the TfL figures, which is that ‘4.7% of revenue is lost to fare evasion’); I’ve updated my prior in the direction of my conjecture being wrong.
I'm not sure how you can reconcile the contradiction of being pro-public transport and anti-subsidies.
I reached out to various sources in the German public transport space who tell me that 3% of people at spot checks turn out to travel without a ticket. Moreover, you gloss over the fact that Germany has the Deutschlandticket, which decimated fare dodging. It's a heavily subsidised programme but one that got people out of cars and into trains, which I'm sure you can agree is a positive outcome.
What Londoners are blind to is how extortionately expensive public transport is compared to other European capitals. The Oyster system is one of the few positives about it. One wise friend suggested that a key improvement that could be made is reducing the time it takes to scan payment cards - it's something like 400ms in London, four times as much as Japan's 100ms.
Exactly this feels like common sense
Montpellier, France - they ditched paying for public transport all together. Public transport can never pay for itself, so it makes sense to cut costs, rather than increase revenue. And besides, free public transport will encourage more people to use it.
They do have a mechanism to verify pay-as-you go "tickets", I think - they record your card and if it doesn't detect taps in/taps out when the overnight reconciliation is done you're charged a fine. Though without ticket barriers you'd still need somewhere to place contactless readers so people can reliably use them.
This is how the Manchester trams work. You tap in and tap off, then occasionally ticket inspectors come on and tap everyone’s cards in order to verify that they’ve paid.
This seems like wishful thinking to me, but even if there were compliance, the effort involved in ticketing would go through the roof. The Oyster/contactless model, where TfL does the calculation for the traveller (to the point of calculating if a weekly ticket is better value than a daily one), is so much more convenient than the alternatives, for both Londoners and tourists. The fact there is no longer a real need for ticket offices is testament to that.
Like others, I suspect the dodging on the DLR is extremely high, but it doesn’t have to cope with the volume of the Underground. It’s nice making comparisons to these other European cities, but they’re nothing in size compared to London. New York, Tokyo, etc (generally) have ticket barriers because it’s far more efficient for dealing with throughput. Try checking the tickets on my Central Line journey this morning, where no one could move. I don’t know the percentage of travellers during the peak periods, but I suspect it’s high. Opening those times to fare avoidance would surely cost the system more than a bit of extra construction.
In Toronto, we have tap on, and the POP inspectors have been accused of bias. "A review by University of Toronto researchers found Black and Indigenous riders were more likely to be formally charged or cautioned by TTC fare inspectors than white riders, and Black males were particularly overrepresented. Though Black residents make up 8.8% of Toronto’s population, they accounted for 19.2% of enforcement incidents; Indigenous people make up less than 1% of the population but accounted for 3% of incidents" Turnstiles are not racist, but POP inspectors can be.
Great piece but I think you can keep touch and pay. We already have this system on the DLR - no barriers just touch points at places like Canary Wharf and Shadwell. Someone comes and checks your card has been touched in - don’t recall transport police either, but perhaps this is because it’s established system.
I’d be interested in a piece on the DLR as a model for wider mass transit - apart from cheap to build and no barriers, the other obvious feature is automation/ driverless. Why can’t we roll it out when they do in France?
I disliked the POP system when I lived in Berlin. Currently, on TFL, it's impossible to pay the wrong fare as long as you touch in and out. With POP, if you make an honest mistake at the ticket machine, you don't find out until they check your ticket and fine you. It's pretty rough for tourists and newcomers – lots of people who visit Berlin end up getting fined at least once, which isn't true of London. I'm all for personal responsibility but train tickets can be complicated!
You are missing the fact that we already have an (expensive) barrier system to support the oyster payment system
While you wouldn't necessarily start from here, the costs of changing massively outweigh the benefits of not requiring wide ticket halls in the few new stations that we build
The problem is that the people most likely to fare dodge will be the people who will escalate the conflict. Therefore the ticket inspectors will not want to enforce the law: particularly if they might get in trouble for inspecting certain... demographics.
Great piece! Would moving away from pay-as-you-go towards season tickets mean scrapping the peak/off peak distinction? How would you think about this?
Two comments. 1) you don't factor in the costs of employing ticket inspectors (and seeing through the succesful proscution of those caught without tickets and who could not/would not pay any fines levied by inspectors)
2) as well as inspecting tickets these officers would have an additional benefit of providing reassurance to passengers particular during the evenings
On the first point, something I cut out of the original draft was that POP is substituting opex for capex. If capex (big stations) is v expensive, and wages are in relative terms low (as is the case in Britain today) it makes sense to swap capex for opex.
And on (2), yes that is a very good point!