I fought the law, and the law (as usual) won

Ticket Inspector

At last. Today I finally got to try out my new Fare’s Fair approach to train tickets. Let me explain…

I generally travel to work by train. The railway company has a penalty fare scheme which means that if you get caught without a ticket by one of the roaming ticket inspectors you have to pay a penalty of £15. This means that if you arrive at the station and the ticket office is understaffed, causing a huge long queue, you have to miss your train or risk paying a penalty. So you are obliged to arrive at the station early, just in case. However, if your train is late, as long as it’s less than 30 minutes late, you get no compensation at all. I think this is unfair because it demands utter punctuality from you but only vague punctuality from the train operators.

Because I thought the system was unfair I devised a compensation scheme of my own. If a train was delayed I wouldn’t buy a ticket on my next journey. If a ticket inspector happened to turn up I would happily pay the penalty fare and then get the money back by not buying tickets on future jouneys until I was even again. It worked because you only get a ticket inspector about once a week, but some of my friends felt that it was wrong for me to be fare-dodging so often and I wasn’t completely comfortable lumping myself in with the hard-core elements who never buy a ticket, so I came up with a new scheme.

What I decided to do was to pass any delays on to the ticket inspectors. So if a train is delayed by three minutes then the ticket inspector should have to wait for three minutes before he can see my ticket. I know it seems petty but it makes me feel much more relaxed about problems if I don’t feel completely powerless. Unfortunately every delayed train I’ve been on lately has not had an inspector on it, until today.

The 06:40 didn’t arrive until 06:43 and just after I’d sat down the inspector came along. I felt nervous but I knew I had to go through with it. I told him that I did have a ticket but I couldn’t show it to him immediately because the train was delayed. He looked annoyed straight away. I didn’t have the courage to tell him that he was going to have to wait three minutes. He told me that he had the power to chuck me off the train at the next stop. I hadn’t thought of that. I prevaricated, he said that he was going to ask me one last time. “I’m going to show you my ticket” I squeaked and got out the huge pile of old tickets I’ve got in my coat pocket. As I nervously fumbled through them, as slowly as I could in a last tiny act of defiance, I realised that my hands were really shaking. It was much more scary than I imagined it would be.

Have I gone soft? I’m sure I never used to find confronting authority figures so difficult. I hope I get a chance to do it again soon. Next time I don’t think I’ll tell him why there’s a delay, they do that to me often enough.

2 thoughts on “I fought the law, and the law (as usual) won

  1. Tannoy announcement a Charing Cross last night: “Trains are being delayed due to congestion in the London Bridge area. This is being caused by late running of previous services.”

    So they did give a reason: the trains are late because they are late.

    Left me stroking my beard, I can tell you.

  2. I’ve been operating the same fare dodging practice as you but against a different principal namely: if they want my money they ought to come and get it. It’s akin to having a shop unstaffed and asking customers to leave their money on the counter, as if…

    I find that paying the fines is far cheaper than buying a ticket each day.

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