How come rail fare dodging is so rampant in Britain?

Because train tickets are so bloody expensive....13 quid for a one way ticket to central london (from south london) ...I have been so tempted.

I was following the thread with regard to that Scottish chav who who thrown off the train for not having a ticket, was watching the Youtube clip with a friend of mine who works for the national rail company of Switzerland... so I got on to ask him how many people does he think are fare dodgers in Switzerland....... his answer was none or if there were they must be foreigners (standard Swiss answer) Then he went to tell me that in Austria when he was working there some years back, if you bought a daily pass for their rail system, all you are given is a ticket and it starts from the time you validate it at a date-stamp machine. He said at random some inspector will inspect those tickets to see if it had been validated.... he said it was an extremely rare case to catch anyone, and if an inspector wanted to show his bosses that he was doing his job, all he had to do was listen out in the train who wasn't speaking in German.

Question : Train fares in Switzerland isn't cheap (nothing is cheap here really) neither is it in Germany or Austria.... but how come there doesn't appear to be much cases of fare dodgers, while in Britain it seems like a daily occurrence that there are a case of somekind of someone either dodging the fare or purposely not having a ticket at all.

what gives?

Top 10 responses after being found with no ticket:

1. "I'm related to the Queen so I don't need one"

2. "I'm in the Zimbabwean SAS, on covert operations"

3. "Don't you know who I am?"

4. "What's a ticket?"

5. "I thought the trains were free"

6. "If the inspector doesn't see me, I don't need one"

7. "I'm a freeman of the land, the law doesn't apply to me"

8. "I thought I was a child till 21"

9. "I didn't think you would accept my fare"

10. "Isn't this a bus?"


Favourites are numbers 3 and 10

I live in South London (zone 6) and I've travelled into Central London (zone 1) several times, and it's never cost me as much as £13 . Are you talking paper tickets at peak times or something? Prices vary depending on how you pay and when you travel, but with my Oyster card combined with my 16-25 railcard, a single journey never costs me more than a few pounds.

Probs just outside of the zone, so no Oyster.

10. "Isn't this a bus?"

Because our trains are awful, over-priced, never on time, don't have enough seats and often smell.

Back in the day when there were less ticket barriers I used to have a somewhat cunning method of avoiding buying tickets.

I used to travel between towns A and B every day, so I would buy a return ticket from A to B. Then when I was returning from B to A, I would buy a return ticket from B to A. Because the return portions of the ticket are valid for one month from the date of issue, I would then have two return portions covering both directions of my journey. If no tickets were checked and stamped I could use these for the full month safe in the knowledge that I did *have* a valid ticket if needed, so there was no chance of ever getting a fine. Of course if the tickets were checked 100% of the time, I still didn't lose anything as I'd paid for two return journeys and received two return journeys. Probably saved about £500 a month doing this since the return was £20 and they were almost never checked!

Because train tickets are so bloody expensive....13 quid for a one way ticket to central london (from south london) ...I have been so tempted.

I used to do it because I could, frequently saved me £30 a journey, if an inspector ever came on he would just let me buy a ticket on the train.

Remember once when we had to get off the train for a replacement bus, was worried I was gonna be stranded but they let anyone get on the bus, free 40 minute coach trip for the win