Huge Potential Increase for Incomplete Journey Charge with Contactless

A trial has silently started (on July 5th) whereby passengers who touch in or out at 16 Central London National Rail stations will be charged an enhanced incomplete journey charge if they do not touch out or in at the station at the other end of the journey. The Rail Delivery Group (RDG) are leading on this initiative which is supposed to cut back on fare evasion from some of the further out stations which only accept contactless. There is no change to what happens if you use an Oyster card.

Background

When Oyster was originally introduced on the Underground there was no incomplete journey charge as almost all stations were gated. However, it soon became apparent that people were abusing the system so an entry or exit charge was applied which didn’t count towards capping.  That principle still applies today.  When late adopting National Rail services joined the Oyster system in 2010 the incomplete journey charge was set at the price of a mixed mode zone 1-6 journey.  If the touch that did happen was made in the peak times then a peak charge was made, otherwise it’s off-peak.  As the Oyster system expanded beyond the zones, incomplete journeys where the touch was recorded at say Gatwick Airport would generally be charged the single fare from that station to the National Rail terminal.  The same idea applies to contactless only stations.

What’s Changed

Without giving away too many ideas, the scope for fare evasion using contactless where it’s possible to join a train without touching in is worth more than the incomplete charge which will be made when you touch out to get through gates in Central London.  Currently that is set at £10.40 in peak times and £7.00 off-peak.  Even though currently only 3% of contactless journeys end up as incomplete, the RDG are keen to reduce that figure and ensure that people pay the right fare.  Thus, from July 5th the incomplete journey charge at the 16 stations is increased upto a maximum of £30.40.  The RDG are being quite guarded about what the actual amount might be, which I think is worrying because we’re talking about an amount which could be taken from the credit card or bank account automatically.  There are sometimes reasons why it is not possible to touch out and a £30.40 charge could well take an account into overdraft if the expected charge was only £7.00.

So Where Is This Happening

The 16 stations involved are:

• Blackfriars
• Cannon Street
• Charing Cross
• City Thameslink
• Euston
• Fenchurch Street
• Kings Cross
• Liverpool Street (Greater Anglia gatelines only)
• London Bridge
• Marylebone
• Paddington (GWR gatelines only)
• St Pancras International
• Tottenham Hale
• Victoria
• Waterloo
• Waterloo East

As these are all stations only serving National Rail trains the impact is designed to only affect people using the following train company services:

• c2c
• Chiltern
• Gatwick Express
• Greater Anglia
• Great Northern
• GWR
• London Northwestern Railway (sometimes using West Midlands Railway trains)
• Southeastern
• Southern
• South Western Railway
• Thameslink

The RDG have assured me that the Elizabeth line gatelines at Liverpool Street and Paddington will not be involved, and supposedly the Weaver line Overground platforms at Liverpool Street will also remain as before.  It’s clear that TfL do not want to be a party to this change, hence Moorgate, Finsbury Park and Clapham Junction (to name just three) are not included.

Euston is a strange one. The majority of London Northwestern Railway services use platforms 8-11 which also happens to be the gateline for Lioness line Overground services.  I wonder if a compromise was reached to allow that station to take part.

Other Important Details

According to internal TfL documents released under FOI, incomplete journeys at the 16 stations above will not be able to be completed online anymore.  Instead people will have to call the TfL Helpline during it’s opening hours (8am-8pm daily).  I pushed RDG on this and they have agreed that an alternative is to use the “Contact us about this journey” link on journey history to initiate the conversation.  This at least caters for busy people who may struggle to call other than at weekends and others with hearing difficulties who may struggle to use a phone.

I do have serious misgivings about this change.  It applies to all contactless journeys at those 16 stations, even those within zones 1-9 which would otherwise only attract the normal charge (£10.40/£7.00).  All that is being said is that the new charge will be upto £30.40, with no indication whether it will be less off-peak or at weekends.  Decisions about whether to refund a charge incurred in error can take several days, during which time your bank account may have been debited an extra £25.00+.  As an example, someone touching in off-peak at London Bridge and travelling to Greenwich (which is an open station with validators) who inadvertently fails to touch out might be charged £30.40. The fare they were expecting to pay is £3.20 and the Oyster incomplete journey charge would be £7.00.

There are occasions where it becomes impossible to touch in/out.  Residents of Kidbrooke will remember the three weeks where the station computer was offline due to building works.  All the touches eventually caught up and were applied correctly, but under this system you might get £60.80 deducted for a day trip to Charing Cross and back.  Twyford also had a similar outage around the same time.

What About Auto Complete

The system does have a useful feature where if you make regular journeys and just happen to miss a touch on one occasion it will auto complete the journey as if you had touched at that station and charge appropriately.  This is sensible and pragmatic and probably results in very little fare evasion.  I asked RDG about whether this feature would still operate and their reply was less than convincing: “Further development is still in progress”.  Does this mean that RDG is unhappy that the system tries to correct inadvertent errors?

In Conclusion

I must stress here that I am not against measures to ensure that passengers pay the correct fare for their journey. My concern is the potential effect on innocent passengers who may have much higher charges made to their bank account than they are expecting.  If you get a penalty fare you are charged £100 (or £50 if paid promptly) plus the usual fare, but you don’t have to pay this there and then and can make arrangements so that your current account doesn’t go overdrawn.  Take the Kidbrooke situation to it’s extreme and someone travelling for a short course of say three days could end up getting £182.40 deducted from their account instead of the £27.60 that 6 peak journeys should cost.

The vagueness is the problem. People need to be told exactly what they might be charged if they forget, in the same way as the penalty fare is spelt out in great detail.

Information Volunteers Requested

Have you been charged a higher incomplete journey charge at one of the stations above?  If yes, what were you charged, which station was it at and what time of day was the touch?  Also, when you called the helpdesk, what sort of information did you have to provide and did you get your charges adjusted?  I’d very much like to understand how the system is working in reality. But please don’t incur an incomplete journey deliberately.