The British rail operator South Western Railway has launched a crackdown on passengers who buy tickets only for the final leg of their journey, so that they can exit through the ticket gates at London stations. The fraud is said to be putting around GBP 1 million in revenue at risk.
The practice, known in the UK as ‘short-faring’, involves buying a ticket that is much cheaper than the one required for the journey actually undertaken.
South Western Railway (SWR) found that up to 95 per cent of bar-coded e-tickets purchased for the four-minute journey between Vauxhall and London Waterloo stations had been used fraudulently.
Passengers were in fact travelling from much greater distances – sometimes from the counties of Devon, Dorset, Hampshire or Surrey – but were using the Vauxhall–Waterloo ticket to gain access through the gates on arrival at Waterloo station.
Tickets are scanned on entry to Vauxhall
To stop this practice, the operator has deployed additional ticket inspectors at Vauxhall station. Staff are checking and scanning all electronic tickets as passengers enter the station.
This makes it easier for staff at London Waterloo to identify passengers presenting a Vauxhall–Waterloo ticket that has not been scanned at the point of departure. The lack of a scan indicates that the passenger boarded the train at another station further along the route.
Since the trial began in June, SWR has detected 153 cases of tickets being used for shorter journeys, compared with just seven during the same period last year.
Passengers caught without the correct ticket must pay a GBP 100 fine, halved if paid within 21 days, as well as the price of a single ticket for the journey made. Repeat offenders may face prosecution.
One passenger avoided paying GBP 20,000
Among the cases recently uncovered is that of a passenger who is alleged to have avoided paying for tickets totalling GBP 20,000 over a three-year period on journeys between Surrey and London.
Another passenger had accumulated debts of over GBP 11,000 after using the same method for more than four years on journeys between Hampshire and the British capital.
Initial results from the campaign show that around a third of passengers previously identified as using this method have started buying the correct tickets.
However, some of those evading payment have adapted quickly. At another SWR station in London, the number of electronic tickets purchased has risen by 89%, suggesting that fraud may be shifting to other parts of the network.
Fraud amounting to up to GBP 400 million a year
“The overwhelming majority of our customers pay the correct fare. However, there is growing evidence that some people are deliberately exploiting the system, which is a criminal offence and deprives the railways of hundreds of millions of GBP every year,” said Matthew Winnie, Director of Customer and Commercial Operations at SWR and Network Rail Wessex.
He added that the operator is targeting both obvious forms of fraud, such as multiple people passing through ticket barriers on a single ticket, and methods that are harder to detect, involving the misuse of e-tickets.
The UK rail industry organisation Rail Delivery Group estimates that fraud and fare evasion result in annual losses of GBP 350–400 million.
South Western Railway claims it loses approximately GBP 40 million a year due to fare evasion, although the level of fraud on its network is said to have fallen by 67 per cent since 2017.
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