Ticketing and fare penalties: fix the system, not the passenger.

System complexity and fairness in fares

The BBC’s recent reporting chimes with what many passengers already feel. Our fares system has accumulated rules and edge cases for decades. It rewards inside knowledge, not everyday use. The regulator’s recent review is frank about this. It finds inconsistent and sometimes disproportionate enforcement across the network and describes a system where honest mistakes are too easily escalated, while deliberate fare evasion still needs tackling with more focus and better evidence. (Office of Rail and Road)

What sits beneath the complexity? Fragmented retail, operator-specific conditions, a proliferation of ticket types, and enforcement that varies by company. The ORR’s point is not to go soft on evasion. It is to separate intent from confusion and apply proportionate responses consistently. That is the only route to a system that is both fair and effective. (Office of Rail and Road)

I write sitting on a train listening to an active conversation between passengers opposite about when exactly off-peak is.

Passenger trust and communication

Criminalising what are essentially innocent errors damages trust. It also corrodes the social licence that rail depends on. Government has accepted the ORR’s recommendations and reminded operators that while fraud costs the system hundreds of millions each year, responses must be balanced. Treat people fairly when they get it wrong by mistake. Reserve the heavy tools for those gaming the system. (GOV.UK)

There is a practical communication job that could start tomorrow. Publish a single, plain-English hierarchy of responses that every operator follows. Make railcard rules obvious at point of sale and at inspection. Default to a corrective remedy first, with a clear path to escalation only where there is evidence of intent. Passenger groups have even proposed a simple “yellow card” model to log first-time errors and focus penalties on repeat behaviour. It is hard to argue with that. (The Guardian)

Technology and innovation

If reform is slow, we should insulate passengers from the complexity they did not create. That means shifting effort from catching mistakes to preventing them.

I can see a couple of quicker routes for this:

1. Automate best-value by default: The East Midlands digital pay-as-you-go trials let people check in and out with a phone, then settle at the best price at day-end. No hunting for the right ticket, no fear of picking the wrong one. Northern will follow with trials in Yorkshire. This is routine in other countries and indeed, I see a lot of trust in TfL’s system that somehow, it’s working out what you should be paying. It should become routine on National Rail. (GOV.UK)

   
   

2. Make rules machine-readable: If railcards, evening peaks and minimum fares live in code, retail channels and inspectors can apply the same logic. That closes off the “gotchas” that catch good-faith travellers and creates a single source of truth industry-wide. I have argued elsewhere that transport data is infrastructure. Apply the same lens to fares logic and the passenger stops being the parser.

   
   

There is also a role for (AI) agents. A travel agent in your pocket should check eligibility, hold railcard proofs, pre-validate journeys against restrictions, and nudge you when you are about to break a rule. If something still goes wrong, it should carry a signed audit trail to show intent. That protects both sides.

Policy and industry reform

The government’s plan to establish Great British Railways puts a single guiding mind back into the system. If GBR does nothing else at first, it should take ownership of fares architecture: one ruleset, one set of enforcement standards, one customer charter on fares enforcement. The policy papers already point to modernising fares under a unified framework. The implementation detail matters now. (GOV.UK)

Do this and GBR becomes the backbone for fares and ticketing across rail, with a pathway to bring in other ground transport where local authorities choose to align. (GOV.UK)

Big-picture leadership

Yes, fare evasion must be addressed. The Rail Delivery Group puts losses in the £350–400 million range. Ignore that and the honest majority pays twice, through fares and subsidy. But if you criminalise ordinary people for confusing rules, you lose public support. The ORR review and the ministerial response are pushing in the right direction. The test is whether the industry can move from patchwork to principle. (GOV.UK)

My message to passengers is simple. Most of this is not your fault. The system is too complicated, and the burden of interpretation has drifted onto you. The fix is clarity by design, not tougher letters.

“You should not need to be a fares expert to buy a train ticket.”

Will AI agents actually help?

Used well, yes. The agent should be an advocate, not a bouncer. It should:

• Pre-clear your journey against the published rules and pick the best fare automatically.

• Manage railcards end-to-end, including eligibility checks, secure storage, renewal nudges and proof at inspection.

• Handle disputes with an auditable record showing what it advised and why, so honest mistakes are resolved quickly.

• Span the whole journey, combining fares logic with live service data and station amenities to suggest sensible alternatives when plans change.

  
  

That is the direction we are taking at DataWharf. Our focus is not a new retail front end. It is the boring but vital layer underneath: clean, consistent, machine-readable data about the rail network and its rules, so agents and apps can make sound decisions on the passenger’s behalf.

You should not need to be a fares expert to buy a train ticket.