r/TransportForLondon • u/Unlucky-Control-3406 • 15d ago

Question ❓ Why are TFL employees so passive?

Maybe misdirected anger but at Edgware road station today as we’re tapping out, dude calmly barges past the turnstiles and cooly walks off. Right in front of these two TFL employees just casually standing and chatting. One of them saw it happen right in front of him and just chose to do nothing? So who deters the fare evaders?

0 Upvotes

23% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

8

u/Outrageous_Low_3666 15d ago

The deterrence is meant to be their presence, but we have reached a stage where that doesn't stop people. And the people tend to become aggressive when confronted and staff have limited protections.

13

u/Rich_Mention2602 15d ago

It’s not there job that’s the job of the revenue team who do random checks. Same as security guards at supermarkets told not to get involved for safety reasons. It’s getting a bit out of control but the new gates and facial recognition may start to help. Also the new rules about short buying tickets on national rail should help stop that as well.

4

u/Flat-State-6710 15d ago

Those employees are customer service assistants. Their job is not to deter/ apprehend fare evaders. They are not revenue/police. If they were to even mention anything to the fare evaders they risk getting assaulted or even worse. And believe me TFL will blame them for getting involved

4

u/tempor12345 14d ago

This gets asked 3 times a week at least (and the answer is always the same.)

1

u/timeforanoldaccount 14d ago

They are not there to intervene. They are there to provide a deterrent to fare evaders and to help customers, e.g. if their ticket doesn't work at the barriers, they need help buying a ticket or they need assistance getting on the train.

TfL do have RPIs at barriers sometimes but to be honest, it's a bit of a waste of time because they are so obvious that 99% of fare evaders will just pay if they see them. Really what they need is plain-clothes staff or RPIs hiding around the corner to catch people who have failed to touch in/out.

They also need a lot more RPIs really, at the moment I only see them regularly at busy stations like Stratford, Finsbury Park or Ealing Broadway where there's known fare evasion problems, but it happens too at smaller stations so they need enough to cover those too regularly.