FOI request detail

fares and ticketing

Request ID: FOI-1624-1819
Date published: 21 March 2019

You asked

Under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, I request the following information: Preamble- Your ticket barriers accept, monitor and reject National Rail tickets, amongst other products and features. They appear to be configured to reject magstripe "Off Peak" ticket variants until precisely 09:30am on a working weekday. However, the tickets are advertised by National Rail as having Restriction B1. Valid by any train to depart at or after 09:30am. Therefore, a customer wishing to enter London Underground at say, 09:27, wishing to travel on a train departing at or after 09:30 is prevented from doing so- which appears contrary to the Consumer Contract, and thus, a potential breach of the Consumer Rights Act, unless your staff have been instructed to manually allow customers through the barriers shortly before the 09:30 time. It may also be a breach of the Equality Act, in that customers with reduced mobility may be prevented from boarding a train at 09:30 - because they were given insufficient time to walk from ticket barrier to platform. Therefore: 1) Please inform me how many magstripe/paper tickets were rejected on the basis of "invalid time" between 09:25 and 09:29am from the 14 March 2018 and 14 September 2018. This may internally be a Reject - Code 12 (but other codes or descriptions may be used). This data is available to you as part of the CUBIC gate management software. I simply require an aggregate number for the above period - however you may break this down in any way you wish. As CUBIC allows you to export this data into a CSV file - it should be relatively simple to apply some filters - therefore this is not an manifestly excessive task to perform. 2) Between 30 July and 03 August between 09:25 and 09:29am - please advise how many "Peak" travel products were sold by your staff or your self service machines. As this may be time consuming should this be requested for all of your locations - I narrow this down to the following specific locations: Euston, Liverpool Street and Victoria. 3) Please provide a copy of the latest ticketing handbook/rule book for London Underground - I believe the current internal version is 8 - but the latest version available when responding would be required. This book contains specimen images of tickets, validity information about a range of both TfL and National Rail products etc. 4) Please provide the previous 6 copies of any periodic retail briefing document/newsletter which London Underground (or TfL) produces for London Underground gateline or revenue protection staff, advising them about changes to tickets, new products, reminders etc.

We answered

TfL Ref: 1624-1819

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 16 September 2018 asking for information about fares and ticketing. I apologise for the delay in replying.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require. You asked:

  1. Please inform me how many magstripe/paper tickets were rejected on the basis of "invalid time" between 09:25 and 09:29am from the 14 March 2018 and 14 September 2018. This may internally be a Reject - Code 12 (but other codes or descriptions may be used). This data is available to you as part of the CUBIC gate management software. I simply require an aggregate number for the above period - however you may break this down in any way you wish. As CUBIC allows you to export this data into a CSV file - it should be relatively simple to apply some filters - therefore this is not an manifestly excessive task to perform.

We do not hold a count for magnetic tickets of when the customer is unable to enter the gate, although it is possible that Cubic may have access to other gateline data that we do not ask them to provide to us. The Freedom of Information Act only requires us to provide recorded information held at the time of your request. Passengers with magnetic tickets who need to catch a specific train at or just after 09:30 can ask our gateline staff to be let through. The automatic gates cannot deal with every eventuality and there are a number of situations where gateline staff use their discretion and let customers through on request and after checking their tickets manually.

2) Between 30 July and 03 August between 09:25 and 09:29am - please advise how many "Peak" travel products were sold by your staff or your self service machines. As this may be time consuming should this be requested for all of your locations - I narrow this down to the following specific locations: Euston, Liverpool Street and Victoria.

We only retain ticket sales information at the level of detail you have requested for the last 8 weeks, ie by the specific time the transaction was made and the type of product purchased. Therefore as you have asked for this information for the period 30 July to 03 August, we no longer hold the information you are asking for. We would, for example, be able to provide information about “peak” products (i.e. 1 day peak Travelcards and 3 day peak Travelcards) purchased between 09:25 and 09:29 at Victoria, Euston and Liverpool Street), provided the dates that were being asked of us were in the last 8 weeks. Please submit a fresh FOI request if you would like to access this data.

3) Please provide a copy of the latest ticketing handbook/rule book for London Underground - I believe the current internal version is 8 - but the latest version available when responding would be required. This book contains specimen images of tickets, validity information about a range of both TfL and National Rail products etc, and

4) Please provide the previous 6 copies of any periodic retail briefing document/newsletter which London Underground (or TfL) produces for London Underground gateline or revenue protection staff, advising them about changes to tickets, new products, reminders etc.

Please find the updates attached. A second email contains the remaining updates.

Please note that in accordance with TfL’s obligations under Data Protection legislation some personal data has been removed, as required by section 40(2) of the FOI Act. This is because disclosure of this personal data would be a breach of the legislation, specifically the first principle which requires all processing of personal data to be fair and lawful. It would not be fair to disclose this personal information when the individuals have no expectation it would be disclosed and TfL has not satisfied one of the conditions which would make the processing ‘fair’.

Additionally some information relating to Oyster fraud and security issues has been redacted as it is subject to a statutory exemption to the right of access to information under section 31(a) – Law Enforcement.

A disclosure under the Freedom of Information act is a disclosure ‘to the world at large’ and whilst we make no suggestion that you would use the information for anything other than your own personal interest, in this instance the exemption has been applied as information regarding security procedures, fraud and its detection could be used by people wishing to commit fraud, or by those undertaking such criminal activities to avoid discovery.

The use of this exemption is subject to an assessment of the public interest in relation to the disclosure of the information concerned. We recognise the need for openness and transparency by public authorities, but in this instance feel that balance lies in favour of withholding the information to ensure that fare evasion is prevented wherever possible to protect public funds.

If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for some reason, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.

Yours sincerely

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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