Fare-dodging in Ealing: an education

The 207 bendy bus carries a lot of people a long distance across the London Borough of Ealing and beyond. More than enough of them do not pay their fares to keep a troupe of Revenue Protection Inspectors busy all day and a complement of Safer Transport Team officers routinely occupied in their support. I spent a portion of last Friday morning with them all, climbing aboard a bus just down the road from the police station on Ealing Broadway, touching-in my Oyster with particular care and watching a series of highly educational public transport mini dramas unfold as the artic made its way down New Broadway and Uxbridge Road towards Hanwell. I enjoyed the RPIs. Their public etiquette is all solicitous good cheer ("Can I see your Oyster please? Thanks, that's beautiful."). Their private humour is infectiously bleak ("Oh, we'll never be short of work..."). Excuses? They've heard them all: passenger claimed not to understand the Oyster system; passenger said card was mysteriously not working; passenger sorry but somehow forgot to swipe. Jason, pictured below, has been doing the job for four years. For the previous five, he was an estate agent. Clearly, he's a man who craves popularity. Perhaps he should try journalism next. Or politics. "Some people are nice about it," he says of those he catches out, "others want to have a go." Of course, you get far fewer of the latter when there's a cluster of uniforms riding the bus at the same time, led in this case by a Sergeant Tony Beasley. You also get plenty of card-carrying passengers who'd decided not to swipe on entry doing so in a hurry when they see conspicuous officialdom climbing aboard. Yet many are still caught taking the "free bus" option. During the exercise I witnessed we disembarked at three stops, to process three or more culprits each time. A couple of male youths signaled low level resentment as they provided their details and waited for their fixed penalty slips, but I didn't think their hearts were really in it. Three young women travelling together turned their small humiliation into a festival of flushing and giggling. They didn't seem very perturbed. Perhaps they've decided that the risk is worth it: the fixed penalty is £50, but only half that if you pay within three weeks, which means if you get caught less than once in every twenty-one journeys paying-as-you-go you could be in profit (21 x £1.20 = £25.20). That said, persistent offenders can end up in court. Earlier, in the police station canteen, I'd been briefed by Steve Burton, Transport for London's Director for Community Safety, Policing and Enforcement. According to TfL's quarterly figures, he said, fare evasion on bendys in general stands at 8.9 percent per passenger journey - that's a 12-month "rolling average" - compared with 1.3 percent on all other types of bus. However, he added, the picture is quite different when you look at crime. Despite perceptions to the contrary, you get no more of it on bendys when you take into account that they carry larger numbers of passengers. He stressed that reported crime on London's buses in general is "very low" - about 12 for every million passenger journeys - and has been on a general downward trend from a peak in 2005/06, which coincided with teenagers being granted free bus travel. Sergeant Beasley said that about 35 percent of bus-related crime across London is "dipping" - pickpocketing - at stops: "It's not massive in Ealing, but it's always there." There's a central "dip squad" that can be called on, if required. Significantly, the PCSOs staffing a crime prevention stand along the road from the station were giving out little pairs of bells which can be clipped to a wallet or purse to alert dipping victims to their peril and, hopefully, deter the perpetrator in mid-act. There were, too, behaviour code cards for Zip card -holders, reminding them of how to ensure they hold on to them. Civility, safety, security. In a sense, the London bus has become a vehicle for the promotion of all three. During the afternoon I went on another fare-inspection operation. That one was sterner and had wider social and crime-fighting implications. I hope to bring you my report on that soon.