How to stop scaring the hard-up off the railways

If there is a serious intention to encourage the use of public transport, then action is needed to make its use less scary for the hard-up.

I could take two adults and four children from Sheffield to London for under £15 each way (cheapest advance-purchase tickets, with a family railcard). But if I discovered on the train that I had lost or forgotten our family railcard, the on-train ticket collector would demand £284 "full single fare" (Note 1) for the journey. If a public transport holdup in London missed us the train home, the ticket office would want £147 (Note 2) from me to get us back on a later train. The same cost would apply if we lost (or forgot) our tickets.

These are enormous penalties for anyone - and unthinkable for anyone on a tight budget.

I know that there are people out there trying to defraud the railway companies, but surely this is the wrong balance.

If I forget my railcard, then make me buy a new one for the original £20 - enough of a deterrent to stop me forgetting it on purpose.

If I lose my fixed-train tickets, make me pay the full walk-up price initially, but refund this to me, less a sensible admin fee, when the audit trail shows that I had bought valid tickets. There is no scope for using the "missing" tickets again on another train - they are only valid on the specified train. I know that I might have given the tickets to my friends further up the same train, but that isn't insurmountable. Give each ticket collector a list of advance-purchase tickets bought (with selling location, date and seat numbers) and then he can work out where the lost-ticket passengers should be seated. If there's someone else in those seats, check their tickets - if they have the "missing tickets" then prosecute. Normally, you will be dealing with error rather than fraud and you'll avoid spoiling someone's day, and avoide yet another public transport horror story doing the rounds of pubs and school-gate conversations.

And if I miss my train with company B because of a late-running train by Company A? Higher-price through ticketholders may well manage to get home without paying extra, but if I have bought separate tickets for parts of the journey, missed connections are my problem - and I'm looking at that £129 extra again.

Fair? Hardly. Desirable - certainly not. A fragmented railway industry makes it harder to verify delays, but that is a problem for the industry - if we want the public to feel OK about using trains, we shouldn't be penalising them for the complexities of the structure.

Notes:

Note 1: Once on a train, only full single and return fares are available - and without your railcard, tickets bought at a railcard fare are invalid. You are therefore faced with paying the full single fare, without any railcard discounts (because you don't have a railcard with you and you cannot buy a railcard on the train).

Note 2: Fixed-train tickets have no value except on that train. Miss the train and you are faced with buying new tickets at a ticket office. You can use your railcard (or buy a replacement railcard on the spot), but you cannot benefit from advance-purchase tickets (because you have already missed your train and so want to travel soon) - so get hit with the "full single" fare - albeit qualifying for the railcard discount.