Manchester Metrolink Standard Fare - that will be £100 please

Travel on a Manchester tram and you probably expect to pay a few pounds.

So it is a bit of a surprise to see that Metrolink's Standard Fare is £100.

Are they serious? Well - Yes and No. That £100 is actually a penalty fare by any other name - but if they call it a penalty it means that they are in a much more complicated legal position. So they (and many other public transport operators) set a punitive "Standard Fare" and then give everyone who jumps through the appropriate hoops (find a working ticket machine, have necessary denominations of change or acceptable plastic, understand the system correctly, keep ticket until it is checked) a big discount down to a more normal amount.

But if you slip up, they don't need to prove any intent to avoid payment - they just need to explain that in travelling with them, you "accepted" that you would have to pay the Standard Fare of £100 if you made a mistake.

I've never fallen foul of this sort of penalty personally, but I can see that it would be all too easy for an innocent person to get stung by this.

Just another part of making life scarier for ordinary, hard-up, well-meaning but fallible people. Dressing it up in misleading language makes it seem even nastier and meaner.