Any other methods besides locking yourself in the bathroom on the train...? Know any good blagging techniques? It cost me £9.60 one way to Preston (bus and train), it's ridiculous.
Tyne and Wear has checkywatch as a form of autoreduction. Dunno how much that would generalise (there's barriers everywhere on the trains down here). A workmate used to make fake monthly tickets for their commute which was pretty cool.
Actually, when I was younger and more reckless, I used to hitch a lot. I tend to look back at it in a what the fuck was I thinking of, and I'm surprised that I'm not buried in a shallow grave just outside of Liverpool sort of way. There were surprisingly fewer nutters picking up hitchers than you would think, but lots of very boring people who obviously didn't get to talk to people much and had you as a captive audience all the way to Birmingham. Not actually recommending it to you because I would hate for you to end up in a shallow grave just outside of Liverpool.
Just board the train. You get to se unexpected places... Rather than Manchester I got to see Milton Keynes. It was freezing and regardless of how far I walked on that grid I couldn't find a nice warm pub :(
Actually, when I was younger and more reckless, I used to hitch a lot. I tend to look back at it in a what the fuck was I thinking of, and I'm surprised that I'm not buried in a shallow grave just outside of Liverpool sort of way. There were surprisingly fewer nutters picking up hitchers than you would think, but lots of very boring people who obviously didn't get to talk to people much and had you as a captive audience all the way to Birmingham. Not actually recommending it to you because I would hate for you to end up in a shallow grave just outside of Liverpool.
I've hitched many a time and the worst nutters I've encountered have been evangelists forcing me to read the Bible aloud (in Sonora, northern Mexico). No axe murderers, funnily enough, cos they represent a tiny demographic of the population.
Word on the boring conversations though. Best to do it with two people so as to tagteam sleeping.
I used to be really shit with tubes and used to keep losing my ticket whilst on the actual tube un knowingly through just fiddling with it or silly shit and then I would get to the barriers and the panic that would set in is un believable. Its your worst fucking nightmare. One time it happened to me and when I started crying the guy let me through :) The less compassionate ones will fine you £20 but usually they will let you out and ask you to come back to the station to pay you if there's no way you can pay it on the spot which Ive had to once.
In other vaguely related news, recently I was coming back from a gig in Camden on the tube late on a sunday night. I was fairly drunk and it was a fairly busy packed affair in a tiny venue, so when I took my ticket out of my pocket, it was fucking ruined with sweat and was falling apart. I still tried to put it through the machine anyway, needless to say it fucked itself and didn't come back. The guy came over and said he would let me through but for reasons of some sort of irrational drunk paranoia, I proceeded to stumble to the ticket machine and buy another ticket, a day travelcard at that. Maybe I went to the wrong machine or whatever but I got one of those ones that only work on tubes and not national rail so upon getting to victoria I got myself another fucking one that would work because I couldn't find the destroyed one to try and get through with that. So eventually I get home and the next day, when Im just about to go out somewhere, already late and rushing, I realize I can't find my fucking debit card, but low and behold, what I do find is the battered sweaty ticket. I then have to ring and cancel my drum lesson, a thing which I am charged for due to lack of notice, and then I ring natwest and do the sensible thing and cancel the card. I then get a call from my mum a couple of hours later, a conversation which she ends with "oh and by the way don't think you lost your debit card, your brother found it outside the door a while ago, its with me". Luckily, natwest were fairly sharp ish about sending me the new card but its jarring as fuck.
I don't know about the UK. In Melbourne I like to walk through the barriers in the city behind someone else, and when they get let through, slide your hand along the metal on the inside of the barrier, and block the door popping back out, and it'll stay inside when it hits your hand. Never been questioned, caught, anything.
Obviously that means I was just risking copping a fine the whole time. Maybe make a fake ID incase you ever get caught, some small countries just have laminated cards.
Train fares set to increase by as much as 17.5 per cent
Glad people are talking about this, what do people think of the possibility of large scale auto reductions on the train system? Huge amount of public anger around transport costs.
The ticket machines are mostly touch screen, if anything like spray paint got on that screen the machine is useless (nobody should do this obviously cos it's criminal damage and you should respect private property). Occupy did a bit of this kind of thing in new york and it seemed to go reasonably well.
The ticket machines are mostly touch screen, if anything like spray paint got on that screen the machine is useless
Then you wouldn't be able to buy tickets but I don't think they'd just start letting you on for free.
Occupy did a bit of this kind of thing in new york and it seemed to go reasonably well.
In new york you only put your ticket in once at the start so if you mash up the way in you're fine getting out. In London for example you have to 'tap in' and 'tap out' so it would only work if both ends of your journey had been touched which is a lot harder to do.
But yeah transport costs are astronomical. And considering how long people spend commuting it's another form of work eating further and further into both leisure (time) and the means of survival (money).
I've never understood why transport workers such as RMT don't just refuse to charge passangers instead of striking, it'd be a great PR.
Caiman del Barrio
Some sort of cooperation between radical commuter groups (as opposed to the current yuppy ones) would be the best way to respond to price rises IMO.
Probable obstacle to this would be the RMT's conservative, tankie leadership...
A lot of people put this sort of thing forward. I think it is very misguided.
Firstly I think that it buys into the whole thing that has developed over the last thirty years or so about strikes and public support. Strikes are not won on public support, but on the damage that they cause to the economy, and the solidarity of other workers, which is a very different thing from 'public support'. One of the things that the power of public transport workers' consists of the the ability to hit other sectors of the economy by basically stopping other people getting to work. By saying that they should work as normal, but refuse to collect fares, you automatically negate this.
Second surely we want workers' struggles to try to involve as many workers as possible. By advocating a strategy like this, you are in effect suggesting involving far fewer workers (i.e. just those who collect tickets, and putting them as individuals into a situation where they don't know if other workers are acting with them (If you are outside the work place on a picket line you know that you are not on your own. If you are one person refusing to collect tickets on a train you don't.), and quite probably leave themselves open to individual discipline processes for failing to preform their duties.
Word to that. Imagine a Boxing Day with free tube!
Just on the subject, in Ankara public transport is free on religious holidays.
Also in the city where I am living now as in many European cities, there is no control at the entrance or exit. You stamp your ticket in the entrance hall of the metro, or on the tram or the bus, but there are no gates or ticket checkers. Of course there are inspectors, mostly on the metro. I have never seen one on a bus, and very rarely on a tram.
1. If you get your fares in advance they're usually a lot cheaper (sometimes 2 or 3 quid as opposed to 50 quid).
2. Even if you book close, but in advance it's usually still cheaper
3. If you for any reason have to cheat the train, be alert, confident and don't look suspicious. Try getting off at a middling suburbs station where no one can be arsed to check the tickets (one example is getting off at Iver instead of Slough, you could theoretically probably get away with your whole journey being free if you got on at the right place). If you get on at stations without barriers (Finsbury Park for example) you'll have to find somewhere without strenuous checks or barriers.
4. Use all the subsidies you're entitled to on top of all the above.
5. Make sure you find the cheapest fare on the tube by using the single fare finder, the LO is much cheaper than the LU and takes just as long, it's more reliable too.
bit.ly/6QkkLt
Use that. Find the stations or ones nearby, go to the Station Map and you can see whether the station has barriers or not (very recently refurb'd stations might not show this, but you can find that info out on google, this tool has been invaluable in the past).
I'd also add that I've had most LU staff be really nice to me in the past, it's usually only when they've got their bosses looking over their shoulder (*literally) that they'll sort of go ahead with the whole shitty process of booking someone in, albeit resentfully.
Always do your best to wangle out of it if that happens
When I was staying in Italy, there are hardly ever ticket checks on the bus so I would buy 1 ticket and then not stamp it, and then if there was a ticket checker I would just claim to be an ignorant tourist and who didnt know to stamp their ticket.
Bendy buses in London are free :)
With the tube you can walk in behind someone but be polite about it (don't push them or cop a feel). As you get checked on the way in and out it is a bit tricky but as long as the station is reasonably busy you'll be alright. The white shiny square at below hip height is the sensor you need to block to follow someone through, although if you're reasonably close it should be ok. The main thing is not to panic if you fuck it up. Also it's a good idea to know an address and matching postcode if stopped, they check it's a valid address but not if you live there. The barriers are pretty hard to jump though.
Rail, get an open return and if you can get onto the train without scanning your ticket then you can use it again. If you have a bag then go through the gate at each end so it doesn't get scanned, on your way out ask them if you can keep it, I've never had a problem doing that.
In Paris. Don't bother paying for buses full stop. Metro they do checks fairly frequently and the best way to get around them is to be white. It's worth having a few old tickets it your pockets (you can pick them up or use a few) and then start handing them over to the checker, that's what I did last time and the guy saw that I had a few tickets and stopped looking. You don't need a ticket to get out so once you're in it's easy. As a matter of course hold the door part of the barrier open after you so the next person can jump the barrier. French railways the tickets have to be stamped in a machine on the platform, so I never stamped it so I could re-use them. Now that the system has changed to make it a lot cheaper to book tickets this is becoming less worthwhile (booked tickets are for a certain train so can't be reused, stamped or not, although they can technically be refunded I think)
Cologne trams, just get on. When I asked for directions the guy in the hostel didn't actually know how to pay for a ticket because he'd never done it :)
Budapest: pay the ticket, the inspectors aren't regular but they are arseholes and wil make you pay even if you are a tourist, although if they think you're a gypsy apparently they often let you off, but might call the cops.
When I travelled from Amsterdam Central to Schipol for work I always bought the ticket- 'cos I am a nervous geezer and sitting shitting my self is worse than paying. My colleague was a young north African who was paying for his university by working; he pointed out his study- the number of inspections per month and the chance of getting hit with a penalty worked out much cheaper than paying for every ride- he was caught regularly and paid the excess but it still worked out much less than a mug like me would pay... I bet he is Jimmy Carr's tax advisor now!
Boris was supposed to get rid of em at the end of '11 though? Think there maybe like one route that i still see occasionally (507 maybe?) but it's not really a general thing.
It's pretty tricky dodging transport in London unless you have encyclopaedic and constantly updating information on the handful of (outer) stations that don't have barriers and you're lucky to be able to travel from one to the other. You're probably better off buying a bike tbf.
Bendy buses in London are free :)
With the tube you can walk in behind someone but be polite about it (don't push them or cop a feel).
Nearly all the tricks have gone but that one will always work. I managed to go in and out of stations all day without paying (since it was my chum, I both pushed him and copped a feel).
We live in a capitalist system. If you have to pay for public transport and don't want to then just don't use it. Walk, cycle or find another way.
As with most, if not all, situations now where there is likely to be a conflict between workers and the public the whole place will be covered by CCTV cameras controlled by someone else. Don't expect a transport worker to put her or his job in jeopardy to allow you to dodge paying.
Ok, for London you can ride the "free" buses. They're the new buses that have 3 doors. There isn't normally a bus conducter on the back so you can just slip on for free. The bus drivers usually don't give a shit, even if there's a group of you. 88 bus goes to Camden/Hampstead all the way south to Elephant and castle (never any conductors on that one), 24 to camden (somtimes conductors), 453 from central, trafalgar to Peckhem through Elephant and castle (rarely conductors), er i think it was 15 to East London, to Aldagate, Freedom (rarely conductors). If a condoctor gets onto the bus you can just get up and walk off, they have no legal rights to restrain or even touch you and they won't try anything (at least in my experience they never have). You don't have to give any details or anything just simply walk off. Although saying that, most of them are ok and will say just pay next time. There are other free buses around but can't remember the numbers. If a conductor is on at the back just walk to the middle door and pretend to show a card onto the oyster machine. This works 9/10.
Otherwise you can bunk the underground by ghosting, much easier in large groups as they then you can just hold the barriers open and the staff will just stare at you at worst but normally just do fuck all. BUT DON'T get off at Camden as there's always BTP so just get off at chalk farm or Kentish town. DLR line is easy to bunk as they rarely inspect and you can see them a mile off. At worst they will just ask you to leave if you refuse to pay the fine or buy a ticket.
You can actually bunk the tube right infront of them, sometimes just a polite "sorry mate i've got no money" as you go through the barriers will be enough.
Other tips include, don't try bunking normal busses, the driver will refure to drive and wait for a really long time which in one case resulted in a munnity and other people started to turn on me.
Travelling for free (in London) is actually really straight forwards, it's acutally just a case of doing it even though at first it feels a bit dodgy. For the rest of the country i find hitchhiking to be pretty decent if you're patient enough and not in a rush to get somewhere. (you will meet wierd people, mainly lonely, but i've met a buisness owner before lol)
As for trains, hide in the toilet or just make up details when they ask you to process the fine. However DO give a real address, don't worry though you don't have to live there. Generally i find hitiching trains a bit more difficult. But yea, London is very easy.
Hope this info isn't too late. I see the orginal post was ages ago........
Eh, most workers did have responsibilities involving explicitly safeguarding capital's profits. You wouldn't expect a soldier to have avoided killing Iraqis to keep their job, for instance. Still, though, if their focus is a bit too spread-out, due to other duties, they could easily be too distracted and give you an opening if you wished to travel.
Generally, while you could skip in London tubes and similar, which might occasionally occur by accident anyway - the gates remain open even if a person had an invalid ticket or card - if you were doing this on purpose you would generally want to be able to get out similarly from the other end. This might imply finding a crowded station, or being available to exiting at a different station. Doing so in a group might be impractical, as it draws attention to yourself or makes you a more easily observed target, and means that more people might have to get through. That is, unless only some members do so, which merely cuts things a bit, and is still slightly anonymous. If the place is a bit of a rush when it comes to getting in and out, that might be optimal.
Of course, there might have been a slight sense of concern or threat during this, but generally speaking if people around you aren't aware, then they might not have enough of an explicit MO or stimulus to accost you immediately. Of course, by itself it wasn't really a stable mode of doing things or was merely an attempt to evade the system while within it, which was unlikely to be too comfortable without external stimuli.
We live in a capitalist system. If you have to pay for public transport and don't want to then just don't use it. Walk, cycle or find another way.
As with most, if not all, situations now where there is likely to be a conflict between workers and the public the whole place will be covered by CCTV cameras controlled by someone else. Don't expect a transport worker to put her or his job in jeopardy to allow you to dodge paying.
as some one who has worked as a gateline assistant (i.e ticket barrier man) for a train company I can confirm this is bullshit. In our training they say that basically you shouldn't give a shit and never try to stop some one from doing it. We have absolutely zero powers to penalise fare evaders. The only people who can actually fine you etc are british transport police and revenue. Most of the gateline assistants give zero shits. I let people do it day and in day out and trust me no one said a thing, managers, co workers. The only people who seemed to give a shit were goody two shoes members of the public .
Listen to who you want to and take your chances but don't come back moaning when you get fined, arrested or just held when you want to get somewhere else and miss that connection.
One of these days, probably when I'm dead and gone, we will all travel on a free public transport system. Until then pay or take your chances...
the croydonian anarchist
Sleeper
We live in a capitalist system. If you have to pay for public transport and don't want to then just don't use it. Walk, cycle or find another way.
As with most, if not all, situations now where there is likely to be a conflict between workers and the public the whole place will be covered by CCTV cameras controlled by someone else. Don't expect a transport worker to put her or his job in jeopardy to allow you to dodge paying.
as some one who has worked as a gateline assistant (i.e ticket barrier man) for a train company I can confirm this is bullshit. In our training they say that basically you shouldn't give a shit and never try to stop some one from doing it. We have absolutely zero powers to penalise fare evaders. The only people who can actually fine you etc are british transport police and revenue. Most of the gateline assistants give zero shits. I let people do it day and in day out and trust me no one said a thing, managers, co workers. The only people who seemed to give a shit were goody two shoes members of the public .
Sleeper - seriously man, where the fuck do you get off with this attitude. Zhou just got the lowdown straight from the horses mouth yet instead of a simple 'fair enough, I didn't realise that', you have to persist in your know all arrogance.. Fuck man. Take that chip off your shoulder and give yourself a break.
As for if you can't pay, don't travel, WTF?!!! How about if you can't buy food, don't eat? That's daft right? We all need to eat so if we have to we steal food. Same principle here. Christ, even common law states that all men have the right to travel freely. Thanks for pointing out that we live in a capitalist system. Have you noticed that in a capitalist system we all HAVE TO TRAVEL. For work, benefits, to buy cheaper food. Should we be deprived of seeing our friends and family just coz we don't have the funds that 'allow' us t go to where they are.
Finally, as I understand it fare evasion is a civil matter, not a criminal one. You are not obliged to give your details. If you're smart about it they won't do shit. It's only acceptance of their authority that fucks you up. If I get a parking ticket I phone the council and tell them that I did not give permission for my car to be touched and that I removed and disposed of the ticket. I never hear about it again after that. Basicly I refuse to contract with them and they don't have a legal leg to stand on. I can't speak for anywhere else but it certainly works that way in Colchester.
Anyway, chill out and quit arguing for the sake of being right.
Listen to who you want to and take your chances but don't come back moaning when you get fined, arrested or just held when you want to get somewhere else and miss that connection.
One of these days, probably when I'm dead and gone, we will all travel on a free public transport system. Until then pay or take your chances...
He's speaking from experience.
It's the same in most customer service jobs, if there's any kind of crime etc you're not supposed to intervene (otherwise they have to train and insure you etc) although they encourage you to do so informally.
To my shame I once helped apprehend a shoplifter after trying to ignore my boss, although if I'd realised at the time him and his mates had beaten the shit out of a security guard I would have felt better about it. On the bright side I took the rest of my shift off because I was traumatised and used it to get them to change my hours without changing my contract (they'd switched from fixed hours to flexible contracts and no way was I risking my sunday shift)
I dont mind pay for public transportation. Because the alternative would be capitalist transportation and then no one could afford it. Ofcourse if the prices climbed i would have to do something about it, but then i would also get public support.
I just found out that Preston has one of the biggest busstations in Europe with 79 gates LMAO! So maybe what you are paying for is that really big building?
http://www.c20society.org.uk/casework/preston-bus-station-2/
Sleeper
We live in a capitalist system. If you have to pay for public transport and don't want to then just don't use it. Walk, cycle or find another way.
That we live in a capitalist society makes no difference. However society is organised, there will always be a cost to transportation since it cost energy and time to move around. Of course transportation is not free.
I remember Northampton saying that they had the biggest bus station, but I think it was the biggest covered bus station. But large terminals are necessary for mass transit, whether mass transit is necessary is another question.
I would not knock the modern bus terminals. The old Dundas Street bus station in Glasgow was very badly lit, often wet and windy. The shelters were like school sheds and smelled of urine and sick. It was considered dangerous for women after dark.
All good modern transport hubs are built around a single idea: No contained spaces where a bomb blast could efectively kill a large number of people (bomb blasts are deadlier in contained spaces where people are packed together).
So you can blame terrorism for the rise in costs. It is one of the few things that we can do to fight terrorism that doesn't involve stupid, ineffective, security theater and more fassism.
Edit: this also explains those massive pillars that you see in some bank buildings. Those aren't actually needed to hold up the building, but are to reduce the number of people that could be mowed down with a machine gun.
Lol sleeper, so instead of being confronted with directly relevant evidence from some one who HAS DONE THE JOB, you just repeat your original hypothesis? Do fuck right off
Also, just some other related things for context. A lot of us get assaulted on the job too. I knew of one older member of staff at a train station I had worked a couple shifts in the past that got assaulted by some drunk dude. The company would have backed him 100% in the court case, but no one EVER takes this shit to court because its too much money and time. Some people in the industry can make pretty good fucking money (ticket office are on like £13 an hour, i was on £10) and even then, there is no actual practical consequence to when this happens. Yet another demonstration how the law is only worth speaking about if you have the money to access and use it. Until that point it may as well not exist in some cases (like this one).
If you already were in a job where you could be alone at midnight with sole responsibility of the station, and no power to stop loud, aggressive, often drunk people from approaching you, trying to intimidate you and all in all making it a living hell, trust me, if one of them seriously started shit you would not be trying to keep your raging animal trapped inside a closed environment. You'd let them get on the train, open all the gates, if it got that bad, just run the fuck away. You simply have NO IDEA. Please shut the fuck up.
THEN imagine having nowhere to run, because your getting the last train home, which is the same as this person is getting on. And fuck all else staff about. These are very very very real situations people in this area of work can be exposed to in quite ordinary circumstances.
You've forgotten the indivualised jet backpacks that we all thought we'd end up using back in the 1950s
Keep the faith for a little longer.
http://metro.co.uk/2015/12/10/first-commercial-jetpack-revealed-and-its-available-in-2016-5555889/
I have a few stories to tell.
Where I live the bus fares are so expensive that if you want to go somewhere and come back you have to buy a day ticket. So in my town what some of us do is after we've finished for the day we give them to someone else at the bus stop.
Another thing we do is get a late train to the next town, they never bother checking, and if they do we're one stop from the end of line so its like a quid and if you don't want to pay they just kick you off at the next stop which is the one you were going to anyway. I've actually been in first class a few times doing that.
Mass transit is fucking awesome!!! - After air-conditioning, it's humanity's single greatest achievement!
I meant in terms of commuting, my contract is about to finish at the place where I only have a half-hour journey from home.
Reddebrek
Where I live the bus fares are so expensive that if you want to go somewhere and come back you have to buy a day ticket. So in my town what some of us do is after we've finished for the day we give them to someone else at the bus stop.
Yeah I used to do that, and on the train I'd give away or leave the return on the machine at the destination because often the return cost the same as a single. If you are going to a smaller place before a large city in the UK it's often cheaper to buy a ticket to the large place and get off early. It's technically against the rules but I can't remember being stopped, the return is often a little trickier because the barrier won't open but if you ask the people just open it, although I did have to spend quite a long time one with a jobsworth who said it wasn't valid.
Be aware there are currently twenty six Train Operating Companies in the UK. Each of these TOC's has some control over the little stuff like barriers and revenue control on their little part. The last bellend who told me to fuck off didn't travel.
the croydonian anarchist
Lol sleeper, so instead of being confronted with directly relevant evidence from some one who HAS DONE THE JOB, you just repeat your original hypothesis? Do fuck right off
i am aware of them all, i worked the job. if you do work as a gateline assistant, fuck you. none of the scraps of money your toc is losing from you stopping some one from fare evasion is going to scrap down into your wages, trust me. fuck you
Yeah I used to do that, and on the train I'd give away or leave the return on the machine at the destination because often the return cost the same as a single. If you are going to a smaller place before a large city in the UK it's often cheaper to buy a ticket to the large place and get off early. It's technically against the rules but I can't remember being stopped, the return is often a little trickier because the barrier won't open but if you ask the people just open it, although I did have to spend quite a long time one with a jobsworth who said it wasn't valid.
sometimes its not even against the rules. some journeys you are allowed 'break of journey' and hence can get off early. also, tip for anyone that needs to get to places like battersea park, new cross gate, south bermondsey (right before victoria and london bridge respectively). get the quick train to london bridge or victoria and then just switch platforms without touching out. there aren't barriers to move between the same set and it means you can get to them both quicker and without paying the zone 1 fare even though your changing in a zone 1 station. ive literally been able to just get to london bridge and sit on the same train until after about 10 mins it goes back to south bermondsey.
The last bellend who told me to fuck off didn't travel.
So you're a jobsworth ticket collector?
Not in general, no - but when people make public boasts like yours above about asserting your legal authority over people after your previous posts discouraging anyone to avoid paying fares ...
There's no boasting. London is one tiny part of the UK, and an even smaller part of the world. You know what, you're a waste of my time.
Red Marriott
Sleeper
Is that how you think of us Red Marriott?
Red Marriott
The last bellend who told me to fuck off didn't travel.
So you're a jobsworth ticket collector?
Not in general, no - but when people make public boasts like yours above about asserting your legal authority over people after your previous posts discouraging anyone to avoid paying fares ...
I know where London is and what relation it has to the world, thanks (dunno what it has to do with this thread though). Seems like you love to arrogantly dish it out but aren't very good at taking a bit back.
I paid 11 quid one-way from
I paid 11 quid one-way from Manchester - Liverpool after a post-anarchist bookfair drinking session and nobody even checked the ticket. Was fuming.
Tyne and Wear has checkywatch
Tyne and Wear has checkywatch as a form of autoreduction. Dunno how much that would generalise (there's barriers everywhere on the trains down here). A workmate used to make fake monthly tickets for their commute which was pretty cool.
Train fares set to increase
Train fares set to increase by as much as 17.5 per cent
I can think of three, and
I can think of three, and only three, possible solutions to this problem, each more cunning than the last:
1) Become a train driver. (Although this does have the one drawback that you won't actually need to commute any more.)
2) Take "The Great Train Robbery" literally, and actually steal a train! I can't see any drawbacks with this plan. You should definitely do it.
3) If you decide not to go along with #2, and I don't see why you wouldn't, then there's always the lowtech solution to fall back on:
They totally solved this
They totally solved this problem in Boston (jk)
omen wrote: I can think of
omen
aye, you forgot one:
[youtube]kRMfyEojBQg[/youtube]
omen, that was hilarious
omen, that was hilarious thank you! :lol:
The Swedish Anarcho-syndicalist Youth Federation, SUF, started a fund called P-kassan which payed for fare-dogers' fines (page 4, Thoughts and Action (2008))...
I've never understood why transport workers such as RMT don't just refuse to charge passangers instead of striking, it'd be a great PR.
Like this Actually, when I
Like this
Actually, when I was younger and more reckless, I used to hitch a lot. I tend to look back at it in a what the fuck was I thinking of, and I'm surprised that I'm not buried in a shallow grave just outside of Liverpool sort of way. There were surprisingly fewer nutters picking up hitchers than you would think, but lots of very boring people who obviously didn't get to talk to people much and had you as a captive audience all the way to Birmingham. Not actually recommending it to you because I would hate for you to end up in a shallow grave just outside of Liverpool.
Just board the train. You get
Just board the train. You get to se unexpected places... Rather than Manchester I got to see Milton Keynes. It was freezing and regardless of how far I walked on that grid I couldn't find a nice warm pub :(
fleurnoire-et-rouge
fleurnoire-et-rouge
I've hitched many a time and the worst nutters I've encountered have been evangelists forcing me to read the Bible aloud (in Sonora, northern Mexico). No axe murderers, funnily enough, cos they represent a tiny demographic of the population.
Word on the boring conversations though. Best to do it with two people so as to tagteam sleeping.
I used to be really shit with
I used to be really shit with tubes and used to keep losing my ticket whilst on the actual tube un knowingly through just fiddling with it or silly shit and then I would get to the barriers and the panic that would set in is un believable. Its your worst fucking nightmare. One time it happened to me and when I started crying the guy let me through :) The less compassionate ones will fine you £20 but usually they will let you out and ask you to come back to the station to pay you if there's no way you can pay it on the spot which Ive had to once.
In other vaguely related news, recently I was coming back from a gig in Camden on the tube late on a sunday night. I was fairly drunk and it was a fairly busy packed affair in a tiny venue, so when I took my ticket out of my pocket, it was fucking ruined with sweat and was falling apart. I still tried to put it through the machine anyway, needless to say it fucked itself and didn't come back. The guy came over and said he would let me through but for reasons of some sort of irrational drunk paranoia, I proceeded to stumble to the ticket machine and buy another ticket, a day travelcard at that. Maybe I went to the wrong machine or whatever but I got one of those ones that only work on tubes and not national rail so upon getting to victoria I got myself another fucking one that would work because I couldn't find the destroyed one to try and get through with that. So eventually I get home and the next day, when Im just about to go out somewhere, already late and rushing, I realize I can't find my fucking debit card, but low and behold, what I do find is the battered sweaty ticket. I then have to ring and cancel my drum lesson, a thing which I am charged for due to lack of notice, and then I ring natwest and do the sensible thing and cancel the card. I then get a call from my mum a couple of hours later, a conversation which she ends with "oh and by the way don't think you lost your debit card, your brother found it outside the door a while ago, its with me". Luckily, natwest were fairly sharp ish about sending me the new card but its jarring as fuck.
I don't know about the UK. In
I don't know about the UK. In Melbourne I like to walk through the barriers in the city behind someone else, and when they get let through, slide your hand along the metal on the inside of the barrier, and block the door popping back out, and it'll stay inside when it hits your hand. Never been questioned, caught, anything.
Obviously that means I was
Obviously that means I was just risking copping a fine the whole time. Maybe make a fake ID incase you ever get caught, some small countries just have laminated cards.
Quote: Train fares set to
Glad people are talking about this, what do people think of the possibility of large scale auto reductions on the train system? Huge amount of public anger around transport costs.
The ticket machines are mostly touch screen, if anything like spray paint got on that screen the machine is useless (nobody should do this obviously cos it's criminal damage and you should respect private property). Occupy did a bit of this kind of thing in new york and it seemed to go reasonably well.
Quote: The ticket machines
Then you wouldn't be able to buy tickets but I don't think they'd just start letting you on for free.
In new york you only put your ticket in once at the start so if you mash up the way in you're fine getting out. In London for example you have to 'tap in' and 'tap out' so it would only work if both ends of your journey had been touched which is a lot harder to do.
But yeah transport costs are astronomical. And considering how long people spend commuting it's another form of work eating further and further into both leisure (time) and the means of survival (money).
wojtek wrote: I've never
wojtek
Word to that. Imagine a Boxing Day with free tube!
Some sort of cooperation between radical commuter groups (as opposed to the current yuppy ones) would be the best way to respond to price rises IMO.
Probable obstacle to this would be the RMT's conservative, tankie leadership...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgwi0OKcYkA
like usual, white hats ruin potential fun by publishing exploits.
Unemployed people to get free
Unemployed people to get free bus travel in attempt to help them find work
If you hop trains (BART) here
If you hop trains (BART) here in the Bay Area you'll receive a brutal beating, perhaps even be shot. Bikes are a safe bet.
wojtek wrote: I've never
wojtek
Caiman del Barrio
A lot of people put this sort of thing forward. I think it is very misguided.
Firstly I think that it buys into the whole thing that has developed over the last thirty years or so about strikes and public support. Strikes are not won on public support, but on the damage that they cause to the economy, and the solidarity of other workers, which is a very different thing from 'public support'. One of the things that the power of public transport workers' consists of the the ability to hit other sectors of the economy by basically stopping other people getting to work. By saying that they should work as normal, but refuse to collect fares, you automatically negate this.
Second surely we want workers' struggles to try to involve as many workers as possible. By advocating a strategy like this, you are in effect suggesting involving far fewer workers (i.e. just those who collect tickets, and putting them as individuals into a situation where they don't know if other workers are acting with them (If you are outside the work place on a picket line you know that you are not on your own. If you are one person refusing to collect tickets on a train you don't.), and quite probably leave themselves open to individual discipline processes for failing to preform their duties.
Devrim
Caiman del Barrio wrote: Word
Caiman del Barrio
Just on the subject, in Ankara public transport is free on religious holidays.
Also in the city where I am living now as in many European cities, there is no control at the entrance or exit. You stamp your ticket in the entrance hall of the metro, or on the tram or the bus, but there are no gates or ticket checkers. Of course there are inspectors, mostly on the metro. I have never seen one on a bus, and very rarely on a tram.
Devrim
1. If you get your fares in
1. If you get your fares in advance they're usually a lot cheaper (sometimes 2 or 3 quid as opposed to 50 quid).
2. Even if you book close, but in advance it's usually still cheaper
3. If you for any reason have to cheat the train, be alert, confident and don't look suspicious. Try getting off at a middling suburbs station where no one can be arsed to check the tickets (one example is getting off at Iver instead of Slough, you could theoretically probably get away with your whole journey being free if you got on at the right place). If you get on at stations without barriers (Finsbury Park for example) you'll have to find somewhere without strenuous checks or barriers.
4. Use all the subsidies you're entitled to on top of all the above.
5. Make sure you find the cheapest fare on the tube by using the single fare finder, the LO is much cheaper than the LU and takes just as long, it's more reliable too.
bit.ly/6QkkLt
Use that. Find the stations or ones nearby, go to the Station Map and you can see whether the station has barriers or not (very recently refurb'd stations might not show this, but you can find that info out on google, this tool has been invaluable in the past).
I'd also add that I've had
I'd also add that I've had most LU staff be really nice to me in the past, it's usually only when they've got their bosses looking over their shoulder (*literally) that they'll sort of go ahead with the whole shitty process of booking someone in, albeit resentfully.
Always do your best to wangle out of it if that happens
Passenger takes out loan just
Passenger takes out loan just to get to work
Pretending to be asleep seems to work.
When I was staying in Italy,
When I was staying in Italy, there are hardly ever ticket checks on the bus so I would buy 1 ticket and then not stamp it, and then if there was a ticket checker I would just claim to be an ignorant tourist and who didnt know to stamp their ticket.
Bendy buses in London are
Bendy buses in London are free :)
With the tube you can walk in behind someone but be polite about it (don't push them or cop a feel). As you get checked on the way in and out it is a bit tricky but as long as the station is reasonably busy you'll be alright. The white shiny square at below hip height is the sensor you need to block to follow someone through, although if you're reasonably close it should be ok. The main thing is not to panic if you fuck it up. Also it's a good idea to know an address and matching postcode if stopped, they check it's a valid address but not if you live there. The barriers are pretty hard to jump though.
Rail, get an open return and if you can get onto the train without scanning your ticket then you can use it again. If you have a bag then go through the gate at each end so it doesn't get scanned, on your way out ask them if you can keep it, I've never had a problem doing that.
In Paris. Don't bother paying for buses full stop. Metro they do checks fairly frequently and the best way to get around them is to be white. It's worth having a few old tickets it your pockets (you can pick them up or use a few) and then start handing them over to the checker, that's what I did last time and the guy saw that I had a few tickets and stopped looking. You don't need a ticket to get out so once you're in it's easy. As a matter of course hold the door part of the barrier open after you so the next person can jump the barrier. French railways the tickets have to be stamped in a machine on the platform, so I never stamped it so I could re-use them. Now that the system has changed to make it a lot cheaper to book tickets this is becoming less worthwhile (booked tickets are for a certain train so can't be reused, stamped or not, although they can technically be refunded I think)
Cologne trams, just get on. When I asked for directions the guy in the hostel didn't actually know how to pay for a ticket because he'd never done it :)
Budapest: pay the ticket, the inspectors aren't regular but they are arseholes and wil make you pay even if you are a tourist, although if they think you're a gypsy apparently they often let you off, but might call the cops.
When I travelled from
When I travelled from Amsterdam Central to Schipol for work I always bought the ticket- 'cos I am a nervous geezer and sitting shitting my self is worse than paying. My colleague was a young north African who was paying for his university by working; he pointed out his study- the number of inspections per month and the chance of getting hit with a penalty worked out much cheaper than paying for every ride- he was caught regularly and paid the excess but it still worked out much less than a mug like me would pay... I bet he is Jimmy Carr's tax advisor now!
jef costello wrote: Bendy
jef costello
Boris was supposed to get rid of em at the end of '11 though? Think there maybe like one route that i still see occasionally (507 maybe?) but it's not really a general thing.
It's pretty tricky dodging transport in London unless you have encyclopaedic and constantly updating information on the handful of (outer) stations that don't have barriers and you're lucky to be able to travel from one to the other. You're probably better off buying a bike tbf.
jef costello wrote: Bendy
jef costello
Nearly all the tricks have gone but that one will always work. I managed to go in and out of stations all day without paying (since it was my chum, I both pushed him and copped a feel).
in nyc you're pretty much
in nyc you're pretty much s.o.l., outside of revolutionary periods (http://libcom.org/news/successful-fare-strike-new-york-subways-29032012)
Dont go out.
Dont go out.
NYC subways are always
NYC subways are always crawling with cops *shudder*
We live in a capitalist
We live in a capitalist system. If you have to pay for public transport and don't want to then just don't use it. Walk, cycle or find another way.
As with most, if not all, situations now where there is likely to be a conflict between workers and the public the whole place will be covered by CCTV cameras controlled by someone else. Don't expect a transport worker to put her or his job in jeopardy to allow you to dodge paying.
Ok, for London you can ride
Ok, for London you can ride the "free" buses. They're the new buses that have 3 doors. There isn't normally a bus conducter on the back so you can just slip on for free. The bus drivers usually don't give a shit, even if there's a group of you. 88 bus goes to Camden/Hampstead all the way south to Elephant and castle (never any conductors on that one), 24 to camden (somtimes conductors), 453 from central, trafalgar to Peckhem through Elephant and castle (rarely conductors), er i think it was 15 to East London, to Aldagate, Freedom (rarely conductors). If a condoctor gets onto the bus you can just get up and walk off, they have no legal rights to restrain or even touch you and they won't try anything (at least in my experience they never have). You don't have to give any details or anything just simply walk off. Although saying that, most of them are ok and will say just pay next time. There are other free buses around but can't remember the numbers. If a conductor is on at the back just walk to the middle door and pretend to show a card onto the oyster machine. This works 9/10.
Otherwise you can bunk the underground by ghosting, much easier in large groups as they then you can just hold the barriers open and the staff will just stare at you at worst but normally just do fuck all. BUT DON'T get off at Camden as there's always BTP so just get off at chalk farm or Kentish town. DLR line is easy to bunk as they rarely inspect and you can see them a mile off. At worst they will just ask you to leave if you refuse to pay the fine or buy a ticket.
You can actually bunk the tube right infront of them, sometimes just a polite "sorry mate i've got no money" as you go through the barriers will be enough.
Other tips include, don't try bunking normal busses, the driver will refure to drive and wait for a really long time which in one case resulted in a munnity and other people started to turn on me.
Travelling for free (in London) is actually really straight forwards, it's acutally just a case of doing it even though at first it feels a bit dodgy. For the rest of the country i find hitchhiking to be pretty decent if you're patient enough and not in a rush to get somewhere. (you will meet wierd people, mainly lonely, but i've met a buisness owner before lol)
As for trains, hide in the toilet or just make up details when they ask you to process the fine. However DO give a real address, don't worry though you don't have to live there. Generally i find hitiching trains a bit more difficult. But yea, London is very easy.
Hope this info isn't too late. I see the orginal post was ages ago........
Eh, most workers did have
Eh, most workers did have responsibilities involving explicitly safeguarding capital's profits. You wouldn't expect a soldier to have avoided killing Iraqis to keep their job, for instance. Still, though, if their focus is a bit too spread-out, due to other duties, they could easily be too distracted and give you an opening if you wished to travel.
Generally, while you could skip in London tubes and similar, which might occasionally occur by accident anyway - the gates remain open even if a person had an invalid ticket or card - if you were doing this on purpose you would generally want to be able to get out similarly from the other end. This might imply finding a crowded station, or being available to exiting at a different station. Doing so in a group might be impractical, as it draws attention to yourself or makes you a more easily observed target, and means that more people might have to get through. That is, unless only some members do so, which merely cuts things a bit, and is still slightly anonymous. If the place is a bit of a rush when it comes to getting in and out, that might be optimal.
Of course, there might have been a slight sense of concern or threat during this, but generally speaking if people around you aren't aware, then they might not have enough of an explicit MO or stimulus to accost you immediately. Of course, by itself it wasn't really a stable mode of doing things or was merely an attempt to evade the system while within it, which was unlikely to be too comfortable without external stimuli.
Sleeper wrote: We live in a
Sleeper
as some one who has worked as a gateline assistant (i.e ticket barrier man) for a train company I can confirm this is bullshit. In our training they say that basically you shouldn't give a shit and never try to stop some one from doing it. We have absolutely zero powers to penalise fare evaders. The only people who can actually fine you etc are british transport police and revenue. Most of the gateline assistants give zero shits. I let people do it day and in day out and trust me no one said a thing, managers, co workers. The only people who seemed to give a shit were goody two shoes members of the public .
Also, the fact you think
Also, the fact you think paying for public transport is an option for people is hilarious.
Listen to who you want to and
Listen to who you want to and take your chances but don't come back moaning when you get fined, arrested or just held when you want to get somewhere else and miss that connection.
One of these days, probably when I'm dead and gone, we will all travel on a free public transport system. Until then pay or take your chances...
the croydonian anarchist
Sleeper - seriously man,
Sleeper - seriously man, where the fuck do you get off with this attitude. Zhou just got the lowdown straight from the horses mouth yet instead of a simple 'fair enough, I didn't realise that', you have to persist in your know all arrogance.. Fuck man. Take that chip off your shoulder and give yourself a break.
As for if you can't pay, don't travel, WTF?!!! How about if you can't buy food, don't eat? That's daft right? We all need to eat so if we have to we steal food. Same principle here. Christ, even common law states that all men have the right to travel freely. Thanks for pointing out that we live in a capitalist system. Have you noticed that in a capitalist system we all HAVE TO TRAVEL. For work, benefits, to buy cheaper food. Should we be deprived of seeing our friends and family just coz we don't have the funds that 'allow' us t go to where they are.
Finally, as I understand it fare evasion is a civil matter, not a criminal one. You are not obliged to give your details. If you're smart about it they won't do shit. It's only acceptance of their authority that fucks you up. If I get a parking ticket I phone the council and tell them that I did not give permission for my car to be touched and that I removed and disposed of the ticket. I never hear about it again after that. Basicly I refuse to contract with them and they don't have a legal leg to stand on. I can't speak for anywhere else but it certainly works that way in Colchester.
Anyway, chill out and quit arguing for the sake of being right.
Sleeper wrote: Listen to who
Sleeper
He's speaking from experience.
It's the same in most customer service jobs, if there's any kind of crime etc you're not supposed to intervene (otherwise they have to train and insure you etc) although they encourage you to do so informally.
To my shame I once helped apprehend a shoplifter after trying to ignore my boss, although if I'd realised at the time him and his mates had beaten the shit out of a security guard I would have felt better about it. On the bright side I took the rest of my shift off because I was traumatised and used it to get them to change my hours without changing my contract (they'd switched from fixed hours to flexible contracts and no way was I risking my sunday shift)
I let people do it day and in
I let people do it day and in day out and trust me no one said a thing, managers, co workers.
I dont mind pay for public
I dont mind pay for public transportation. Because the alternative would be capitalist transportation and then no one could afford it. Ofcourse if the prices climbed i would have to do something about it, but then i would also get public support.
I just found out that Preston has one of the biggest busstations in Europe with 79 gates LMAO! So maybe what you are paying for is that really big building?
http://www.c20society.org.uk/casework/preston-bus-station-2/
Sleeper
That we live in a capitalist society makes no difference. However society is organised, there will always be a cost to transportation since it cost energy and time to move around. Of course transportation is not free.
I remember Northampton saying
I remember Northampton saying that they had the biggest bus station, but I think it was the biggest covered bus station. But large terminals are necessary for mass transit, whether mass transit is necessary is another question.
I would not knock the modern
I would not knock the modern bus terminals. The old Dundas Street bus station in Glasgow was very badly lit, often wet and windy. The shelters were like school sheds and smelled of urine and sick. It was considered dangerous for women after dark.
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timthelion wrote: All good
timthelion
Bollocks!
Lol sleeper, so instead of
Lol sleeper, so instead of being confronted with directly relevant evidence from some one who HAS DONE THE JOB, you just repeat your original hypothesis? Do fuck right off
Also, just some other related
Also, just some other related things for context. A lot of us get assaulted on the job too. I knew of one older member of staff at a train station I had worked a couple shifts in the past that got assaulted by some drunk dude. The company would have backed him 100% in the court case, but no one EVER takes this shit to court because its too much money and time. Some people in the industry can make pretty good fucking money (ticket office are on like £13 an hour, i was on £10) and even then, there is no actual practical consequence to when this happens. Yet another demonstration how the law is only worth speaking about if you have the money to access and use it. Until that point it may as well not exist in some cases (like this one).
If you already were in a job where you could be alone at midnight with sole responsibility of the station, and no power to stop loud, aggressive, often drunk people from approaching you, trying to intimidate you and all in all making it a living hell, trust me, if one of them seriously started shit you would not be trying to keep your raging animal trapped inside a closed environment. You'd let them get on the train, open all the gates, if it got that bad, just run the fuck away. You simply have NO IDEA. Please shut the fuck up.
THEN imagine having nowhere to run, because your getting the last train home, which is the same as this person is getting on. And fuck all else staff about. These are very very very real situations people in this area of work can be exposed to in quite ordinary circumstances.
You've forgotten the
You've forgotten the indivualised jet backpacks that we all thought we'd end up using back in the 1950s
Quote: But large terminals
Mass transit is fucking awesome!!! - After air-conditioning, it's humanity's single greatest achievement!
Battlescarred wrote: You've
Battlescarred
Keep the faith for a little longer.
http://metro.co.uk/2015/12/10/first-commercial-jetpack-revealed-and-its-available-in-2016-5555889/
I have a few stories to tell.
Where I live the bus fares are so expensive that if you want to go somewhere and come back you have to buy a day ticket. So in my town what some of us do is after we've finished for the day we give them to someone else at the bus stop.
Another thing we do is get a late train to the next town, they never bother checking, and if they do we're one stop from the end of line so its like a quid and if you don't want to pay they just kick you off at the next stop which is the one you were going to anyway. I've actually been in first class a few times doing that.
Chilli Sauce wrote: Mass
Chilli Sauce
I meant in terms of commuting, my contract is about to finish at the place where I only have a half-hour journey from home.
Reddebrek
Yeah I used to do that, and on the train I'd give away or leave the return on the machine at the destination because often the return cost the same as a single. If you are going to a smaller place before a large city in the UK it's often cheaper to buy a ticket to the large place and get off early. It's technically against the rules but I can't remember being stopped, the return is often a little trickier because the barrier won't open but if you ask the people just open it, although I did have to spend quite a long time one with a jobsworth who said it wasn't valid.
Be aware there are currently
Be aware there are currently twenty six Train Operating Companies in the UK. Each of these TOC's has some control over the little stuff like barriers and revenue control on their little part. The last bellend who told me to fuck off didn't travel.
the croydonian anarchist
Quote: The last bellend who
So you're a jobsworth ticket collector?
Red Marriott
Red Marriott
Is this true Sleeper? If so its Chinese burns and jungle treatment for you son.
i am aware of them all, i
i am aware of them all, i worked the job. if you do work as a gateline assistant, fuck you. none of the scraps of money your toc is losing from you stopping some one from fare evasion is going to scrap down into your wages, trust me. fuck you
Quote: Yeah I used to do
sometimes its not even against the rules. some journeys you are allowed 'break of journey' and hence can get off early. also, tip for anyone that needs to get to places like battersea park, new cross gate, south bermondsey (right before victoria and london bridge respectively). get the quick train to london bridge or victoria and then just switch platforms without touching out. there aren't barriers to move between the same set and it means you can get to them both quicker and without paying the zone 1 fare even though your changing in a zone 1 station. ive literally been able to just get to london bridge and sit on the same train until after about 10 mins it goes back to south bermondsey.
Is that how you think of us
Is that how you think of us Red Marriott?
Red Marriott
Sleeper wrote: Is that how
Sleeper
Not in general, no - but when people make public boasts like yours above about asserting your legal authority over people after your previous posts discouraging anyone to avoid paying fares ...
Come on Sleeper, what's up
Come on Sleeper, what's up with this shit?
Noah Fence wrote: Come on
Noah Fence
There's no boasting. London
There's no boasting. London is one tiny part of the UK, and an even smaller part of the world. You know what, you're a waste of my time.
Red Marriott
I know where London is and
I know where London is and what relation it has to the world, thanks (dunno what it has to do with this thread though). Seems like you love to arrogantly dish it out but aren't very good at taking a bit back.