Merseyrail mulls fraud team to crack down on fare dodgers as tap-and-go expands

Earlier this month, it was confirmed after a lengthy wait, 50 people across the Liverpool City Region became the first to get the chance to test a tap and go system to travel.

The system uses the smartcard to effectively track journeys across the Merseyrail network across a 24 hour period. It removes the need to buy a physical ticket and is seen as the next phase towards bus and ferry integration.

Suzanne Grant, the operator’s chief commercial officer, told a Liverpool City Region transport committee how as methods of fare evasion become more sophisticated, it will look to respond in kind. This could include an entirely new team to catch those trying to game the system.

Speaking at Mann Island, Ms Grant explained the road map for the further roll out of tap and go technology. She said: “We’ve got a phased project, the first phase of which will be followed by bank cards.

“Our next phase is exploring geofencing which will allow passengers to travel without having to tap a card, they’ll tap a mobile phone at the start of their journey and be tracked around the network. Our next priority following that is to introduce barcodes, that will allow regional and national travel from our network and that is something we are being asked for nationally.”

The Merseyrail officer told a panel of councillors how revenue protection staff operating on the £500m fleet of trains will be equipped with new devices as people go ticketless more frequently. She said: “Our buy before you ride policy will remain.

“At the moment, you have to have a printed ticket before you board one of our services. When we modernise our retail offer, you will have to tap your metro card or your bank card before boarding one of our trains.

“Revenue protection duties will change in that they won’t just be taking paper tickets, they will have handheld devices that will tell them if a person has tapped a bank card or a Metro card at the start of their journey. If they haven’t, it’ll be treated in the same way that it is now in that if you haven’t got a valid ticket, you’ll be issued with a penalty fare.”

Ms Grant said Merseyrail is “expecting the ways in which fare evaders operate to change” and cited how other transport operators were encountering people removing bank cards from their mobile phones before being charged to avoid a fee. She explained how the operator would look to combat the new ways people would look to dodge paying, including bringing on a new taskforce.

She said: “There’s other issues where people will travel along the network, jump off, quickly tap a platform validator that’s closer to their validation station, and jump back on. The ways we have to tackle fare evasion will change.

“We’re expecting once we launch our full scheme, we’ll need a fraud team that will sit within our revenue protection team. We’ll have access to a back office that will give us much more information about where passengers are travelling and what their habits are.

“If people are registering for their account, we’ll have their home stations so if we do see patterns in a certain area where people are all tapping a validator at Sandhills for example, we’ll know there’s issues and we’ll be able to deploy teams in those areas.”