Permits to Travel - Broombridge
 

At Broombridge station this morning Tuesday 9 April 2013 a member of Iarnród Éireann personnel was issuing to passengers slips/chits of paper entitled "Permit to Travel".

The permit read-

"Permit to Travel

This Permit verifies that the passenger boarded at Broombridge today 28.03.13

Ref No: 121

Issued by the Revenue Protection Unit. Non-transferable. Misuse will result in a prosecution"

The new Iarnród Éireann/Irish Rail logo was displayed at the bottom of the chit.


For the avoidance of doubt, the date 28.03.13 is how the chit read; it is not a typographical error in this post.

This is an ongoing program to detect fare evasion by people falsely claiming to have boarded at Broombridge when challenged later.

Those falsely claiming to board at Broombridge then get stung for the 100 euro fine, most of the fraudsters then claim of course then Broombridge is unstaffed, of course not knowing the trap Irish Rail has set.

Needless to say if the case gets to the court the full 1000 euro fine is applied

SI 109 / 1984 does provide for this style of temporary ticket.

Surely if they have someone there to hand out permits then they can have someone there to sell tickets. :D

As a quick aside some unstaffed (or staffed at certain hours only) stations in England have Permit To Travel machines.

Quite robust machines. The intending passenger inserts whatever coins s/he has and a little card permit is issued stating amount paid, station name and time.

Passenger must then exchange the card permit for a ticket ASAP (within a maximum of 2 hours) and pay the balance of the fare due.

Whether a similar machine at certain stations here would have merit is hard to know. The ideal situation at all unstaffed stations is a ticket vending machine (TVM) but perhaps at a few locations due to low traffic/ antisocial behaviour (and maybe other reasons) a machine along these lines may be worth considering.

I would delay any permanent improvement at Broombridge until Luas BXD is completed. The elimination of the wasteland around the station, replaced with a busy staffed depot, should have a positive effect and allow for at least a ticket machine somewhere. There will be Luas machines as well, remember.

No money can change hands at Broombridge due staff safety concerns

The booking office, well container was set alight with the clerk inside some years back. That was the final straw.

Is this the particular problem you have?

well, it is a big one. then again if everyone turned up showing a ticket of the same day, albeit the wrong day, i assume the RPU in Connolly/Tara/Pearse would get the message.

Presumably these chits are contained in booklets of say 50 or 100 similar to a receipt book. So it would seem reasonable that staff may estimate how many are likely to be issued that day and pre-date that amount before circulating and issuing them. So possibly 28.03 is explained as being the previous occasion when they were handed out. So while unused chits already written probably can't be discarded (audit purposes etc...) surely a quick line through the obsolete date to write in the actual date with a staff initial/code alongside is in order. That's how I see it anyway.

Fully agree that there's probably little point in doing anything at the station (in terms of facilities) until Luas arrives.

There are some nice people in the Broombridge area who will be delighted to empty such a machine nightly on IÉ's behalf...

Would you not be wary of being given a Permit to Travel with a past date on it? Unless it's not a date but a code?!