[article] TVM and Child Tickets

[Jamie2k9]

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news...-30100495.html

Irish Rail is to introduce a new system in which children's tickets can only be bought from vending machines if an adult ticket is also purchased.

The transport company has not sold child tickets from machines at 164 stations for over two years because adults were using them to evade fares.

Commuters were greatly reducing their travel costs by purchasing a child's ticket, instead of paying the adult fare.

Irish Rail said it had no choice but to disable the 'child' option on machines in stations across Dublin's DART and commuter network.

The company decided to only sell children's tickets at service counters because of what a spokeswoman described as "a notable level of misuse".

She said the problem was centred on the greater Dublin area and the revenue lost could not be quantified.

Irish Rail said it was now setting up a new system whereby a child ticket can be purchased from a vending machine – but only when bought alongside an adult one.

"In the DART/Commuter area there was a notable level of misuse of child tickets by adults," the spokeswoman said.

"Despite our revenue protection officers focusing on penalising such fare evasion, the problem continued, and we decided, in the DART/Commuter area only, to withdraw child tickets for sale from ticket vending machines.

"We have recently increased the level of revenue protection officers operating on our network so we are now confident that misuse will not occur due to increased ticket checks."

Labour TD Sean Kenny, who raised the issue with Irish Rail, said passengers were concerned they could be held liable and fined if unable to purchase a ticket from machines for their children.

An on-the-spot fine of €100, plus the fare, can be imposed. A fine of up to €1,000 can be imposed by the district court if the penalty is unpaid.

Mr Kenny said he was "happy" that Irish Rail was addressing the problem.

A short-hop journey is €2.15 for an adult, compared with €1.15 for a child.

[James Howard]

That is good news.

I had an issue with this a while ago where I was attempting to a buy family day ticket for the DART on a Sunday morning in Landsdowne road. We simply couldn't get on a train without jumping the barriers so we just ended up getting the car out the of hotel car-park and going home early instead of spending the day seeing Dublin by rail. Result, loss of revenue for Irish Rail and the restaurant in Howth that we didn't bother eating at and the shops we didn't bother visiting.

[Mark Gleeson]

Family tickets have been available on all routes from the machines for quite a while.

Our discussions with Irish Rail indicated that child tickets were to be made available without restriction, which is not what is happening. The TVM's are being basically set to the way they were originally, must buy at least 1 adult ticket as part of the transaction

[James Howard]

This was a while ago - probably a couple of years.

How difficult would it be to make the exit barriers make a different noise if a child ticket was used?

[Mark Gleeson]

The barriers visually indicate if a child ticket/smartcard is in use, watch for a yellow bar inside the green arrow on top of the turnstile. London Underground use the same trick

[berneyarms]

So what, officially, is an unaccompanied child, who does not have a LEAP card, supposed to do if the station booking office is closed?