TfL’s testing an illuminating approach to increasing DLR fare payments

Transport for London (TfL) is trialling a new way of making the tap-in/out payment points in DLR stations more obvious to passengers and encouraging more people to tap to pay for their trips.

As most of the DLR stations don’t have ticket barriers, there’s a certain level of trust that people tend to do the right thing and pay for transport, and the vast majority do pay to take a ride on the DLR.

However, not everyone does, and in addition to in-train checks, the DLR carries out around 40 inspections at stations every 4-weeks – where a load of staff check tickets as people leave.

During a question and answer session at the GLA, Richard Graham, KeolisAmey Docklands Managing Director said that the station “blocks” where they check everyone’s ticket detect around one percent of passengers are not paying their fare, although it’s expected that the real figure is higher as people avoid the station if they hear an inspection is taking place. The average across TfL is about 3 to 4 percent.

However, away from deliberate evasion, there’s always going to be some accidents, and a trial is underway to see if increasing the visibility of the touchpads as people enter and leave the station will reduce accidentally forgetting to tap-in/out when people use the DLR. And maybe also nudge people into reducing fare evasion as well.

Trish Ashton, TfL’s Director of Rail & Sponsored Services explained at the same meeting that they are testing with an illuminated sign on the floor as standard stickers tend to fade and get dirty. She also noted that over time, people get used to stickers and they become “wallpaper” rather than something people pay attention to, so hopefully the illuminated spot on the ground will be much more obvious.

Floor illuminated spot at Shadwell DLR station (c) ianVisits

The issue they are addressing, apart from reminding people to tap on them, is that due to constraints about power supplies, some ticket readers might not be in the most obvious locations, so would some form of improved signage help increase use.

The projector mounted above the card reader (c) ianVisits

As there are people counters in stations, they can compare ticket taps to passenger numbers to look for discrepancies to see where there might be an issue that needs addressing.

However, as Tom Page, TfL’s General Manager of DLR, explained that’s never a direct match as a large portion of customers don’t need to tap when using the DLR. Examples such as freedom pass users or TfL staff members were cited. They do look for changes and patterns that might suggest fare evasion, or accidental avoidance is becoming a problem.

However, the trials, currently at Shadwell and Cyprus DLR stations do appear to be showing a shrinking of the gap between passenger numbers and taps on the ticket machine.

Trish Ashton confirmed that the trial has had “pretty good success rates in additional taps”, so they’re looking at rolling them out more broadly, although at this stage no timeframe was available.

Although that can be expected to lead to increased revenue from fares, it can also reduce it — as people sometimes forget to tap out and can end up paying more than expected. If they’ve registered an account on TfL’s website, then a refund is easy to arrange, but preventing the accident in the first place would be better.

Shadwell station, showing a ticket reader with floor sticker, one without, and the illuminated ticket reader (c) ianVisits

Updated 20th Dec – the 40 inspections are per period (4-weeks), not per year as originally stated.