Northern Rail reveals Rochdale is fare dodging hot spot

Rochdale Train Station

Northern Rail has revealed that Rochdale is a fare dodging hot spot. They found that the most common journey where people are caught travelling without a ticket was from Rochdale to Manchester Victoria.

Across Greater Manchester there were 10,046 occasions were people did not purchase a ticket to travel. 876 of those journeys started in Rochdale.

Northern Rail is currently launching a campaign to crack down on travelling without tickets across Greater Manchester.

Alex Hynes, Managing Director of Northern, said: “We know from talking to our customers they have a real problem when they see others not paying for their journey.

"We don’t want to see passengers get into trouble and want to make sure they understand the implications of taking a free ride.

“We hear all sorts of excuses from passengers as to why they don’t have a ticket – they don’t have any money or a conductor did not come down the train and sell them one. It’s the passenger’s responsibility to buy a ticket, so they must seek out the conductor to get one or if that is not possible, then buy a ticket at their destination station.”

Fare evasion continues to be a huge issue for the rail industry, costing £240m per year.
Mr Hynes added: “We know that some of our smaller stations have limited opportunities to buy tickets, and we are investing in new ticket buying facilities and currently carrying out independent surveys across the network to gain information on how our customers want to purchase tickets. This will allow us to continue to give our customers easy and varied opportunities to pay for their journey. However, the highest number of journeys made without paying for them started at stations with open ticket offices and ticket vending machines.”