I conducted in that era. You’d be amazed at the number of people who did not bother scratching until the conductor asked to see the ticket. No doubt they were banking on a lazy conductor who would either not bother to look at the ticket or would give a nod to an unvalidated ticket. You should have seen their faces when I used my punch to validate the ticket! Up to a point, scratch tickets were okay. They fell down to the due to the blatant dishonesty of so many passengers.

While I would like to point out that at South Melbourne virtually all drivers took the job seriously as did a goodly number of career conductors, in the time leading up to the demise of conductors, too high a percentage of them made little effort in doing the job.

Even at the time of the yellow tickets with the date around the perimeter, I could not understand why people bought a two-hour ticket when they were obviously going to work as a day ticket saved them $.40 each day below the price of two 2-hourly tickets.

Eventually the penny dropped. All those people were obviously banking on a lazy conductor in the PM peak not bothering to check or sell tickets, and after about two free rides home over the week they were in front.

I used to have quite a collection of fraudulent tickets doctored for the purpose of fare evasion. The commonest trick was to hold out a used ticket for punching while keeping hold of it to cover the punch hole made just a few days earlier. These were easily detected. I asked to be given the ticket, and lo and behold, there was the old punch mark. Sometimes sticky tape was used to hold in place a little patch over the hole.

In Brisbane or Gold Coast I have never seen violent outbursts when fare evaders are first questioned unlike what seems to be frequently the case in Melbourne. When ticket examiners come across fare evaders who have the attitude of a thug, what are they supposed to do? Stand back and say it’s okay?

Regards,

On 19 Mar 2019, at 10:03 am, Hal Cain hegcain@...> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 10:43 AM Tony Galloway arg@...> wrote:
>> On 18 Mar 2019, at 6:43 am, 'Richard Youl' via TramsDownUnder tramsdownunder@...> wrote:

>> I believe that this dispute also commenced the mass civil disobedience of fare evasion which essentially continues to this day and has been passed on to following generations.

>

> Seems like a fair response to me.

>

> It’s what you get when legitimate workers (conductors) get replaced with shit-brained playcop thugs.


Don't forget the other factor, the ludicrous scratch ticket system.

Hal Cain

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