The fellowship brought in aspects of systems thinking and helped me to understand the interaction between the different customer ‘touch points’ when taking a journey by rail.
Policy Challenge
How can we develop effective policies to address fare evasion and fraud on the railways, including establishing minimum standards for ticketless travel surveys, standardizing operator contracts, and assessing penalty fare regulations for a common approach across Great British Railways?
Learning Journey
Having worked in the commercial side of transport most of my working life, operators today face new challenges related to technological developments and the impacts of changing customer behaviour. My policy challenge was to address an important and growing issue within all areas of government and in rail specifically, which is improving revenue protection, reducing fare evasion and fraud.
The policy fellowship provided me with access to a knowledgeable network of professionals who had new and innovative ideas. The programme also helped me to think through the problem from the perspective of other policy individuals. This expanded the scope of the issue to look more broadly at the customer rather than just the rail journey been undertaken.
During the fellowship I explored different themes with fellows and with other members of the cohort which helped me to understand similar issues relating to fraud and revenue loss in other areas. It also highlighted the very latest innovative thinking in terms of technology which would help to mitigate these issues.
Each fellow that I worked with including those involved in the cohort for the policy fellowship helped to assess the challenge from a different perspective. The fellowship brought in aspects of systems thinking and helped me to understand the interaction between the different customer ‘touch points’ when taking a journey by rail. This led to discussing the balance between enforcement and the social values of improving the customers knowledge of ticketing and fares.
Matthew Barker is Fares, Passenger Rights and Benefits Manager at Department for Transport.
Impact
The programme has allowed me to look at the ‘big picture’ and try some alternative approaches to reducing ticketless travel and fraud on the railway. The outcome of this policy fellowship has led to real change in the policy approach in reducing fare evasion and fraud, providing more revenue to the railway and ultimately taxpayers.