Safer Travel Initiative Exposes Cheats

Travel West Midlands' Safer Travel initiative has been cracking down on bus passengers during the month of June who have not paid the correct fare or who have tried to pass off fraudulent Travelcards.Corporate Affairs Director Phil Bateman, said; "During the month of June more than 7,000 buses were stopped and checked by our Revenue Teams and 126,511 customers had their Travelcards and tickets scrutinised. During this process we identified 3,273 passengers that were travelling with incorrect Travelcards or tickets, and of these 664 passengers had their Travelcard withdrawn for further detailed investigation.Neil Barker Acting Chief Executive, Travel West Midlands, said; "As part of providing a safe and reliable bus service here in the West Midlands County. We have been active in ensuring that travel cheats just do not prosper and we will make every effort not to allow the unlawful activity of some to spoil the good transport facilities we provide for customers. Our whole ethos is to ?make travel simpler? for our customers. We apologise for any delays that occurred during these sweeps by our revenue teams but we know from our contact with customers that they do not want to see 'cheats' getting away without paying for their journeys.Mr Barker added; "We are in the process of retrieving £37,000 from this group of passengers who felt that they could wilfully cheat the system. I hope it serves as a warning to others that we do have systems in place that will expose cheats and we do place hefty standard fare charges on those people we catch."- The Police also arrested five persons in June for other offences including a drugs offence.- TWM's Safer Travel Initiative is an Award winning partnership with West Midlands Police. In 2006 there were 602,546 passengers who had their Travelcards and tickets checked during the course of the year.

Published 6th August 2007