BY PAUL T HORGAN
Were it not for the office blocks dominating the southern, more populous, side of Reading Station, it would be an imposing piece of railway architecture. The building’s striking feature is its wide concourse, mounted above the eight platforms aligned with the Great Western Main Line. Much like Joseph Bazalgette, who built London’s sewers with four times the required capacity, this escalator-and-lift-linked concourse is vast in both width and height. Built in the early 2010s, the new, highly spacious 15-platform station was of such significance to the railway network west of Greater London that it was formally reopened by Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth.
Consequently, crowding, even at busy times, is not much of an issue. This changes only when the lines into Paddington are out of action, forcing London-bound passengers to be corralled onto the stopping service to Waterloo. But the station is well equipped to manage rush hours, surges for Royal Ascot and rugby at Twickenham, and home fixtures for Reading FC.
There is, however, an annual corralling ritual that has just concluded. It has nothing to do with capacity, rolling stock, or points failures. Instead, it is quite literally a rite of passage for teenagers.
The Reading Festival, held over the Bank Holiday weekend, has just finished. It boasts significant headliners that could grace Glastonbury, but lacks the status of that Somerset mustering of liberal hatreds. Reading is, obviously, far more accessible, not least because of its superb new station. Tickets are also cheaper and more available than for Glastonbury, which seems to have grown increasingly elitist in parallel with the shocking sentiments on broadcastable display there.
This naturally attracts teenagers, specifically 18-year-olds on their first festival experience. How do I know it’s their first? It concerns the teenage ritual of fare-dodging.
After the age of 16, children must pay the full adult fare. The reasons seem obscure but may be rooted in the historic fact that this was once the school-leaving age, and thus 16-year-olds would have jobs. The railway companies, eager for revenue, rightly determined that employed 16-year-olds should pay their way like any adult. Parliament seemed to agree then, and still does.
It may seem strange in our ‘progressive’ society, but our railway system often appears run as if the ‘Big Four’ companies still existed, with union demarcations preventing staff mobility across the national network. In that context, charging 16-year-olds the full fare aligns with this corporate inertia. Railway modernisation is a fraught affair with numerous special interests and the ever-present prospect of damaging strikes if change displeases the shop stewards. It is a miracle, therefore, that Reading Station, serving multiple lines from multiple providers, was rebuilt to face the 21st Century. But I digress.
To overcome this historic inertia following the raised school-leaving age—while raising the age for a full fare seems strictly verboten—a ’16-17 Saver’ railcard was introduced. It costs £30. Physically, it is not a card but a smartphone app with a QR code (that machine-readable pattern resembling a swastika rearranged by a cubist) and a photo of the holder. The railway companies assume all 16-year-olds have a smartphone, a fair but somewhat disappointing assumption. It does, however, grant half-price rail travel for two extra years.
This is the reason for the teenagers’ corralling at festival time. The railway companies have detected a propensity for 18-year-old festival-goers to travel at half-price on their expired 16-17 railcards, or to buy a ticket on that basis without owning one at all. So, starting on the Thursday before the festival, every passenger has their ticket manually checked, with festival-goers singled out to ensure they have paid the full fare.
They are easy to spot: laden with rucksacks, tents, and sleeping bags. They are directed into a chicane of temporary barriers at the northern end of the concourse where a squad of inspectors performs its task. Bar tables are set up with officials to process the caught fare-dodgers, take details, secure proper payment, and issue fines. Smaller, similar facilities appear at the ground-level southern exits for anyone attempting to use them and cross via the pedestrian subway.
It’s all rather Darwinian, but based on the survival of the honest.
The closest analogy is the river-crossings of wildebeests on their annual migration, where they run a gauntlet of crocodiles gathered at fords to thin the herd by taking down the weak and the elderly.
Those caught seem to feel no shame. I spoke to one young man, with the obligatory chin-fluff denoting the opposite of maturity, who was nonchalant and defiant. This did not seem a youthful façade of bravado. The defiance is actually a small cause for hope; these same people will have had woke propaganda drummed into them by left-wing teachers from age five, yet they remain capable of carving their own path irrespective of a decade of liberal indoctrination—even if that path includes a spot of cheating.
The downside to being caught seems limited to a financial penalty and an entry on a naughty-step database, offering limited deterrence. In response to complaints about fare dodgers, teams have been set up to catch persistent offenders who may face court over unpaid fares, but targeting the casual dodger seems too labour-intensive. At festival-time, however, clear economies of scale are at work.
But, beyond defiance, why dodge? We live in an affluent age. If these teenagers have stumped up for a festival ticket and all-new camping equipment (some of which will be dumped there due to an unusual reluctance to schlep it home), it seems strange to skimp on travel. Are they in grinding poverty? Is rail travel seen as an avoidable expense? The 16-17 railcard is replaced by the 18-24 railcard, which also costs £30 but provides only a third off. Obtaining it seems too much of an imposition for some, even though it would pay for itself for those heading to a remote university or travelling afar. The irony is that the fine for getting caught will invariably exceed the cost of the railcard. A fine example of cheats never prospering.
I called it a ‘rite of passage’ because only first-time teenage visitors get caught. The next year, now 19, they know what awaits them. It is rather touching that each individually thinks they are the first to devise this dodge, and that the railway companies, despite the festival’s longevity, remain oblivious.
What is also odd is that in the era of social media, the intelligence on manual ticket checks at Reading during the festival seems absent from these teenagers’ smartphones. Furthermore, why do these 18-year-olds not twig that the scannable QR code on their expired 16-17 railcard might just include the inconvenient detail of their date of birth?
Other travellers are not greatly inconvenienced. I sailed past the encumbered youth, though my ticket was still inspected—despite the inspectors being positioned well before the automated barriers.
It is not the most interesting annual spectacle, but it is a ritual with its own rules and regalia on both sides. Its necessity stems from a human desire to get something for nothing, a desire most societies have established rules to deter. Despite over a decade of formal education, this is a social lesson some teenagers have yet to learn. It may be that, after a lifetime of mummy and daddy paying for everything, adapting to spending their own money is difficult. But that excuse will not impress a ticket inspector at any time, and especially not during the Reading Festival.
Paul T Horgan worked in the IT Sector. He lives in Berkshire.