I’m relatively new to this whole Newcastle metro business, and I have only ever used paper tickets and PAYG. I’ve been considering getting a season ticket (Pop card), and I wasn’t sure whether I should tap in and out with a season ticket, since there’s no balance to change. I looked it up on the Nexus website, and it looks like you should tap, however…
Thinking about the last 10 times I used the metro, out of the ~20 people who got off with me, only 3-5 other people tapped their card on the yellow reader. That made me think: there’s no way this many people had paper tickets. So you either don’t tap in/out with your season ticket (but then how do you check zones), or out of the 20 people, at least ~10 just tried to get away not buying a ticket.
What’s going on? Should I just ditch my PAYG Pop card and go thug life (since apparently, you can almost always get away like the other 10 people), or you just simply don’t have to tap your season ticket?
These days not only do I tap in everywhere, I’m so much of a goody two shoes that if I forget to tap out I log in to the nexus site to complete the journey.
But 15+ years ago, back in the days of the yellow paper tickets, I never bought a ticket because - and this is the absolute truth - I was checked once in 3 months, and realised it was cheaper to pay the fine than buy tickets every day. I then didn’t get checked for about 9 months, and saved (well, drank) an absolute fortune.
So yeah, if you’re not going through stations with barriers, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if people are free riding.