To not pay my bus fare (London bus)

[KatRee]

Got on the bus today with my 1-year-old in the pushchair and my 3-year-old, who was walking. We went through the doors at the back to get directly into the wheelchair/pushchair space.
As soon as we got on, the announcement was played: “For your child’s safety, please stay with your buggy.” There were no seats, so my eldest also had to stand with us and hold on tight to keep his balance. I needed to supervise him to make sure he was doing that.
There were people standing in the aisle, so I couldn’t easily get to the front to tap my card to pay. So I ended up not paying.
This has happened maybe 2 or 3 times before since I’ve had kids and I always feel like I’ve done something wrong! But I’m not really sure what’s expected.
Usually we either get on at the front if the aisle is clear, as I have a little pushchair that fits down it, or we get on at the back, I quickly put the brake on, my eldest sits down and I run to the front and back to tap before the bus sets off.

Was I unreasonable not to pay today?
YABU – It’s basically stealing – pay your fare!
YANBU – For the love of God woman, supervise your small children and don’t worry about depriving TfL of £1.75!

🤣🤣
I needed this, thanks.

Round my part of London you'd get some Bible readings as your card is passed down and someone will possibly bless it for you.
I have actually had it a few times on buses when me and my (teen) daughter haven't got seats next to each other but she wants her headphones so they get passed down like crowd surfers at a festival. Then she needs a charging cable...passed again...oh but it's the wrong one...gets passed back... replacement then sent down through the crowd. She's sorted. Everyone happy.
Not everyone in London is thieving and rude. Some of us are helpful and nice.
Oh I've also had random babies plonked on my lap while their mum folds the buggy. Not so much since the COVID days though 🙁
I miss that 👶

YANBU. You have a conscience, that's more than some have. If you generally try to pay but some days it's too difficult, that's fine.
If you're teaching your kids how to wear balaclavas and jump over ticket barriers and threaten transport workers when challenged that's not so fine, but I suspect that's not what you're doing.

Fair play to you, obviously London hasn"t "fallen" just yet.

If you can’t pay, you don’t get on.

Can't believe people are getting so worked up on you not paying less than £2. Could understand if you were deliberately dodging, but you're clearly not. This is the driver's fault for not giving you the opportunity to pay, but also they were doing a nice thing by allowing you on, so I wouldn't be suggest making a complaint.
If it's making you worried, contact TFL and explain and offer to pay.

You can get on.
The driver will tell you to get on at the middle doors.
You just can't get to the front to beep because people are stood in the way. The driver can tell them to move down but if they don't then there isn't much the driver can do.
People like the OP want to pay.
The driver would prefer it if they could.
It's the non movers who are causing the problem.

Ask them if they will pay?

But the driver cannot physically move the lemons who stand there in the way.
The drivers get enough grief as it it so they don't care over a few unpaying passengers.

If people are going to be that pissed off about un paying passengers then be pissed off at the mostly men aged between 18 and whatever age you get a freedom card that get on and say "forgot my card" or "I've got a new card coming" or "I'm only going two stops".
University age students are also very big on the "I forgot my card".
I see dozens of people in those two groups practically every single day doing exactly that.
They are the people to be angry at. Not the OP who at least wanted to pay and would have if she could.

People are responding to op’s question, not need for other random whataboutery.

Yes but people are basically getting angry at the OP for not paying. Saying she's a terrible person etc. Costing TfL money blah blah blah.
They are angry at the wrong people if they care about TfLs profits that much.

Nobody cares about TFL’s profits. They don’t think op is a terrible person either, they just think she should pay her fare like everyone else, on principle.

My point is several of "everyone else" frequently doesn't pay.
Not because they couldn't get to the machine.
Because they simply just don't.

Yes, I don’t disagree.

Thanks all for your thoughts. I have contacted TfL via their online query form to see what they expect passengers to do in this situation. Apparently they will respond within 10 working days. I will update with what they say in case anyone is still interested by then!

Because the turnings on our buses are narrower, the buses without middle doors work just fine for wheelchairs and my buggy here too….but the ones without don’t. Not rocket science

OP you are making every excuse under the sun not to pay. I have 3 small kids. I would rather wait 5 seconds of inconvenience than subsidise all your free bus trips

No surprisingly, I’ve not heard back from TfL yet, but I did ask about the whole situation in a subreddit run by a London bus driver, who gave me a lovely very thorough reply.

They basically said that drivers are under a lot of pressure to keep the bus moving and that waiting for someone to get a buggy on at the back and then come to the front and back to tap in is one of the most time-consuming things that happens. He said that the driver playing the stay with your buggy announcement when I got on was effectively him warning me to stay put and letting me know he wasn’t expecting me to come to the front to pay. That is exactly how I interpreted it at the time. I understand the people saying that the announcement is there to tell you not to just park up and go sit somewhere else, but really on this occasion there wasn’t anywhere else I could go- pretty much every other inch of the bus was already taken!

He did also say that despite all this, if an inspector got on, I’d be liable for a fine. Tbh though, I’m not particularly worried about that, partly because it’s unlikely to happen, but mostly because what I’m worrying about is offending the driving or the other passengers. I’m a bit less worried about offending the driver now as it seems likely my interpretation of him playing the announcement as him saying he’d rather be on time than have the fare was correct. But clearly it seems to have offended a lot of other people.

The driver on Reddit also said not to overthink it, which is something a lot of other people here have said. But here I am. Chronic overthinker.

You’re not overthinking it, you’re making it complicated so you don’t have to pay. It’s simple really

Agree, every excuse to justify not paying 🤦‍♀️

We got on a different bus today- different route as we’d been somewhere else, but still relatively short journey, although it took longer because of traffic. Also the same time of day, so lots of school kids getting on to go home. This time, I did what some people suggested - I gestured at the front to the driver that I had the buggy, he kind of gave me the thumbs up and gestured to the back door, but I got on the front and tapped first, then got back off and took the buggy and my 3 year old to the back door to get on. It was a bit tricky because whilst I waited til most people had got on to get on and pay myself, a lot of people then suddenly arrived also wanting to get on so it was difficult to get to the back door, but we made it, and I managed to park the buggy. Someone kindly gave my son their seat which was behind the wheelchair area, so he could sit within arms reach of me. Important as he almost immediately fell asleep as soon as the bus set off and I had to try and stop him leaning on the guy next to him or falling off the other side and ensure he was awake and ready to get off when we approached our stop.
Bus set off and there were so many people waiting at the next stop , the driving started letting everyone on the back because the front filled up so much there were people standing right next to the drivers cabin. No one was tapping in and the driver clearly didn’t expect them to. We only just managed to get off at our stop because people were so desperate to pile on the back door they weren’t waiting for people to get off first. Mostly teenagers, also slightly younger kids with their parents and a few adults that just seemed to be determined to get on amongst the home-from-school crush. The adults did not tap in that I saw, maybe they did later on if the bus emptied out a bit, but there was just no way to reach the reader as it was.
I guess this is just the reality of taking buses late afternoon in the area I’m in. They are all single deckers and just don’t have enough space for the amount of people who use them at that time of day. I used to manage to avoid them most of the time because I had a double buggy and would just walk everywhere, it’s just since the schools went back after summer and my 3 year old is too tired at the end of the day to walk home that I’m experiencing them. Will definitely be trying to avoid altogether after the last two experiences!