Fare dodging, most would agree, is anti-social behaviour and should be prevented.

The London Regional Transport (Penalty Fares) Act 1992 is one of a number of local Acts which implements this method of encouraging every passenger to pay their fares.

That this article concentrates on London Transport ("LT") is not so much a reflection on the fact that the author lives and works there, as the way in which LT has tried to exploit the legislation.

While national railways have tended to restrict the issuing of such fares to those appearing to have designs on avoiding payment altogether, LT unashamedly uses it to penalise those who have no dishonest intention.When thinking about writing this article I decided I would ask friends and colleagues for their own examples of penalty fare horror stories.

I would surely need to talk to at least a dozen to get a couple of good examples.

However, I needed no more than a brief discussion with the editor-in-chief of this journal.

His own and his deputy's experiences provided striking illustrations of how LT disregards both the letter and the spirit of the penalty fare legislation.

The editor-in-chief usually boards at his local station in outer suburbia.

When the station is unmanned and the ticket machine not working there is another machine which sells "authority to travel" tickets.

One can pay as much as one likes for these, that amount being deducted from the sum that is paid at the destination.These tickets are recognised in the Act (s 2(1)), and without qualification enable the holder to travel.

However, on more than one occasion he, having changed trains at an intermediate station and presented himself for payment at his destination, has been threatened with a penalty.

LT policy is -- so he was told -- that on changing trains the holder of the authority should leave the platform and go to the booking hall and then make the outstanding payment.

Ascertaining whether such legally unsupportable assertions are merely the work of a ticket collector on a frolic of his own or do represent the views of the LT hierarchy is virtually impossible.Even with the weight of a national newspaper behind me I have never got beyond press officers -- invariably courteous and doing their best to help -- who do not understand the intricacies of the legislation.

On the last occasion I spoke to them I was trying to ascertain whether LT had ever successfully sued for a penalty fare in the county court.

It soon became apparent the man I was talking to did not appreciate the distinction between the county and the magistrates' courts.

LT's lawyers, adopting a policy at variance with that of most large private and public bodies, refuse to speak to the press on or off the record.

In some way the lack of willingness to account for what appear to be manifestly illegal polices grate as much as the policies themselves.Returning to the random sample of two that it was necessary to poll to obtain the two penalty fare horror stories, the editor of this journal was returning to her home in inner suburbia one evening.

Absent mindedly she bought a £1-30 rather than £1-60 ticket.

Had an inspector caught her "out of zone" with the ticket and given her a £10 fine she probably would have moaned.

However, in that situation once she had reflected she would no doubt have accepted that LT has little way of distinguishing between the dishonest and the careless.

However, she was not caught.

When s he arrived at her station there wasn't even a ticket collector.

Being perhaps rather more honest than the average tube passenger she went up to the ticket window and offered the 30p shortfall.

Rather than being thanked her for honesty she was told that she was to be given a penalty fare notice.

Virtually speechless she stormed off, ignoring demands to come back and leave her name and address.

Strictly speaking, then your editor did commit a crime.

Section 8 of the Act makes it a summary offence for a person required to pay a penalty fare and not paying it immediately in cash to refuse to give their name and address.Strictly speaking, she would have no answer to the penalty fare either.

However, the fact that it could be demanded in such circumstances, shows a misplaced willingness to delegate a law enforcement power to an inappropriately low level on the personnel scale.

Had this ticket clerk come running after her and tried to detain her -- even to await the arrival of the Police -- she would have had an unanswerable claim for wrongful arrest.Perhaps the most difficult area of penalty fares, is the position of the passenger who arrives at the station willing to buy a ticket, and finds himself unable to do so without a long wait.

Arriving at my own home station one morning (just before writing this piece: pure coincidence!) I found all three ticket machines out of order and just one clerk selling tickets to a queue snaking around the forecourt.

The other window remained resolutely closed, although someone was sitting in a booth reading The Sun waiting to check the tickets of non-existent arriving passengers.

I balanced whether to risk an embarrassing, bad-tempered battle at the other end against the unnecessary wait.

Ironically after I had stood for five minutes the "CLOSED" notice on one of the machines flicked itself enabling tickets to be bought reasonably quickly.Had I simply boarded the train and proffered the fare at the other end would I have been liable for a penalty fare? It all depends how one interprets s 5(2)(a) of the Act.

A person is not liable to pay a penalty fare if "at the time when and the station where he started to travel on the train service there were no facilities available for the sale of the necessary ticket .

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Is a ticket window fronted by a queue that will last twenty minutes "available"? The inclusion in the statute of the words "at the time when .

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he started to travel" would add support to the argument that in those circumstances there is no facility available.When I have put this argument to LT, I have been told it is wrong, but have never got beyond the "it just is because we say it is" level.

It is a point crying out for testing in the courts but LT is understandably reluctant to litigate for the sake of £10, particularly when the result could be an immensely damaging precedent.A penalty fare notice is merely a demand for money.

Although LT's leaflets suggest there is an obligation to pay it immediately that clearly isn't the case.

Ultimately the only way to enforce it is through the county courts.

If a passenger gives a written statement as to why the notice was not valid within 21 days of it being issued then the burden is on LT to prove its validity in proceedings (s 5(5)-(6)).

In the absence of such notice it is for the passenger to prove its invalidity, but discharging that burden in front of a district judge suffering the affront of LT taking up his time with a £10 claim might not be too difficult.

LT's coyness about the amount of actions it has brought where it knows the val idity of the notice will be challenged does lead one to the inference that it will write off penalty fares rather than pursue them through the courts.In the absence of a vigorous enforcement policy those so inclined will be able to avoid paying penalty fares.

It will not just be those who have studied the fine print of the legislation who take advantage of that.

Seasoned fare dodgers will have worked out they can get away with it.

The law abiding but occasionally absent-minded or hurried passenger is much more likely to be intimidated into paying.Penalty fares may well have increased the proportion of passengers who pay their fare at the point most convenient for LT, without any reciprocal effort on its part to sell tickets promptly and efficiently.

While LT proclaim that they have conquered the problem of fare dodging, its enthusiasm for closing station exits -- Golders Green's access to the Finchley Road was one of the most recent -- so passengers can be checked all the more closely, suggests the reality is that virtually no inroads have been made into the real problem.