Fare evasion
travelling by public transport without paying
Fare evasion, also known as fare jumping, fare circumvention or fare dodging is the act of travel without payment on public transit. When considered problematic, it is mitigated by revenue protection officers and ticket barriers, staffed or automatic, are in place to ensure only those with valid tickets may access the transport. The term fare avoidance is sometimes used as a euphemistic synonym and sometimes used to refer to the lawful use of much cheaper tickets.
Fare evasion and fare fraud may or may not be a crime, depending on jurisdiction.
Methods
On stations
One method of fare evasion is jumping or climbing over the turnstiles which bar the entryway into a subway system; hence the term, "turnstile jumping". Fare-dodgers also can walk right behind a passenger with a valid ticket before closing of some types of ticket barrier gates (this is called tailgating). Other methods include adults traveling on children's tickets, or using discounted tickets or free passes that the passenger is not entitled to. They also can purchase valid tickets for shorter journeys in order to get through the entry and exit barriers at a lower price than their actual journey, or board a vehicle with just a platform ticket (called "doughnutting", as the ticket coverage looks like a doughnut on the Tube map). Fare evasion on trains or subways is also called "bumping trains".
On vehicles
On vehicles fare-dodgers usually try to avoid ticket inspectors or conductors.
The public source identifies “Fare evasion” as travelling by public transport without paying. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Fare, evasion and travelling.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q814271. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fare evasion” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.