Here is an argument for the 45-swipes threshold. We have a great deal of experience in this area and have had consistent success in settling these matters out of court, avoiding a criminal record. Per Cuomos office, fare evasion costs $240 million a year on the subway and buses, about 5% of total revenue. Not at all equivalent. These costs should therefore be understood as hidden taxes: they fall disproportionately on commuters and on the public purse, and benefit employers. This is an issue where my main methodology for making recommendations for Americans looking at peer developed countries is especially useful. Except for the occasional hospitalization or death. Question is not whether, its by how much. Fare is split between the different agencies. WebSo fare evasion is a civil offence not a criminal one. The American moral panic about fare evasion regrettably goes far beyond New York. For the other 5%, you would just put in the starting and ending destination in a machine, and the machine would tell you the price. We are far behind some of the leading nations in terms of our approach to publicly available transportation. If subsidized transit leads to people moving further out and leading more car oriented lives, it could even increase transportation costs, as people saved money on housing by moving to a further out area, but end up needing a car for many non-commute trips. These costs are financial, environmental and also pertain to health and wellbeing. That Britain thinks monthly passes are old news does not mean that they really are old news. Caltrain has an unlimited annual GoPass (http://www.caltrain.com/Fares/tickettypes/GO_Pass.html) they only make available to large employers, who must pay based on total eligible employee headcount and not actual employee usage. Quick correction: Singapore does have monthly passes. Similar remnants to Roslagsbanan and Saltsjbanan do exist in Germany as well. This is bad practice, especially for passengers who prefer to refill at a ticketing machine rather than at home or on their phone with an app, since it means passengers visit the ticketing machines more often, requiring the agency to buy more to avoid long lines. However, in states such as California -- where cities and transit authorities can choose to make fare evasion a civil violation under Section 99580 of the Public Utilities the routes that after privatisation were run as Southern. France..tampe..Paris68 .2% In New York City, a spate of attention has come recently to policing Americas largest transit system. 70% of department 77 Seine-et-Marne) and has huge forests and national parks (eg. If fares generally bring in X amount of revenue, then why would increasing tax revenue by X be bad. Or maybe it is part of a longer-term game by Pecresse and conservatives to kill the VT which was made more ubiquitous by Mitterrand (the Chevnement law). It takes tourists and business travellers to Gatwick and Luton airports. So its not really that Berlin doesnt care if criminals discourage ridership among law-abiding customers, its that Berlin doesnt treat every rider as a criminal who must constantly be watched and monitored. Every dollar that doesnt come to us, in terms of fares that should be paid, is a dollar that we cant improve in service, he said at a news conference in September, according to AM New York. At 20 km the single fare is $1.78 and the breakeven point is 68, which means the monthly might as well not exist. Its in the budget. It is still bad. So you need to LOOK like youre going after the habituals. Just please stop being ridiculous. In contrast, the unlicensed churro vending is more a problem of city and state regulations making it too onerous to sell food, hence Jessica Ramoss proposal to lift the cap on food carts. Passengers need to swipe 46 times in a 30-day period to justify getting a monthly pass rather than a pay-per-ride. On the subway the rate is only 4%, and there is somewhat more revenue loss on buses than on subways. Even the Brits who have had to contend with such systems their entire life, get immensely irritated by it. Southern is a story of rail failure. One paid for it via an automatic salary deduction, paying 50% of its face value. For the thousands working on an employment pass, youre out of luck. because it is so easy to do. While I agree with pretty much everything in this post, I think encouraging monthly passes is a mistake. I discussed the situation initially over the phoneand then met at the BSB office in Central London. Subsidizing transit commutes is certainly much better than subsidizing car commutes, but the end result still seems like it could be much better if commutes were less subsidized. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. I really appreciate it. What? If you have social priorities (which is totally fine and reasonable) make sure they target the groups such as low-income earners, students, unemployed, poor pensioners, etc directly. I cant find the article, but there is some evidence that enforcement is largely unimportant. The advice I received was always well thought through and was communicated promptly at every point. One should also note that providing useful public transport service does not scale to the level of individual trips or trip lengths. That doesnt make any sense. That is true in HK and Singapore which arent really inexpensive city-states but have transit use as a priority over road use. On the other hand, the short single trip, for a person without a monthly pass, will be unreasonably expensive, for example creating cruel incentives for poor people to walk for 25 minutes in the rain, instead of taking a bus 6 stops. I wouldnt say that, most people are commuting from the suburbs to the center city, so on weekends the pass can be used to visit the center for shopping, cultural events, etc, not to mention any intermediate destinations along the route. Perhaps this is a Grauniad beat-up but it would have to be on a Trumpian scale. I have had the privilege of working with then,true professionals, who has used alltheir knowledge and effort, to reach the best possible solution for me, in record time. Its the number of non-commuting trips that are hard to budget for because they can be more variable from week-to-week and month-to-month. So Caltrain is transitioning the GoPass to require tagging on and off (Caltrain uses ~12.5-mile fixed fare zones as a super chunky proxy for more equitable true distance-based fares) which will for the first time yield a cornucopia of data about GoPass use (station pairs, time of day, day of week, how often and by which employees of which program participants, etc.). And you really have no excuse for not understanding this as I explained it all, here: No one asking for M16s. (I have literally just joined this site so apologies if I do anything wrong!) Solano Verde Water District. Fares arent the only source of revenue for the MTA; the system also earns money from tolls, taxes, government subsidies, and advertisements. It cancels more trains than all the other rail firms in Britain put together. . Verified Hi Thank you for your question. There are very good reason why such pricing structures are extremely uncommon in other parts of society. If so, you will be instructed to submit a plea by post. So, I dont have a problem with the Octopus type card as long as it keeps transit relatively cheap and easy, for those who use it the most. Doing this by encouraging wasteful use and monthly passes makes no sense (and often the logic behind it is flawed and empirically incorrect). In smaller operations, I actually encountered that the driver just counted the number of people getting on and off (well, that was in a midi bus, or even smaller one. Its probably best to see if your Powers-That-Be ever manage to get past Fare Evasion Kindergarten first before doing that. The most important maxim when addressing a low-level crime is to make it easy to follow the law. Maybe we are cognitively disadvantaged in the West compared to East Asians, but I would instead argue that it is more likely that with modern technology varying fares dynamically by distance is very straightforward (with 1990s technology) and westerners would adapt very quickly. Fare gates on very crowded systems (such as Londons) also act as crowd control at Stations that are getting overcrowded due to disruption. Its a valid debate to have and a valid stance to have. | I didnt understand this the first time I read it. These systems arent put in for a whim the bump in revenue from gating has been well documented otherwise they would not have pushed so hard on covering more stations. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Today I interpret monthly passes a kind of rent-seeking among one group of transit users, who want other people to pay the cost for their transit use. Susan Lenne, Clovelly, NSW. it is clear that you dont have any experience of very well run transit city, such as in East Asia, where rich and poor regularly alike use transit. Maybe I meant A15s? While the number of 15 km trips will be less sensitive to if a trip cost 0 or 0.5 or 1. A Monthly Travelcard for zones 1-4 (inner London) is 194.00 (US$243.87, 217.17) Come on that reeks that of condescension to the poor. Its telling that the NYC MTA police response is on subways and not on LIRR or Metro North, where you can evade a $20 fare. Indeed if you can get most of your passengers/city reaching two yeses then your casual evasion will be well below a level worth caring about.. I can say with all my heart, that no matter the case, you can truly rely on this law firm, and you can expect the most favourable result. If you were to plead guilty at court or to be found guilty after a trial, this is a criminal conviction. In the majority of cases, commuters pay the fare, take the time and bear the brunt of the health costs. BTW Japanese policy on rail operations probably has something to do with the almost US$400 billion (yes billion) debt the government or its various proxies still carries from the privatisation of JR. Also on the geographic fact that they cant have too many people owning and using cars (in Japan you have to prove you have parking before you are allowed to even own a car; in Singapore there is a 150% tariff on cars). Those casual fare evader mental questions are: 1) Do I already have, or can I buy a ticket right now? Finally, monthly passes are regressive for people with very low incomes, and uncertain cash flows, as they may simply not be able to make bulk purchases. Answered in 5 minutes by: Solicitor: Jo C. Jo C., Barrister Category: UK Law Satisfied Customers: 82,725 Experience: Over 5 years in practice. @Sassy: If subsidized transit leads to people moving further out and leading more car oriented lives, it could even increase transportation costs, as people saved money on housing by moving to a further out area, but end up needing a car for many non-commute trips.. In reality, this would actually be a cost saving measure because any system to collect fares, be that fare gates or proof of payment, is very expensive, so getting your revenue from taxes instead of fares would actually be cheaper for the residents. These people will start your core of users who ride everywhere and thus get other people who think about using your system instead of driving. its the poor who suffer from more from dirty streets and parks. The only thing predictable about the service is that its always awful: the train you want is odds-on to be late or cancelled. I dont know what Londons crowd control is like, but in Paris the faregates made crowd control worse in the World Cup victory celebrations. There are likely to be cultural differences, so it is possible that in most American cities, it makes sense to have some POP officials. a longer trip across town to an Ikea store or whatever. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. have been recorded, including against people with mental disability trying to validate their ticket with their disability discount count, with fare inspector questioning authenticity of the disabled passengers proof of disability, and MTR have defended these actions by saying they are allowed to use reasonable violence against those who suspected to have violated their bylaw. E.g. Britain generally overuses faregates, for example on the commuter trains in London. My solicitorhas been extremelyprofessional and his confidence has put my mind at rest. Boston, too, has its moral panic about fare evasion, in the form of campaigns like the Keolis Ring of Steel on commuter rail or Fare is Fair. 2019) (applying abuse-of-discretion standard to review the denial of a motion to amend to add a claim for punitive damages), review denied (Minn. Mar. Whats the worst that can happen with open access? Tear down these faregates. In the summer, Governor Cuomo announced a new initiative to hire 500 cops to patrol the subway. This logic does not work the same way for people living in the retail-rich neighborhoods of New York, London, Paris, etc, where people are within walking distance of many of their destinations. I guess the numbers on Wikipedia are old, but according to its list, neither BVG nor MVV break even on fares. Trains and trams are also PoP. The kind of thing I imagined every time I travelled between the two mega-cities in the 80s and 90s. Very clearly, a growing activist community wants to eliminate these standards, favoring total decriminalization not just of fare evasion, but of unlicensed vending, panhandling on trains, public urination, pot smoking, radio playing, etc. Find out about prosecutions, court proceedings and how to get help with your case. And probably linked in to ICE. Even the Tokyo MEA which is just municipalities with 10% commuting into the 23 Wards is a ton of wilderness, as wilderness area is included in municipal borders (zero unincorporated land, all wilderness belongs to a municipality administratively). In fact, all of these have had a more permissive stance that has been incrementally put in place in NYC over the past 2-3 years, and anyone who rides the train has seen it. Of course fare gates need manning so outside of the busiest stations fare gating is often a peak time only operation. Oh, and the new companies will of course order the cheapest rolling stock they can find which will mean Chinese, which in turn will reduce the profitability and scale etc of Alstom and Siemens (which arent allowed to merge to effectively compete against the likes of even more massively state-subsidised China rail companies). Affordable transit, along with affordable housing, is just one thing in not only creating an equitable society, but as economists now realise (doh!) For smaller municipalities, transit should be free. As you can imagine, any criminal record on a 27-year-olds CV would be detrimental to many future opportunities. Webtfl fare evasion settle out of courtmeat carving knife blank. And you DO want the police involved., Partly this to protect staff but ALSO because non-economic habituals have a higher rate than normal of OTHER shit theyre already wanted for. Or abominations on privatised lines with endless train cancellations, without refunds of course, while the train companies award their chiefs millions in bonuses, even as they continue to extract huge government subsidies (more than before privatisation!). Regardless, its S$120 per month without discounts, whereas the longest single-ride fare is $2.08 (link 1, link 2), for a breakeven point of 58 rides a month for trips longer than about 40 km. You dont need to convince me that British fares are out of control. In Zurich, its 20 trips; ZVV does whatever it can to discourage people from buying single tickets. Sorry, I think fare evasion is important. Similarily just put a few machines on each bus that electronically can read transport cards, and let passengers get on and off as they like. Writing a letter of representations offering to settle out of court so as to prevent prosecution. 3) Is evasion hard (i.e. Shed be turning in her grave (lets hope) over CrossRail and HS2. Knowing stuff about the rest of the world is a type of competence, and competence is not a factor in a culture war. In the US and in certain conservative circles in the UK, public transit and the London Underground are merely a drag on public finances. Ref: Brief history of the Paris metro. Whats more, the fare inspection should be a low-key affair. Probably not, in that I dont think these French companies that operate in other countries bring their bad habits back home (eg. The lack of S-bahn style operation patterns in the non-megacity regions is a failure of government and private-sector since no-ones pushing it. BTW, where did you get that data? Thats what a monthly/annual pass stands for. I just looked at Sendai. WebFare evasion from tfl which led to a court summoning. What you want in terms of Get cars out of the city is a system where riders dont have to do math or stuff to consider whether they should take transit, As soon as you force them to calculate whether its worth it, theyll consider cars. Its technically still a crime in Germany and repeat offenders Especially those who cannot pay do end up in jail. Fare enforcement should be done with POP alone, by unarmed civilian inspectors, as in Berlin. What fare evasion offences could I be prosecuted for? In fact I strongly believe they are counterproductive, and not just by making using the system very irritating and off-putting for the users. Are you aware of the kind of thing they subjected Season Ticket holders to from the Home Counties? But from a nation that does allows compilation of such statistics: A report by Statistics Denmark released in December 2015 found that 83% of crimes are committed by individuals of Danish origin (88% of the total population), 14% by individuals of non-Western descent and 3% by those of non-Danish Western descent. They will probably engage in Uber-like fare undercutting to get pax numbers at first, which will reduce the traffic on SNCFs most cash-generating routes. With a modern system, there is no extra inconvenience is actually charging according to how much you use the system. Of all the oddities thrown up by rail privatisation, this must rank among the oddest: a train company in the business of running fewer trains. Much less a whole restaurant. Because they wont embarrass a habitual, but theyll act like a gameshow buzzer highlighting to everyone else that CASUAL evasion is possible when that person gets away with it!, But you DO need enforcement, its just your dirty secret is that you dont really give a shit whether you catch anyone. EDIT: Ignore that, the CAG thread states OP had an Oyster card, not a freedom pass. Youll say that one doesnt rule out the other, but it seems that effectively it does. I have seen a claim of Ile de France urbanised zone as 3,640/km2. 2) Casual They were technically convenient before modern technology (and thus motivated historically), but today there is no excuse to not have payments per trip, and per distance (and preferably also extra in rush hour). Is there any country where ethnic minority which is poorer than rest of the population is not disproportionately inprisoned? 3) The San Francisco stations have public areas before the gates. Contact emilia@chancellors.com to see how we can assist you. I wouldnt hold Japan up as a model here, since many (most?) Of course you need a good system. I am a bit sheepish to admit that for all the years I benefitted from the subsidised Carte Orange monthly card (now Navigo) in Paris, I never knew who subsidised it. Its now got the stage where in London trains are much more lightly loaded on Mondays and Fridays. We base such a policy on international examples wherein commuting costs are also born by employers, the state, or a combination of employer, state and commuter. > And the S-Bahn gets subsidies because of lower suburban ridership, same as the RER/Transilien. Which doesnt make it any more tolerable but makes it understandable and an intractable problem, only ameliorating with the climb out of poverty and marginality. New York does poorly on the metric of encouraging monthlies. the Foret de Fontainebleau is 2.5x the size of intramuros Paris! Also, how do you cite someone who doesnt have ID? I concur, and Ive used London, NYC, HK, Tokyo, Shanghai, Moscow, Beijing amongst mega-city metro systems. If in fact the Navigo card works like the old Carte Orange? Boston, too, has its moral panic about fare evasion, in the form of campaigns like the Keolis Ring of Steel on commuter rail or Fare is Fair. cheaper transit promoting sprawl. But Paris: [Wiki, 2017] fremont hospital deaths; what happened to tropical tidbits; chris herren speaking fee; boracay braids cultural appropriation; tfl fare evasion settle out of court. My single ticket to Windermere cost about $A200; by comparison, I can travel from Sydneys Central Station to Bomaderry on NSWs South Coast (a three hour journey, as is Windermere from London) for $2.50 on my seniors Opal Card. The third problem could be fixed if cities actually worked to provide public restrooms either free or at a nominal cost outside every station. As you wrote, passengers should be able to get on and off trains quickly, with minimum friction. Do not send or request any private messages for any reason. There are at least a couple in SF (24th and 16th and Mission) that do this. And you can go even lower with barrier-free systems like Germany's, FYI, I just came across this report (June 2021) on the fare crisis in the UK, as they come out of pandemic. According to the present report, there is a common misunderstanding as to what commuting really is and how it should be accounted for. In cases where longer term avoidance of fares in suspected, for example using someone elses reduced fare Oyster Card over a period of time, Transport for London (TFL) may want to interview you under caution. Theres something interesting going on with Chesa Boudins campaign: he wants to decriminalize quality-of-life crimes (okay) and deprioritize prosecuting theft and redirect resources to prosecuting sexual assault (prioritize violent crime) and train cops to be more responsive to victims. Menu and widgets Transit, even expensive transit, is nearly always affordable as is. No one is questioning that it could be done by technology. Commuter rail is essentially PoP. As they push out, all non-frequent transit users, the support among transit-users for monthly passes is understandably high (a typical insider-outsider issue). They rely on people voluntarily going to the cash register and checking out. Wow, I had no idea a Japanese city could have so much car dependent sprawl! You must submit a plea of guilty or not guilty within 21 days from the date of the notice. Germany..Eberswalde.Berlin.1204%. put in half-height gates and theyll jump them. That means all of your non-commuting trips are free. long-term transit passes are for travel between an exact combination of two stations only, and are essentially useless for anything besides commuting. A sizable proportion of riders who do not pay would just stop riding altogether, for one. Again, counter logical. To you and others, it seems to be narrowly econometric efficiency and my experience is that it is anathema to passenger experience or satisfaction, and not least to the ease and functionality of transit in a big city. 95% of users would use an electronic card that you sweep when you enter and when you exit, and only know the price when they exit. MS (July 2017), I would like to place on record my sincere thanks for the highly professional and thorough service that I received from BSB Solicitors. Thank you so much! I think TfL is roughly in that area as well lumping both the Tube and the buses; sure, the Tube breaks even, but London has a way higher bus/rail ridership ratio than Paris or Berlin. So why do it at all? It may be possible to have some legal advice without charge. The main way to encourage compliance is really to make it easier to follow the law than to break it. 2) Is the service worth the relative economic price to me? I use the discount punch pass (something that really should be eliminated ) instead of the monthly pass because my local network isnt good enough to consider using the bus for more trips. Please see our reviews at the bottom of this page and contact our office on 020 7837 3456 for further details and to make an appointment. Thoughts on Planka.nu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planka.nu) and similar movements/organizations? It is evident that she is very experienced in dealing with fare evasion prosecutions and aware of the impact that a potential prosecution can have on ones career and volunteer work. LegalAdviceUK exists to provide help for those in need of legal support in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Passport-size photos, applications, visiting the ticket office. Your everyone else is the minority, and just as with your earlier wrong assumption, they might be tempted by a monthly pass but under your scheme there wouldnt be any point. Non-car owners would be able to buy an annual pass. I would wholly recommend BSB Solicitors for anyone looking for help with fare evasion cases. If they decide to prosecute, you will receive a Court Summons in the post, providing a date when you must attend court. I am of course talking about transit performance in how to move the largest amount of people at the lowest cost for the transit users and taxpayers. Turned things around very quickly and were the most efficient solicitors I have ever dealt with. Or/and they think pay as you go is so hot, and so new. To add in, one more point for passes is that many operators have a special program for organizations buying them in bulk (in other words, employers can buy passes for their employees at a discount (sometimes negociated, sometimes just depending on the number of passes bought).