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Fare Dodging Is an Organized Rebellion in Stockholm, and It’s Winning

nytimes.com

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Re: Fare Dodging Is an Organized Rebellion in Stockholm, and It’s Winning

#31

Post by zyxley »

barrkel wrote: post #29
scotty79 wrote: post #14

Why public transport is paid is beyond me. Why would city spend significant resources to discourage usage of public transport by putting price on it? Do they really prefer for the people to buy cars and stand in traffic for hours on overcrowded streets and subsequently be disgruntled and pressure local governments for more roads? Why only public traffic commuters pay if all benefit from the fact that they are not on…

You get other problems if it's completely free; homeless people start living on public transport, drunks using it for extended napping. Fares also act as a congestion control mechanism. Higher rush-hour and central prices push information into the rest of the market. Also, cars are not the only alternative to public transport. In central London where I work, cars face congestion charges that normally exceed the cost…

> homeless people start living on public transport

That isn't a problem with public transport, it's a problem with social services.

Re: Fare Dodging Is an Organized Rebellion in Stockholm, and It’s Winning

#32

Post by viraptor »

nostromo wrote: post #25

> If travelers keep their side of the agreement, the group will cover any of the roughly $180 fines that might result. What an ingenious and devious application of risk pooling. Imagine risk pools being created for other fines, like tax evasion penalties or speeding tickets. I wonder if such agreements are legal?

I guess that the patent / IP infringement indemnity clauses in business contracts come close to that. The company offering the service takes the risk of being sued, but offsets that with money earned from the contract. Quite popular and apparently legal.

Re: Fare Dodging Is an Organized Rebellion in Stockholm, and It’s Winning

#33

Post by viraptor »

zyxley wrote: post #31
barrkel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get other problems if it's completely free; homeless people start living on public transport, drunks using it for extended napping. Fares also act as a congestion control mechanism. Higher rush-hour and central prices push information into the rest of the market. Also, cars are not the only alternative to public transport. In central London where I work, cars face congestion charges that normally exceed the cost…

> homeless people start living on public transport That isn't a problem with public transport, it's a problem with social services.

It's still a problem for the public transport and its users though.

Re: Fare Dodging Is an Organized Rebellion in Stockholm, and It’s Winning

#34

Post by mikeash »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #8

A somewhat off-topic but honest question: why is it that the NYT gets a free pass when it comes to linking pay-walled sites? Others would get ignored, not upvoted, flagged or at least come with a clear warning label in the title. Linking to pay-walled content without warning is generally considered bad form on open discussion platforms.

It's not difficult to evade the paywall, especially for this (skilled with computers) group.

Re: Fare Dodging Is an Organized Rebellion in Stockholm, and It’s Winning

#35

Post by JeffDClark »

noxxten wrote: post #28
scotty79 wrote: post #14

Why public transport is paid is beyond me. Why would city spend significant resources to discourage usage of public transport by putting price on it? Do they really prefer for the people to buy cars and stand in traffic for hours on overcrowded streets and subsequently be disgruntled and pressure local governments for more roads? Why only public traffic commuters pay if all benefit from the fact that they are not on…

Traveling the DC metro from baltimore literally cost me like $2 one way. It would otherwise be a 50 mile drive. So I could either spend roughly $5 on the metro, or $20 in gas (plus a long ass commute and gridlock wait time). For what you get, most metro costs ARE planned to be at a significant advantage to most people.

How do you only pay ~$5 for a DC-Baltimore commute?

Re: Fare Dodging Is an Organized Rebellion in Stockholm, and It’s Winning

#36

Post by barrkel »

vacri wrote: post #24
barrkel wrote: post #19

Increase fines and capture rates until the expected benefits of fare-dodging are negative. Nobody needs to run to catch the evaders. Periodically, ticket inspectors need to check everyone on a carriage / vehicle, covering all exits. $180 isn't much of a fine, especially since it can be covered by 50% of a $15/month membership charge. That implies a catch chance of about 4.2% per person per month. If an unlimited tick…

$180 isn't much of a fine, especially since it can be covered by 50% of a $15/month membership charge. $180 is a significant fine, if you're poor. I've always liked the idea that a fine should be generally tied to your level of wealth, perhaps with a floor so it's not pointlessly low. If the idea of a fine is to deter repeat activity, wealthy people should be equally deterred.

I agree (there was a time, maybe 10 years ago, that ~$60 was my weekly rent and I still ran arrears), but my girlfriend vehemently disagrees for reasons I don't fully follow but do respect (she's an economist by profession, in healthcare microeconomics, not macroeconomic weather forecasting).

It had something to do with maximizing overall welfare / utility for society. She's very touchy about it though, finds it hard to talk to me about it because she thinks I sound condescending when discussing it :) She also rejects the declining marginal utility of money as an axiom. And she rejects the concept of irrational economic actors; economic actors are rational by definition, therefore all their actions are rational, it's just your theory of their action that is wrong. You can imagine this doesn't make discussion easy :)

Re: Fare Dodging Is an Organized Rebellion in Stockholm, and It’s Winning

#37

Post by barrkel »

zyxley wrote: post #31
barrkel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get other problems if it's completely free; homeless people start living on public transport, drunks using it for extended napping. Fares also act as a congestion control mechanism. Higher rush-hour and central prices push information into the rest of the market. Also, cars are not the only alternative to public transport. In central London where I work, cars face congestion charges that normally exceed the cost…

> homeless people start living on public transport That isn't a problem with public transport, it's a problem with social services.

Some people want to be homeless, because the (usually institutional) alternatives are incompatible with how they want to live their lives. They don't want someone else telling them what to do or how to do it. They're not always simply people "down on their luck", or former mental patients. Sometimes it's a deliberate rational choice.

Re: Fare Dodging Is an Organized Rebellion in Stockholm, and It’s Winning

#38

Post by CPLX »

noxxten wrote: post #28
scotty79 wrote: post #14

Why public transport is paid is beyond me. Why would city spend significant resources to discourage usage of public transport by putting price on it? Do they really prefer for the people to buy cars and stand in traffic for hours on overcrowded streets and subsequently be disgruntled and pressure local governments for more roads? Why only public traffic commuters pay if all benefit from the fact that they are not on…

Traveling the DC metro from baltimore literally cost me like $2 one way. It would otherwise be a 50 mile drive. So I could either spend roughly $5 on the metro, or $20 in gas (plus a long ass commute and gridlock wait time). For what you get, most metro costs ARE planned to be at a significant advantage to most people.

The DC metro system does not go to/from Baltimore.

Re: Fare Dodging Is an Organized Rebellion in Stockholm, and It’s Winning

#39

Post by vegardx »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #9

Being able to pay the fare really is an issue for poor people. Every time I've seen MUNI or VTA (Santa Clara County) agents checking for fare evasion, the perpetrators are invariably poor, homeless, look like they are mentally ill, etc. Good luck collecting those fines.

We have that problem in Oslo, Norway too. Usually homeless and/or addicts are just silently let go, without a fine, even when they have big sweeps. It costs the company and by extension society (things end up in court) too much money trying to collect something that, by all standards, are uncollectible.

There has been some discussion about how they can solve the issue, but so far everything is at a stand still. Some people want to make it so that public transport passes are a part of welfare, others mean that they should use the welfare money to pay for the passes if they need it, etc. It's a tough question, and I can see good arguments being made on each side.

Re: Fare Dodging Is an Organized Rebellion in Stockholm, and It’s Winning

#40

Post by blibble »

oh_sigh wrote: post #22
GuiA wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triple the fines, and the poorer people who may have paid up before won't be able to anymore. It's a delicate balance; otherwise it would be too easy ("just make the fines $10 000")

What do you mean? Why were they evading the fare in the first place? Tripling the fine may decrease the number of people that pay it, but it would also essentially shutdown the group that encourages people to skip fares.

or adopt something similar to the UK's penalty fare system, which generally allows innocent mistakes to be dealt with with a minor fine, whilst persistent offenders end up with a potentially large fine (upto £1000) and a criminal record:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_fare

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