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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

#41

Post by vegardx »

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.

People slip up, forget to renew the pass. There are multiple reasons why large fines will have the exact opposite effect, and only make it much harder for those already poor. It's easy being well established to swallow a fine like that, not so much when you live out of what you made that day.

You could however take the group to court, from my point of view this is organised fraud.

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

#43

Post by morsch »

hagbardgroup wrote: post #30
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…

Because we use accounting to measure how equipment is used and decide how to allocate resources efficiently. Without accounting, we can't tell where to divert resources to maintain or improve the equipment. It's also not possible to limit the use of the equipment beyond its stress limits without using money. Trains in particular require additional staff to handle high passenger loads. Some passenger trains are not se…

We don't use accounting (fares) to plan local public transport, at least not exclusively as it's not at all a reliable, what with its inability to track routes, lots of unregistered riders with monthly tickets, etc. etc. To get reliable data, you need to count people in the vehicles and poll them regarding their route and other things -- which of course the public transport authorities do routinely. Automatically tracking people is an invasive technical improvement to this, and it's deployed in some places, but again it doesn't really require fares.

Trains of course do require additional staff to handle higher loads, as do all modes of transportation, but with trains the staff/passenger ratio is ridiculously low, and it gets lower as they are used more. Of course there's a resource allocation problem there, but again, fares don't seem to be very useful there, at least in the realm of local public transport.

Charging money does limit the ridership, which was GP's point, and which is the opposite of what sensible minds would want, namely less cars on the roads. Vandalising trains carries with it much harsher penalties than free-riding, so I doubt fares are a very effective deterrent; you don't need to pay a fare to spray a tunnel wall, just a disregard for the law and maybe your own safety. Other people you might describe as bad actors might be affected by fares, but I'd hold that if homeless people have no better recourse than abusing trains, you might want to solve that problem instead of making it less publicly visible.

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

#44

Post by vegardx »

al_gore wrote: post #2

HEET turnstiles?

In my city they tried to install something similar, yet less invasive, ie. you could jump over them. But it was removed pretty much just weeks after being installed. It didn't satisfy the fire department if there had to be an evacuation. Now - you might think that they had investigated that before it was installed, but ... yeah.

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

#45

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

Don't try this kind of thing in London. There is a zero-tolerance policy in place on public transport, not just for intentional fare evasion, but for honest mistakes including getting on a train at the wrong time or sitting in the wrong part of a train, even if no other seats are available. Even problems with the ticket barriers are the responsibility of the traveller, not the train company. And repeat 'offenders' can end up with a criminal record.

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

#46

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

blibble wrote: post #40
oh_sigh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Unless you're rich, in which case you can just get off by paying the original ticket price, and avoid a criminal record altogether [1]. By punishing innocent mistakes, and mainly operating outside rush-hour, the UK penalty system unfairly targets tourists, the elderly, and anyone else who is unfamiliar with the nuances of all the various rules, prices, etc. It also treats honest citizens like dirt and is wholly regressive and outdated in my opinion.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/13/man-avoids-pr...

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

#47

Post by hagbardgroup »

morsch wrote: post #43
hagbardgroup wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we use accounting to measure how equipment is used and decide how to allocate resources efficiently. Without accounting, we can't tell where to divert resources to maintain or improve the equipment. It's also not possible to limit the use of the equipment beyond its stress limits without using money. Trains in particular require additional staff to handle high passenger loads. Some passenger trains are not se…

We don't use accounting (fares) to plan local public transport, at least not exclusively as it's not at all a reliable, what with its inability to track routes, lots of unregistered riders with monthly tickets, etc. etc. To get reliable data, you need to count people in the vehicles and poll them regarding their route and other things -- which of course the public transport authorities do routinely. Automatically tra…

>We don't use accounting (fares) to plan local public transport, at least not exclusively as it's not at all a reliable, what with its inability to track routes, lots of unregistered riders with monthly tickets, etc. etc. To get reliable data, you need to count people in the vehicles and poll them regarding their route and other things -- which of course the public transport authorities do routinely. Automatically tracking people is an invasive technical improvement to this, and it's deployed in some places, but again it doesn't really require fares.

That depends on the system: many do track the routes purchased and use it to optimize scheduling (and that includes some systems with monthly riders). It's not the same as in a private sector system in which there are no public subsidies but it does make it easier to allocate the resources more efficiently.

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

#48

Post by sp332 »

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.

For all the money they already paid to make that possible, paying an extra $2 to make your trip free would be a very small addition.

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

#49

Post by YokoZar »

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.

The general argument against raising fines alongside wealth is that it might actually be "efficient" for people to break the law and incur the fine. If the act you're trying to prevent can only cause, say, a thousand dollars of damage then it doesn't make sense to have the price go much beyond that.

For instance if you're about to make a billion dollar deal but you have to run through a turnstyle to do it, society as a whole might just be better off letting you get away with a modest fine.

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

#50

Post by dingaling »

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…

> Why public transport is paid is beyond me.

In the UK people over 65 now receive a Senior Citizen card that permits them free use of public transport. The respective local governments pay a subsidy to the transport operators when each card is used.

Anecdotally, the result is that people take public transport for 'something to do'. Going 120 miles on the cross-border train to Dublin because it is warm and they are bored at home ( they stay on the train when it turns-around ). Catching the bus down into town to post a letter, instead of using the postal box at the end of their street.

I have been on buses to my work where I am literally the only passenger paying and I have had to stand on the journey, even at peak rush-hours.

On that basis I think that if public transport were made totally free for everyone it would also become unusable for everyone. Unfortunate as it is, paying is the only mechanism to control demand.

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