Tech recommendations for transit systems (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Tech recommendations for transit systems (2018)

pedestrianobservations.com

60 pointspchristensen66 comments

> There are approximately three first-world Western cities that have any business having faregates on their urban rail networks: London, Paris, New York. Even there, I am skeptical that the faregates are truly necessary.

Not sure I agree with this, Tokyo has well designed faregates and with contactless it's really fast. Since fare evasion is usually a minor crime and/or comes with steep penalties, I'd rather structurally reduce it instead of making it easier and punishing after the fact.

Specifically referring to Western cities... Author does use Tokyo as an example of excellent fare control when needed due to usage later in the article, so they do agree with you there.

If the author believes no Western city needs faregates at all, shouldn't it follow that the vast majority of them in Tokyo are unnecessary too?

Yes, as the article clearly states: "Only the overcrowded lines in Tokyo (and a handful in Osaka, Beijing, and Shanghai) are clearly so busy that barrier-free proof-of-payment fare enforcement is infeasible."

Seriously, I take BART daily and it would benefit greatly from the biggest gates they can find. So many of BART's problems are caused by fare evasion.

Taller fare gates are in test at Richmond BART station right now.[1][2] The regular lane works OK, but the fat people/wheelchair lane has problems.

NYC just puts in very strong stainless steel turnstile cages 8 feet high.[3]

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/BART-s-new-stack... [2] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/BART-Fare-Evaders-Caug... [3] https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/cagelike-subway-turnsti...

NYC has some of the most annoying faregates ever conceived of. The "cages" have bizarre mechanics that makes pushing them annoying, and the "normal" turnstiles make it hard to push even a small suitcase through.

Tokyo has probably the best-designed faregates I have ever seen and I wish NYC would copy them.

NYC has some of the most annoying faregates ever conceived of. The "cages"

That's so New York, to have an in-your-face un-jumpable turnstile.

You are not wrong; and yet, HOW they use their money is another big problem altogether. I can't find the right reference now, but BART is one of the most expensive transit systems in the world ("per mile", I assume the calculation was) in terms of maintenance and operations.

Faregates are awful for people in wheelchairs and family with strollers. Vienna does not have faregates and the fare evasion is low. Additionally it’s cheaper to operate because it requires fewer staff and machines (statement by the operators).

Yes, because the culture there is very different. A lot of systems that work in Europe just can't be transplanted to the US without a massive shift in the culture.

> "To discourage fare evasion, the agency should set up regular inspections (on moving vehicles, with unarmed civilian inspectors)."

no, no, no, no, no. we do this in LA and it sucks. fare-paying riders (i.e., most riders) are regularly accosted by transit police for fare checks and thus pay most of the cost of this in time and humiliation. instead, costs should primarily accrue to fare evaders, not fare payers.

for instance (off the top of my head), technology should be used to (anonymously) deduct fares at a distance while simultaneously detecting fare evaders (maybe triangulated from multiple NFC readers). transit police can then choose to fine the evader. to incentivize getting it right, give the rider free rides if the system pinpoints the wrong person. or even just allow cards to go negative (to repay later) and save on transit policing.

We have that in Portland and they're reall not a hastle if you're just sitting there anyway. It's no different than showing the bus driver your ticket before you get on the bus, except you do it less and don't create lines that slow down the bus/train.

This is how it is in the UK. You will occasionally have a ticket inspection, and it's just a person wandering through the train asking to glance at peoples tickets. Sure, I wish I didn't have to reach into my pocket and pull out my ticket for 5 seconds - but never heard anyone complain about it, nor thought about it much myself.

We have that on buses in SF. During the 4-5 years when I heavily rode the bus, fare inspectors came aboard exactly three times. When it does happen, it's no big deal, takes very little time, and there's no "humiliation" aspect (well, except for fare evaders, but they deserve what they get).

(Given the lack of frequency, I expect that there's a decent amount of uncaught fare evasion.)

My favorite part of seeing that in SF was the gaggle of homeless and fare evaders who would immediately just walk away, while the inspectors weren't paid enough to physically accost them and force them to suffer for their theft. As a result the thieves walk away while muttering to themselves, and the law-abiding citizens line up. The system works!

it's way more aggressive in LA (i used to take public transit in SF as well). here, i've been stopped 3 times in one day before, twice at stations and once aboard the train. if you do anything other than meekly presenting your card to the electronic reader, the transit police will accost you and even chase you down. all for a measly buck seventy-five.

What if we just make transit free at point of service? It isn't like those fares are really paying the costs

that would be ok with me and would really simplify the solution, but economically speaking, riders generally should pay more than non-riders, since they get more direct benefit. also, by paying, riders feel a little more invested and less likely to take transit for granted.

fares are $1.75 per ride in LA, and from what i remember, that pays about half of the metro's costs. without thinking too deeply about it, that seems a reasonable split.

> but economically speaking, riders generally should pay more than non-riders, since they get more direct benefit.

Like fewer cars on the road, less pollution, and less space wasted to store cars?

yup, those benefits accrue to everyone, so it makes sense that everyone pays for (part of) public transit, even if they don't directly use it. it's the same for roads, everyone benefits, but the people who use it more should pay more (gas tax, registration fees, etc.).

Fewer cars on the road is a direct benefit to those who drive.

Exactly. And measures to get fare-payment or prevent evasion are very costly in themselves, e.g.:

https://twitter.com/AmesCG/status/1140737315452706817

"To discourage fare evasion, the agency should set up regular inspections (on moving vehicles, with unarmed civilian inspectors),"

This absolutely does not work in a lot of the US urban areas, there is a ton of fare evasion.

BART (SF Bay Area) released their "unpaid citation" numbers, it was in the tens of thousands. San Francisco MUNI is similar. There are existing low-cost/free passes for people available, they're apparently "too hard" for people to get and use.

> it was in the tens of thousands.

This is a meaningless number without context. And assuming fully 5% of rides are unpaid, is that really a significant strain on the riders who do pay? A large amount of fare avoidance is more a sign of poverty in your community (if a cost-benefit analysis comes out with a large number of people risking arrest rather than paying the average fare between fare inspections.) We should be subsidizing the fares of people that desperate anyway IMO.

I'll revise my statement to "it seems too high"

Here's the article from our local paper that talks about it: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Almos...

The citation number is only a measure of the people who were caught, I'd venture that thousands evade paying daily.

Our transit system needs that money.

There's not much fare inspection on MUNI. You need to actually have a credible chance of meeting an inspector to discourage fare evasion (i.e. P(caught) * Fine > Fare).

BART has faregates, so it's using the system that is argued against in the article. The proposal from the OP would be to remove the gates and significantly increase the cadence of fare inspections.

I rarely see them in SF and they're rarely in the problem areas anyways.

I've lived in SF my whole life, taken MUNI a lot (gave up on it mostly, I drive everywhere now) and I continue to take BART; I've been "fare inspected" twice.

I usually only see the fare inspectors when they've caught someone who then got belligerent and needed to be arrested.

It apparently didn't take long for this to happen at a station with new fare gates as well -> http://nbcbay.com/EVt6G4o

One of the top complaints I hear about BART/MUNI is about safety and if they can't even catch fare evaders, how are they ever going to find an actual criminal?

Growing up MUNI did have fare inspectors, albeit not too common and mostly on the light rail. However, I haven't seen a fare inspector in years, and fare evasion is noticeably worse these days.

There are inspectors, they always start out of Van Ness Station and ride out to the lines they are checking for the day, then back out Van Ness. Statistically, you are most likely to get checked at that station as a result.

Tens of thousands out of 142M total ridership annually is pretty low. That's .07% of ridership.

At some point it costs more to nail down the remaining fare evasion than to just let it happen.

Los Angeles has mostly inspection based fare enforcement and it looks like ~5% evasion rate. Doesn't seem too bad for higher throughput.

http://metro.legistar1.com/metro/attachments/94807457-8593-4...

Seems a bit higher than that on average, Dec/Jan were ~8.3%. Faregates are rarely the rate limiter on throughput (buses moreso than others though). Adding more cuts enforcement labor and increases revenue.

There's a not-insignificant capital cost (faregates need electric and networking), and some users cannot be accommodated with faregates at all, necessitating station agents to let them in through an emergency exit or some other means of ingress.

Actually LA metro switched to faregates everywhere a few years ago. Busses still have some hopons though

There are many stations that lack fare gates, it is not universal throughout the system.

Most of the expo line doesn't have gates.

The enforcement you refer to is not universal or uniform in nature.

Author says: „Can anyone with a Hacker News account reply to this person explaining BART fare evasion as a share of trips is low?“

(https://twitter.com/alon_levy/status/1151153124343799813)

I replied to them on Twitter in case they have something amusing to say :)

This is done in certain bus routes in NYC.

I have also noticed that the new Q70-SBS service (AKA LaGuardia Link) is often fare-free during times with heavy air travel such as the summer and around Christmas. It's just about the only thing that gives the MTA any points in my book!

Unmentioned is the insanely obvious: there should just be a way to use a standard contactless credit/debit card for occasional riders. Works in London, Singapore, Chicago, a few other cities.

Transit systems/trains/etc. in general have no idea (or don't care) how horrible many of their systems are to the occasional user and even more so to the visitor. And it's gotten worse as regular users have been switched to refillable contactless payment cards that are usually specific to a particular city or even specific set of transit modes.

Go to just about any airport with a train into the city and see all the sleep-deprived people trying to navigate the fare with credit cards that may not work, no cash, etc.

The technology was only recently developed, and transit systems are usually not flush with cash to keep upgrading payment systems more than maybe once a decade, if that.

Uh, Hong Kong had Octopus cards since I visited in 2003. Probably sooner.

That the western CC industry was reticent to pick up innovation from Asia is not news either.

Transit systems being underfunded is a governmental problem, they should not be seen as being revenue neutral as they facilitate commerce.

Octopus is a debit/credit card in and of itself, but you can't use regular bank contactless cards for payment. There are bank Octopus cards but those have to be specifically compatible with Octopus. And it's availble in Samsung Pay but as a distinct card, you can't just use any credit card in your mobile wallet.

The system the OP is describing is compatible with standard contactless technologies (bank cards, Apple/Android/Samsung Pay). It cuts out the need for separate Octopus entirely.

Coins, cash, and disability-accessible faregates solve most dimensions of this problem -- portability, scalability, no vendor lock, security, privacy, and equal access -- but even that isn't universally deployed.

If you want to support distance-based, or otherwise complex fare structures, have both entrance and exit gates demand a fixed payment, and give a one-time-use token, ticket, or rebate code that identifies the origin, which, when inserted at the exit, reduces the price if it's below the default amount. Non-payment at exit gates is a similar issue to being caught with fare evasion by roving inspectors, and has similar societal answers (or lack thereof).

If you want to reduce entrance friction, you can additionally deploy faster payment methods for those who opt in, or reconsider the funding model of transit entirely. Roads are a similar public good, yet rarely are 'usage fees' deployed for roads; instead, the funding model of roads is complex, but fees designed to somewhat correlate with road usage, like fuel taxes, are deployed widely for this purpose. Both transit and roads are extensively subsidized from general government revenues as well.

The effect is that roads are generally used without individual purchasing decisions needing to be expended for every trip, and together with cars' intrinsic point-to-point routing, it vastly reduces friction compared to transit. Rethinking the funding model of transit, in places where the road network is under strain and transit is a viable contender, would be worthwhile.

New York is slowly rolling out a new payment service called OMNY.

I was curious to see what data privacy looked like in the new system. OMNY's Terms of Service does not say anything about how they might access your personal data from a NFC or contactless card payment until you register your account, which is optional. In that case, the following policy applies:

> In providing us with OMNY Account registration information, you confirm that the information is current, accurate and authentic. You agree to keep us updated if any of the information you provide changes. You authorize us to make inquiries, whether directly or through third parties, that we consider necessary to verify your identity or protect you and/or us against money laundering, the financing of terrorism, fraud, or any other illegal or suspicious activity, and to take action we reasonably deem necessary based on the results of such inquiries or investigations. When we carry out these inquiries or investigations, you acknowledge and agree that your personal information may be disclosed to prevent money laundering, fraud, the financing of terrorism, or any other illegal or suspicious activity to the appropriate authorities.

Curiously, it's unclear from anywhere on OMNY's website what the program's name stands for: https://omny.info

>>Curiously, it's unclear from anywhere on OMNY's website what the program's name stands for: https://omny.info

Figured out from the wikipedia article[1] that the acronym stands for One Metro New York. You're right that they should really have that listed somewhere on the MTA OMNY homepage.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMNY

"fare evasion" is a fictional concept in any city where the massively subsidized automobile culture exists: fuel cost + pollution externality, parking and roads giveaway of real estate.

The math doesn’t really work out for your argument. For the DC metro, for example, the cost is about $1 per passenger mile. https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/docs/300.... Fare revenue brings that down to a $0.53 cent per mile subsidy. One calculation of driving subsidies (relying on various studies that estimate the cost of parking, pollution, etc.) brings the driving subsidy to about $0.43 per passenger mile: https://ggwash.org/view/10891/funding-amtrak-is-more-cost-ef.... (That’s from an urbanist, pro-transit website.) Electric cars cut that by more than half. (The direct subsidy for driving is just $0.02 cents per passenger mile.)

So if you didn’t have far revenue, each passenger mile of subway would receive about 4x the subsidy of a passenger mile of electric car travel. As it is, the subsidy is slightly higher for the subway than a gasoline car.

Increasing ridership (at any time except peak) would lower the cost per passenger mile, at trivial additional cost. would. Does that $0.43 calculation include the effects of reduced ridership due to auto subsidy? I don't see thatin th ggwash article. Nor do I see a line item in the DOT info for the economic value generated by transit but 0% captured by the transit system (as constasted against Tokyo where the real estate system is part of the transit economic model.)

Additionally the language and penalties for fare evasion often don't match that of say parking tickets, which I would put as roughly similar in terms of moral violations (i.e. taking advantage of a common good, but not endangering the safety of others, like say speeding).

I think easiest and preferable would just be to get rid of fares altogether. I really like how this group approaches the issue:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planka.nu

Good article, I wonder if the solution is something akin the Amazon store.... you just hop in, and perhaps tag you card, either in the station, or inside the train/bus, which contains some kind of (one way) hash of your face....

The card buying process can be anonymous, and the hash is a card/face combination, (i.e. you can't repro the hash, unless you have both).

The card is only needed for tourist/people that want privacy. For the rest, you can just create an account, and have money deducted automatically when you step in a train. No tagging necessary.

This requires: 1. Great face recognition. 2. Strict privacy rules 3. People being ok with it

Why would you need the facial recognition if you're already using your card?

To identify your account and allow the system to take a snapshot of your face for the session.

Why would the card not identify your account? We already have cards that can do this. It seems that the only point of using facial ID is if you want to avoid forcing people to use cards (or if you want to collect and sell their biometrics, but lets assume altruism).

"In Germany, the population is more concerned about privacy. Despite being targeted by a string of communist terrorist attacks in the 1970s and 80s, it maintained an open system, without any faregates at any train station (including subways); fare enforcement in German cities relies on proof of payment with roving inspectors. "

A lot of systems have faregates that work also using anonymous tickets or fare cards.

But kudos to Germany for using such a system, I cannot imagine it working without massive fare evasion in many other countries.

The Minneapolis Light Rail works this way in the US! If there's a significant fare evasion problem, I haven't heard of it.

I feel that it's an institutional problem in the U.S. Leaving cultural issues aside, if people were being taken care of, they would less likely have such an antagonistic relationship with society(which includes government, businesses, companies, other people, etc) where they could justify fare evasion and other "small" crimes. Ideally, people should understand they are ultimately stealing from themselves and hurting themselves when they do things like litter or steal. Because if they pay taxes in any shape or form, that's partially their money that's going to be used to fix it. Unfortunately, in the U.S., for many it feels like the taxes they pay either never go back to them in the form of services and infrastructure that benefits them or is out right used to exploit or hurt them.

Most bus and light rail systems use something like this, don't they? Kind of impractical otherwise.

I know the light rail system in St. Louis uses this method of fare enforcement and I believe several other small systems do as well.

I’m not sure I follow the dislike of fate gates, especially how the author believes the largest rail transit systems in the world should use them but no one else.

My experience has mostly been with Washington DC transit and I don’t ever remember having an issue at the fare gate. They also let you buy an rfid card from a machine kiosk with cash.

Oslo uses roving fare inspectors and has a wonderfully-unified time-based card system that applies to all subways, trams, buses and ferries. No gates anywhere.

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