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Comment by bifrost | Hacker News Reader

"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.

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> 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.

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.

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?

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...

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.

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.

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!

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