Pay Up, Part Deux
Yesterday I told the story of my son and his son arguing about paying for SkyTrain.
Only a few hours later, a friend who is running for office on November 15th told me ove coffee that his 20-year old daughter laughs at the idea of paying on the SkyTrain.
I don't care how many of you claim that turnstiles don't work, I insist that we demand people pay for their fares on public transit.
3 comments:
The problem with turnstiles is that they have to be manned to prevent fare cheats. What is needed of course is an independent audit of SkyTrain's ridership and percentage of fare evaders. Then compare with the cost of retro fitting turnstiles and/or fare gates to the metro. If the cost of fare evading is less than the cost of turnstiles/fare-gates, then its not cost effective.
Now, here is the real story; let's get those double dipping retired RCMP, now transit police, off their collective asses and have them check fares!
Here is something else to consider, many fare cheats take transit because they can for free, but when confronted with a strict regimen of fare protection, they stop taking transit period. This is known as soft ridership.
Sadly fare evasion has been around as long as those who have provided public transport and in over 200 years, nothing has changed much.
If London's mighty Oyster fare-cards got hacked and thousands ride for free, turnstiles and fare-gates won't achieve much.
NOTHING EVER CHANGES DEPARTMENT
An excerpt from the 1993 Ahad report on SkyTrain.
3:12 Revenue leakage: There is significant revenue leakage through the barrier free SkyTrain stations. This leakage is estimated at between $10 million to $20 million annually. The current fare evasion monitoring program is not statistically verifiable and the V.P. of SkyTrain concurs with this. Please see Pete Marwick Report of March 6, 1992 confirming FALSIFICATION of fare evasion reports.
It's simple enough, the management of SkyTrain (Translink?) is grossly incompetent; these guys couldn't run a whorehouse, let alone understand its function!
Mayoral hopeful Gregor Robinson is setting a good expample don't you think. Robinson is to Skytrain as Campbell is to drunk driving -- GUILTY!
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