This report puts forward a relatively simple Claim the Commute scheme as a solution to this problem. Even the Brits who have had to contend with such systems their entire life, get immensely irritated by it. And that should coincide with a transition of everything to a paid model, with app-based day/weekly passes. As in Paris-RER this is best done with attractive monthly cards, so even people who have to use cars at least some of the time are tempted to still have a monthly card and use it for all journeys where possible. (England) Hi, I got a fare evasion summoning me to court, and Id like to know if theres a possible out of court settlement option from tfl as Im not trying to stain my record. The dissatisfaction with Southern was legendary. Because they wont embarrass a habitual, but theyll act like a gameshow buzzer highlighting to everyone else that CASUAL evasion is possible when that person gets away with it!, But you DO need enforcement, its just your dirty secret is that you dont really give a shit whether you catch anyone. If fares generally bring in X amount of revenue, then why would increasing tax revenue by X be bad. CrossRail was first proposed in 1948. Let me grab my laptop and a beer from the hotel bar and Ill do a quickly summary of findings., Okay. Find out about prosecutions, court proceedings and how to get help with your case. However Sydney had a horrendously complex British style system, and worse buses and ferries were different (and it was intended to integrate everything), and eventually they couldnt do it under the contract constraints (it was part of the reason they went bust). I think TfL is roughly in that area as well lumping both the Tube and the buses; sure, the Tube breaks even, but London has a way higher bus/rail ridership ratio than Paris or Berlin. On one hand by the awful British system of dozens of different fares for the same journey, and the (now superceded) horrible, and horribly expensive, LU fare structure. This is the most farcical privatisation even by the comedic standards of British railways and the aim is to defeat one of the last holdouts of organised labour The public transport system provides a certain level of constant service and a monthly pass is a right to use this service. Menu and widgets Germany is known for stereotypically being law-abiding, I am not sure how well their experience generalizes. I then received a letterfrom Tfl saying that I was summoned to court forfare evasion. Would certainly recommend. But no other American city has that excuse. Paris has one-way faregates, so half the exit space is unusable during (one-way) busy times, and the exit gates are hard to open and easy to close in order to discourage fare dodging. (slightly out of date; too lazy to update): Naturally there is no algorithm or magic cost-accountancy software that can calculate those costs and benefits. Wedged in overcrowded carriages, fellow passengers suffer panic attacks. So you need to LOOK like youre going after the habituals. So why do it at all? Development London. London, WC1N 2ES | 020 7837 3456. They are cited in the same way that a fare evader is, even though theyve obviously paid the fare. That is, about the Brit who is the latest guy charged with pulling NYC-MTA into order. There are various statistical ways of determining how much each agency should receive of that monthly pass. It is taking all the land area of Ile de France and ignoring that huge parts of it are either farmland (eg. And on the other hand, by the relatively frictionless Paris and French system. A different reason to dislike monthly passes is that they work against people using bikes-walking-transit (and for that matter, cars) in different combinations. This was a great result and I could not be more grateful. We are seeing more an more examples of clients being NYCs subway, though a lot less user-friendly, at least has the virtue of fare simplicity. On many buses, drivers just let it go and let passengers board without paying, especially if nearly all passengers are connecting from the subway and therefore have already paid, as on the B1 between the Brighton Beach subway station and Kingsborough Community College or on the buses to LaGuardia. Typically, trips are charged by distance and are regarded as fair by the majority of users. Exactly. (I did turnstile-jump in Paris once, with a valid transfer ticket that the turnstile rejected, I think because Pariss turnstile and magnetic ticket technology is antediluvian.) Nor is making it easier to follow the law going to encourage more crime to the contrary. widespread availability of payment kiosks and retail sales locations as well as a low or zero upfront cost would seem to be reasonable starting points. Your second point sounds like moral panic. Paris RER-A (the direct equivalent of CrossRail) opened in 1977 and today carries 300m pax p.a.. Today Paris has 5 RER lines which carry more than 1bn pax p.a.. About 44 years later, and 75 years after it was first proposed, CrossRail will cost north of 18bn and the scale of opportunity cost that can only be imagined. Intuitively most of the induced extra trips, in a monthly fee, rather than pay per usage system, will be very short trips, that are easily substituted by walking or biking. Its now got the stage where in London trains are much more lightly loaded on Mondays and Fridays. Affordable transit, along with affordable housing, is just one thing in not only creating an equitable society, but as economists now realise (doh!) BVG doesnt break even on fares, but thats because of buses, not the U-Bahn. https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/10/24/numerology-in-transportation/#comment-67419. I discussed the situation initially over the phoneand then met at the BSB office in Central London. classic TOD. I guess the numbers on Wikipedia are old, but according to its list, neither BVG nor MVV break even on fares. @Eric2 Some of the sprawl was developed during the bubble era , but the public transportation was scrapped after the bubble burst. In fact, the UKs disaster of rail privatisation saw much higher subsidy from central government than before privatisation! For the thousands working on an employment pass, youre out of luck. For the far right and the far left, transit is a social service for poor people rather than a general transportation service in the United States. 4) If I do it, do I THINK Im likely to get caught?, The more yes answers they reach, the LESS LIKELY they are to do it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Settlement_Plan. The form will ask you whether you intend to plead guilty or not guilty and will give you an option to enter your plea by post. In any case, it should be clear that both Paris and Tokyo could be much more compact than they currently are. No one asking for M16s. I certainly tend to see S-Bahn inspectors more than I used to. Commuter rail is essentially PoP. The travelling public in the East seems a lot more happy with their experience than the travelling public you refer to in the West. San Fransisco went to POP for their buses, and fare violations and dwell times both went down substantially. Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed my travels in both countries, I was astounded by the cost of regional trains and bus and tube transport in the UK. But instead, each agency requires the card user to pay (tap the reader). And it does an appalling job. There are no marginal costs close to zero in cities close to capacity at rush hour (such as New York, Tokyo, London, or Seoul), instead, those marginal trips have gigantic marginal cost if the solution is something like the Second Avenue Subway (or alternatively a horrible overcrowded travel experience). But the government still think this is a severe problem to the government budget, and is now proposing the adaption of a new ID-based system for the elderly discount, requiring elderly across the city obtain a new transit card with their name and photo printed onto it, and show the photo to drivers or ticket validators whenever they want to ride public transit, so as to avoid such sort of abuse. And of course the marginal cost to the operator of these discretionary trips is close to zero, especially as they are almost wholly out of peak periods. Thanks, BSB Solicitors. Occasional users will by definition be hardly affected while youd punish the majority of users, and indeed risk their commitment to use public transit. It is the worst performing train operator of the lot. Boston, too, has its moral panic about fare evasion, in the form of campaigns like the Keolis Ring of Steel on commuter rail or Fare is Fair. Would you say that SNCF fails to provide good service to the regional cities of France? Sacked London council on the pretext of fiscal irresponsibility over Livingstones Fair Fares (or Fares fair?) Webtfl fare evasion settle out of courtmeat carving knife blank. One paid for it via an automatic salary deduction, paying 50% of its face value. At 20 km the single fare is $1.78 and the breakeven point is 68, which means the monthly might as well not exist. It certainly helps the use of the Metro/RER, keeps car use low (you need to be slightly insane to try to drive in Paris; I did for the first year . have been recorded, including against people with mental disability trying to validate their ticket with their disability discount count, with fare inspector questioning authenticity of the disabled passengers proof of disability, and MTR have defended these actions by saying they are allowed to use reasonable violence against those who suspected to have violated their bylaw. put in half-height gates and theyll jump them. They actually reduced the fare on the Staten Island ferry to zero. ), Id like to see cameras on every train on every bus on every station on all the gate lines, Byford said in September, according to the New York Daily News. I have seen a claim of Ile de France urbanised zone as 3,640/km2. People do not take mass transit at rush-hour if they can help it. And life goes on. Those casual fare evader mental questions are: 1) Do I already have, or can I buy a ticket right now? It seems a bit of a wasted effort otherwise, eh?, Oh, should of added, that this is why when youre designing your roaming checks youre really looking for how you can MAXIMISE the number of people that saw that check happen. $50 for a week pass, $127 for monthly, $1500 annual. Labour will scrap the bewildering and outdated fares and ticketing system that discriminates against part-time workers, discourages rail travel and excludes the young and low paid.. Claim the Commute schemes can take the form of season tickets subsidies (STS), fare receipt claims, bike purchases, bus route subsidies, or petrol receipt claims if the job absolutely requires car transport. In most of the US, as you know, we need better service more than we need cheaper fares. In Paris, various classes of low-income riders, such as the unemployed, benefit from a solidarity fare discount of 50-75%. 1) Theyve got the moral compass of Donald Trump. In fact, all of these have had a more permissive stance that has been incrementally put in place in NYC over the past 2-3 years, and anyone who rides the train has seen it. Thats not my impression but admit I dont have direct experience for several decades now. That requires enforcement exercises, which are expensive. Just please stop being ridiculous. Theres a bunch of other stuff I could go into about fine levels vs fare levels vs chance of being caught, value of ticket sales at airports, balancing the disruption of checks against frequency, the value of uniform vs non-uniform etc. You specifically dont want discounts on tolls, though the point of tolling is to discourage car traffic, e.g. because of Chile, but it goes back further than that) isnt great. This results in a very odd situation, where someone who owns an unlimited use monthly pass can be cited for lack of payment. With an electronic payment system, you can have pretty non-interfering gates (which also makes it possible to charge per distance), they can be largely symbolic (just a tower you push your card against). Until recently, the GoPass was a flash pass no tagging required. a healthy economy too. This setup works at palatial East Asian stations, but a cheap cut-and-cover Continental European station gets overwhelmed when a million Parisians all descend on a handful of stations to celebrate. (But not enough. Or maybe it is part of a longer-term game by Pecresse and conservatives to kill the VT which was made more ubiquitous by Mitterrand (the Chevnement law). They claim such abuse could be costing the government hundreds of million in long term. It is entirely because the government refused to adequately fund public transport. If you have social priorities (which is totally fine and reasonable) make sure they target the groups such as low-income earners, students, unemployed, poor pensioners, etc directly. In most cities roads are not priced properly and the transport system is a broken market in general. Personally Id rather SNCF hired from Keolis and not from Air France, While the fine for fare dodging is indeed 60 thats for a first time offense. Subsidizing transit commutes is certainly much better than subsidizing car commutes, but the end result still seems like it could be much better if commutes were less subsidized. its the poor who suffer from more from dirty streets and parks. If thats something I do often, most of those will be free trips under the 45-swipe regime, regardless of whether I lose a few workdays in a given month. For zones 1-2 for instance the weekly version is 35.10, monthly 134.80, yearly 1404, presenting some savings if youre able to commit to the amount up-front! Its technically still a crime in Germany and repeat offenders Especially those who cannot pay do end up in jail. france.fr The official website of France. No surprise it is one of things that makes some vote for Corbyn/Labour (re-nationalise the railways). tfl fare evasion settle out of court. the Albtalbahn before it was converted to tram-train. Which surprised quite a few people that night. Typical nit-picking scrooges.) The mass transit (light rail) system is run by one agency, and the bus system(s) are run by others. The panhandlers, subway dancers, public urinators, and worse are what drives people away from transit. Because the truth is that ANYONE will fare evade, its just for these people it is a conscious (or almost-conscious) act based on a bunch of questions they are running through in their head:. Thats what a monthly/annual pass stands for. So if someone rides a King County Bus, then a Sound Transit train, both Sound Transit and King County get money. According to the present report, there is a common misunderstanding as to what commuting really is and how it should be accounted for. Sendai for instance is very much concrete before electronics/operations. BART has a three-pronged problem that it is dealing with concerning fare-evasion. Some people got so infuriated that they went and sat in the First Class carriages (!) Passengers need to swipe 46 times in a 30-day period to justify getting a monthly pass rather than a pay-per-ride. Notably the Tokyo is denser than Paris is a Phenomenon o the last 30 years according to the Atlas. Excellent services. FA November 2020, Wonderful experience. We operate as a form of "legal triage" where commenters can guide posters towards resolving issues themselves or towards an appropriate professional. Its really self-enforcing and does not need the extremely irritating British price-engineering. The most common example of fare evasion involves the use of another persons Oyster Card to get the benefit of reduced or free travel. Theyd be lynched if they tried that in France, and probably by other politicians Come on that reeks that of condescension to the poor. The total cost of the new patrol program is $56 million in the first year, escalating by 8% annually thanks to a pre-agreed pay hike scale. In the context of most US metros, I think looking at transit fares in isolation is a mistake. Such a scheme would save the working population billions of pounds every year, and will help rein out of control transport fares. While commuting time is always going to stop people from living too far away, I cant see how lowering commuting costs isnt going to push a lot of people further out than they currently are. HL February 2021, I highly recommend BSB solicitors, they are professional and responsive. They were technically convenient before modern technology (and thus motivated historically), but today there is no excuse to not have payments per trip, and per distance (and preferably also extra in rush hour). In New York City, a spate of attention has come recently to policing Americas largest transit system. One might say that of course they would say that. Even the Tokyo MEA which is just municipalities with 10% commuting into the 23 Wards is a ton of wilderness, as wilderness area is included in municipal borders (zero unincorporated land, all wilderness belongs to a municipality administratively). New York itself may have an excuse to keep the faregates: its trains are very crowded, so peak-hour inspections may not be feasible. One doesnt think, on the weekend or non-commuting period, whether to take a short or a long trip on the Metro, one thinks of the trips one wants/needs to take and might compare doing it by Metro, private car or taxi. A Monthly Travelcard for zones 1-2 (inner London) is 134.80 (US$169.45, 150.96) Sure. Most people will pay, one way regardless. Whats the worst that can happen with open access? And you DO want the police involved., Partly this to protect staff but ALSO because non-economic habituals have a higher rate than normal of OTHER shit theyre already wanted for. Also, since you can technically board a tram with good intentions, if the ticket machine is full of cash already (or has a defect) you even have a good excuse. And London. I think its also right thing to talk about the sum of the three: Pendeltg is the proper S-Bahn / RER after all and that started in 1968. Evidently it did non-German things like building a full metro in a then-small city rather than a Stadtbahn and having Lokalbanan terminate in outlying areas with a T-bana transfer rather than trying to through-run them as S-Bahns. if someone from outside the metro drives and parks on-street they have to either meter or pay daily parking rates on a app. 800851655). Non-car owners would be able to buy an annual pass. Most if not all Parisians love the Metro and consider it theirs. I get why that is, but you really want to go somewhat lower than 45 on these grounds. Not least, via job access. And incidentally I totally reject your repeated assertion that low fares, or flat fares, to the outer zones of big cities, encourages sprawl, because it does the opposite (it will encourage TOD around the stations) and is much more likely to entice them out of their cars. We offer a fixed fee service, which includes: If you have been invited to attend an interview regarding an allegation of Fare Evasion, we strongly recommend you have the benefit of a criminal defence solicitors presence. This situation requires not only a shift in the thinking concerning the ownership of commuting infrastructure, but also a radical restructuring of its funding model. Large employers often sign reduced rate Job Ticket deals with public transit operators. As part of a new campaign to combat fare evasion, the MTA hired new cops to police the subway. The German one is to make it easy to follow the law and then use enforcement to not make it so easy to break it. Efficiency is usually both environmental and fair. For local operation (bus, tram, regional trains) they use vehicles which contain a passenger counting system, counting the number of people getting off and on. TFL Fare evasion prosecution | RailUK Forums. Today I interpret monthly passes a kind of rent-seeking among one group of transit users, who want other people to pay the cost for their transit use. As an operator you want monthly passes because people who have a pass are more likely to use your system in off hours when it is cheapest for you to provide service. The turnstile acts as a reminder to everyone to pay their fare, since its not possible to fare-dodge without actively jumping it. The outcome is predictably polarization and is just as disastrous here as for any other dimension of US public services. application of binomial distribution in civil engineering eames replica lounge chair review eames replica lounge chair review Also, it was valid on everything 24/7 (I understand the rough equivalent pass in London isnt actually valid for weekend use! He was very honest and though the odds may have been against us, he was able to come up with a good plan of action. I seriously doubt the London system could, however I hope they have learned lessons from the Kings Cross fire disaster. Ill admit my attitude is very conditioned by direct experience. It is over 25-year-old technology by now. It boasts the worst record on significant lateness. @Henry: Again, counter logical. We're pleased to announce the launch of our new booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk, which helps Having felt very positive about my initial interaction with the person who took my initial phone call, I immediately booked a consultation the next day., I arrived early and was greeted with smiles and a lot of reassurance. Its a proxy for lawlessness, for police racism, for public safety, for poverty. That maybe the US its not in the UK. Random inspections with moderate fines are the layer of enforcement, but the point is to make enforcement largely unneeded. As they push out, all non-frequent transit users, the support among transit-users for monthly passes is understandably high (a typical insider-outsider issue). We will send you a Single Justice Procedure Notice or a Postal Requisition. city bankers) because its both an easy PR win, AND a lovely big reminder to potential casuals not to try it themselves., And there you go. BSB Solicitors fielded my call in a very professional, courteous, and sympathetic manner, and helped plan a response to TfL over the course of just three working days. The consequence is that pretty much everyone using the system during peak hours has a pass. No gates to get on. These people will start your core of users who ride everywhere and thus get other people who think about using your system instead of driving. Its $127 now and 127/4 has a 32-trip breakeven. I guess there could be some aspiration to greatness. This is hard to accept for our (moderate) right out of principle, but they now seem to be listening to solid arguments for operational efficiency. In Paris on the RER I cant tell I believe its three figures of which the first is a 1. (No doubt, partly econometric because of the cost-benefit calculation of replacing their antiquated coin-op turnstiles with something modern.). Also, people in those places tend to lower SES, so theres an element of social justice (the opposite of what applies in most places where they are punished by paying per km travelled). Finally, monthly passes are regressive for people with very low incomes, and uncertain cash flows, as they may simply not be able to make bulk purchases. There are very good reason why such pricing structures are extremely uncommon in other parts of society. In this context the metro is not totally out of place for German practice, just for bigger cities. Then the S-Bahn probably gets a lot of subsidies at least outside of the trunk areas. the Foret de Fontainebleau is 2.5x the size of intramuros Paris! I would wholly recommend BSB Solicitors for anyone looking for help with fare evasion cases. Fare evasion is a criminal offenceand you may be prosecuted. The sprawl exists. Generally, the train companies argue that prosecutions are in the public interest because of the huge sums of money which are lost to the rail industry as a result of fare evasion. It might be seen as a less pressing issue when most of your systems income come from taxes (its certainly not in low subsidy systems) but is still important. In lieu of treating it as a big intra-urban culture war, I am going to talk about best practices from the perspective of limiting revenue loss to a minimum. And of course it is not the least ethnically discriminatory . You must submit a plea of guilty or not guilty within 21 days from the date of the notice. Ridership on those marginal branch lines was cratering before. The Wiki section on France is truly pathetic (not worth publishing or reporting but I am sure it was): A 2009 study found that the share of immigrants in the population has no significant impact on crime rates once immigrants economic circumstances are controlled for, while finding that unemployed immigrants tend to commit more crimes than unemployed non-immigrants.[83] A study by sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar, director of studies at the EHESS, found that Muslims, mostly from North African origin, are becoming the most numerous group in [French prisons].[84][85] His work has been criticized for taking into account only 160 prisoners in 4 prisons, all close to northern Paris where most immigrants live. Yeah, the lack of monthly caps on Oyster baffles me. More people either work from home one or two days a week or are often hopping between client sites or their own company locations throughout the week and which might not even be in the same city. I have just returned from an overseas trip to the UK and Italy.