Unfortunately, the problem of indifference to monthlies on urban rail is common around the Anglosphere. Answered in 5 minutes by: Solicitor: Jo C. Jo C., Barrister Category: UK Law Satisfied Customers: 82,725 Experience: Over 5 years in practice. Good lord! I was summoned to court for fare evasion by TFL, for using my fathers Freedom Pass which I was guilty of. Britain generally overuses faregates, for example on the commuter trains in London. 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. (LogOut/ Instead of forever delaying spending money today for appropriate infrastructure that will serve the city for ages, they have constantly convinced themselves and the politicians they can play these games with the travelling public. They simply DO NOT BELIEVE fares apply to them Most importantlyI got the result that I wanted! And the operators are normally satisfied. No surprise it is one of things that makes some vote for Corbyn/Labour (re-nationalise the railways). And the chances of being killed by police will be even lower. Even today way too many stations on the Iida or Yonesaka lines while too few on the Kagoshima area ones, the urbanised Ou line areas or the Yosan line. 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. By the same token, the issue of fare evasion should be viewed from the lens of revenue loss, rather than that of crime and disorder. I think what we really want to do bundle an annual transit pass, annual bikeshare, street parking pass, plus a local tolls discount, airport access pass, etc into a vehicle registration fee. This is less of an issue on Commuter systems where its mostly the trains that get crush loaded, but revenue protection is even more important for them as fare levels are higher. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/19/southern-rail-failure-crush-unions This is bad practice, especially for passengers who prefer to refill at a ticketing machine rather than at home or on their phone with an app, since it means passengers visit the ticketing machines more often, requiring the agency to buy more to avoid long lines. Train tickets from London (St Euston) to the Lakes District return, plus a one-way trip from St Pancras to Gatwick airport, cost me $A500. That doesnt make any sense. Im not sure if there is the same DWB (Driving While Black) phenomenon? Shrinkage happens. LegalAdviceUK exists to provide help for those in need of legal support in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Yeah, but dont confuse yourself or others. Random inspections with moderate fines are the layer of enforcement, but the point is to make enforcement largely unneeded. Is it a shorter trip? the. All of the agencies have counts, they just chose the laziest way to enforce things, then went ahead and enforced it with vigor. It is still bad. It may be possible to have some legal advice without charge. 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. Thank you so much! At the moment that the rail industry is having a long drawn out argument on the best way forward as everyone can see the season ticket is dying but the political cost of getting rid of it is too high, so some form of fudge will be needed. the routes that after privatisation were run as Southern. Everything is proof of payment. The kind of thing I imagined every time I travelled between the two mega-cities in the 80s and 90s. Londons fare capping system is weekly rather than monthly there are no monthly passes, and all fares are set at very high levels. Most people dont get on and off along the way. Let me grab my laptop and a beer from the hotel bar and Ill do a quickly summary of findings., Okay. Theres no monthly fare capping in London, but the travel card has a breakeven point of 48 in zones 1-3, which means that commuters who dont take the Tube off-peak will rarely hit the cap. ), * Paris + Petite Couronne are 762km^2 with a population density of 8.8k/km^2, * The 23 Wards of Tokyo are 619km^2 with a population density of 15.1k/km^2, * le-de-France is 12,012km^2 with a population density of 1.0k/km^2, * Itto Sanken is 13,500km^2 with a population density of 2.6k/km^2, * Kanto + Shizuoka (wide enough to cover pretty much every Tokyo commuter including distant Shinkansen suburbs, though is dominated by wilderness and includes many towns that dont have commute links with Tokyo at all) is 40,200km^2 with a population density of 1.1k/km^2. The transit agency is not an individual who is broken by being mugged of $100; it should think in terms of its own finances, not in terms of deterrence. Is France really going to repeat this nonsense? A Pew Research study (documented here: https://www.inquirer.com/transportation/septa-bus-fee-transfer-poverty-transit-pew-study-20190724.html ) notes that Philadelphia has one of the highest rates not just of working poor but of residents with limited or no access to banks and internet connections. Germany is very law-abiding in stereotype. BVG doesnt break even on fares, but thats because of buses, not the U-Bahn. If you through more honest pricing for the actual demand can avoid both things such as the Second Avenue Subway or horrible overcrowding that is a very good thing. Until then stop acting like these exceptions that exist for Paris wont exist for Tokyo. Whats more, the fare inspection should be a low-key affair. 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. its the poor who suffer from more from dirty streets and parks. 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). You give the keyword with that pass: Freedom. it seems it's a RA1889 prosecution ie Fraudulent use of a Freedom pass with the intent to avoid payment of the correct fare. TfL Verification Letters: Receiving an Information Request T.T. ( June 2017). Of course the Oyster card tech (copied from Hong Kongs Octopus) could have fed the Brits propensity to burden their fare systems with all kinds of conditional time and zoning regulations that would have allowed them to painlessly pump up the cost to the customer. 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. [7] I suspect the reason Paris is capping-curious is precisely that the breakeven point there is so high it was 52 relative to buying tickets in bundles of 10 last time I was there. Let me tell you many working class people like law and order and a good public realm. And on the other hand, by the relatively frictionless Paris and French system. In such cities monthly passes do barely exist, and cities aim for a fair and efficient pricing system. I am of course talking about transit performance in how to move the largest amount of people at the lowest cost for the transit users and taxpayers. If the subsidy for bulk discounts and rush-hour trips could be used to make off-peak fares really low (say on average 1 dollar or less in NY), this would have great gains in overall transit usage, the efficiency of the system, and social equity. since New Yorkers ride off-peak so much less than Parisians. Its difficult to get an ice cream truck into a subway station. Claiming the Commute requires employers to pay for half of the commuting costs of their workforce that pertain to (more environmentally-friendly) modes of transport. Thats Fare Evasion 101. On Monday, Democratic legislators pitched a new system decriminalizing fare evasion on public transit statewide, making the offense a petty misdemeanor, similar to a Tear down these faregates. Its really self-enforcing and does not need the extremely irritating British price-engineering. It is advisable to seek the representation of a solicitor in this situation. Plan a journey and favourite it for quick access in the future, Choose postcodes, stations and places for quick journey planning, Find out more about the Single Justice Procedure and how to submit your plea, London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. The solicitor who took on my case took a statement, we spoke about mysituation in depth. Monthly passes indeed encourage transit use, but thats not wasteful. I will try to help with this. The most common excuse is revenue loss, which is weird since realistically New York would transition to a large discount through holding the monthly fare constant and hiking the single-ride fare. If an inspector (conductor) finds you without a ticket, you either pay a fine or get kicked off. What if those exit-only turnstiles are actually supplementary to those where the entrance and swipe-card machines are? London has a card like HKs but no one would call it a travel bargain being at minimum twice as expensive as Paris. This one said the writer was exaggerating the cost, and that there were many choices to get the price down a lot. It is $12.40 to go from Fremont to SFO (a 30 mile drive). My solicitorhas been extremelyprofessional and his confidence has put my mind at rest. Transport For London (TFL) has an aggressive prosecution policy when it comes to Fare Evasion. In Europe there are usually other societal goals for public transport than just fiscal efficiency. So if someone rides a King County Bus, then a Sound Transit train, both Sound Transit and King County get money. Trains and trams are also PoP. 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). The mass transit (light rail) system is run by one agency, and the bus system(s) are run by others. However, again one should compare the compact arrangement of Ile de France versus what happens with Japan & Tokyos laissez-faire development policies. In such cities monthly passes do barely exist, and cities aim for a fair and efficient pricing system. 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.. If fares generally bring in X amount of revenue, then why would increasing tax revenue by X be bad. WebTransit Fare Evasion. However, this really isnt about revenue or enforcement approaches or fare levels. it is clear that you dont have any experience of very well run transit city, such as in East Asia, where rich and poor regularly alike use 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:. You dont need to convince me that British fares are out of control. Ive had fare inspection before on a 1 am commuter train out of Paddington before. Webboston college early decision acceptance rate 2025. UK.ManchesterLiverpool2578% But fares account for the largest chunk about 38 percent (or $6.2 billion) of the MTAs annual earnings. Affordable transit, along with affordable housing, is just one thing in not only creating an equitable society, but as economists now realise (doh!) Passport-size photos, applications, visiting the ticket office. The American moral panic about fare evasion regrettably goes far beyond New York. And I speak as a transit user. They did an excellent job and she gave me all the information Ineeded. But lets not pretend were talking about the best means of revenue collection. If you require advice you should contact a solicitor. People who buy monthly cards are the biggest users of the system and deserve any discounts over occasional users while you appear to believe the biggest users are captive and thus can be charged as much as possible (the British mentality). That maybe the US its not in the UK. Even the fragmented British railway system is able to manage fare revenue distribution for generic tickets. You focus on a small permanent presence where habitual evasion is common, and then focus your roaming enforcement on areas with a high CASUAL risk., which is why (in London) youll see periodic HIGHLY VISIBLE ticket check sweeps at big stations, or on services like the DLR or high-risk bus routes where there are a large number of POTENTIAL casual evaders. Oh, and the new companies will of course order the cheapest rolling stock they can find which will mean Chinese, which in turn will reduce the profitability and scale etc of Alstom and Siemens (which arent allowed to merge to effectively compete against the likes of even more massively state-subsidised China rail companies). The #1 cause of escalator failure is human waste. Find out about prosecutions, court proceedings and how to get help with your case. HL February 2021, I highly recommend BSB solicitors, they are professional and responsive. I was facedwith the prospect of receiving a hefty fine and a criminal record. Even though the Key card offers pay-per-ride functionality in addition to calendar passes, its $10 up-front cost and the difficulty of maintaining a payment balance force economically-marginal riders to use cash instead. The penny pinching Japanese private railroad operators seems very able to operate and plan efficient transit decades ahead. Extra induced trips by a switch to 0 from 0.5 a trip, are of course relatively more often going to be new 0.8 km trips than 15 km long. Contrast with Japan which even with almost entirely privatized rail has heavily regulated fares. A fully Learn how your comment data is processed. On most of our bus lines drivers check tickets on boarding, but we seem to be transitioning away from this as well. The next state government forced the city transit operators to simplify their systems and work together for the next contract . TFL Fare evasion prosecution | RailUK Forums. Probably not, in that I dont think these French companies that operate in other countries bring their bad habits back home (eg. Webtfl fare evasion settle out of court. Find out more about the Single Justice Procedure and how to submit your plea. I dont really know; admitting this makes me feel like one of those elites the Gilets Jaunes (and maybe Alon who had neither of these perks?) (Both also have the worst inequality amongst the developed world so they need to cater to the low-SES workers.) However, what Ive encountered more resistance about is the idea that people should just be able to walk onto a bus or train. For the other 5%, you would just put in the starting and ending destination in a machine, and the machine would tell you the price. 2) Is the service worth the relative economic price to me? Andy McDonald, the [Labour] partys shadow transport secretary, said: Privatisation has created one of the most complex, exploitative and expensive ticketing systems in the world. It is very likely that your employer paid some part, and, depending on the size of the enterprise, it is a discount. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. For a small % this is an economic decision. San Fransisco went to POP for their buses, and fare violations and dwell times both went down substantially. > And the S-Bahn gets subsidies because of lower suburban ridership, same as the RER/Transilien. Doing this by encouraging wasteful use and monthly passes makes no sense (and often the logic behind it is flawed and empirically incorrect). Or/and they think pay as you go is so hot, and so new. In fact, I think most US cities should be fareless anyway since their farebox contribution to revenue is so low. Those with immigrant background are over-represented in Swedish crime statistics, but research shows that socioeconomic factors, such as unemployment, poverty, exclusion language, and other skills explain most of difference in crime rates between immigrants and natives. Since racial identification is supposed to not occur in official stats. Yes. I really appreciate it. because it is so easy to do. Fare Evasion Solicitors Paris recently eliminated the zone restriction on certain Navigo cards thus reducing, in the most significant means, the previous disadvantage of those living further out and often less economically advantaged. 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.