Posted on 04/18/2015 11:31:21 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
It took an agreeable 15 minutes Monday to get from the Westgate Station to the Warehouse/Hennepin Avenue station on the Green Line. There was merriment in the air all right, but not enough actual humidity to smell the green grass of Target Field. We are unseasonably dry, and a bit of moisture in the air is essential to bring about the full flowering of the baseball home opener. I watched passengers get on and off; there are seven stops between Westgate and Warehouse, or probably two too many. I don't know who paid and who didn't. Impossible to tell, really, but it was noted in the Pioneer Press on Tuesday that lawmakers at the Capitol have at last brought in officials of the Metropolitan Council to address the issue of fare skipping, which might or might not be epidemic. An audit conducted by the Metropolitan Council found that 3 percent of Blue Line riders don't pay and between 4.6 percent and 9 percent of Green Line riders are freeloading. That apparently adds up to between $800,000 and $1.5 million in lost revenue per year. I find that hard to believe. Granted, my riding experiences have been limited to one initial ride in June when the fares were waived anyway and subsequently about a half-dozen trips from Westgate to downtown Minneapolis. Each time I dutifully clutched my ticket, hoping to be checked. I have never been checked. I have never seen anybody getting checked.
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
Way higher skip rates for Cleveland’s Rapid Transit. Minority kids don’t pay. Virtually all of them vault the turnstiles.
Brother. Every metro around the world I’ve been on makes you validate a ticket to get through the turnstyle to get to the train, and makes you validate it to get out at your destination.
Not rocket science.
Since the little fare-checking that is done gets conducted in such a sporadic and limited fashion, I don’t see how they could possibly arrive at any reasonable “estimate” for the extent of losses.
Light rail systems generally don’t have turnstyles.
Too expensive to implement such a system for light rail, it’s the same here in DFW with DART, they check so infrequently you can always tell which riders aren’t paying.
In my case I have an app that displays my pass on my cell phone.
They have the same problem in Phoenix, AZ. When they built the light rail the plan was they would have an honor system for ticket purchases. Now keep in mind the first light rail stations were built mostly in the poorest parts of the areas. They did not even plan to hire anyone to check tickets. After the first couple of months they were “shocked” people were not buying tickets.
Penny wise and pound foolish.
Light rail systems typically have stops that are more like block-long bus stops than metro transit stops. Additionally, unlike a bus, there are multiple doors along the train where passengers can board and leave the train.
Unless you could set up some sort of secured area limited by a turnstyle entrance, light rail and controlling access are incompatible.
and of course, you can't stop the practice of jumping the turnstiles because that would be raciss....
I hear that train a coming!
It’s rolling round the bend
And I ain’t bought a ticket
Since I don’t know when
But I ride the light rail
Because I can ride for free
And when I need some money
I’ve got my EBT.
Don't travel much, do you?
Recent trips without turnstiles:
San Diego
Phoenix
Dallas
Koeln Strassenbahn
Koeln S-Bahn
Recent trips that had turnstiles:
Washington
Lite rail seems to be a farce everywhere.
No don’t travel much.
In the last year in Rome, Istanbul, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Manama, Berlin,Amsterdam,Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava, Nuremberg, Passau, Regensburg,Bamberg, Cologne, Chicago, Boston, New York and Washington.
Just a home body that doesn’t get out at all.
Now I will grant you that older light rail systems like in Europe don’t have real terminals or stops. But for brand new systems like the one in Minneapolis it would be easy to design them in right from the start. Or deal with a 10% loss rate. Pick one.
You can add San Jose’s VTA light rail to that list. As I mentioned earlier, most light rail systems have never had (and probably never will have) turnstyles for access control.
Heh. Music to my ears.
I don’t quite remember the ticketing, but in the past, when in Colorado visiting a daughter, I used the light rail - the branch that is close to daughter’s house - and found it most convenient getting from her part of Littleton, to near the 16th Street Mall in Denver.
It was crowded on Rockies and Broncos play days.
I have no idea the current financial status of that Colorado light rail.
well done for having no CASH.
Priceless!
The Sprinter light rail in North San Diego County is on the ‘honor’ system. Just to see what all the fuss was about from our liberal friends, Mr. RightField and I took a round trip between Oceanside and Escondido. On the outbound leg of the ride, only one fare checker was on board, and when she found two teenagers without a ticket, she took them off the train for nonpayment and said she was going to stay with them until the police arrived. For the rest of the trip (and all of the return trip) no fare checker at all.
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