Free Republic

NEW YORK - As the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and New York City Police Department look to crack down on fare beating, new police numbers reportedly show minorities make up the bulk of people stopped for jumping the subway turnstiles. According to the Daily News, 86 percent of the nearly 700 people arrested from April through June were Black or Latino. Blacks and Latinos also made up 71 percent of those hit with a summons for fare evasion over that same period. The News says NYPD numbers over the past few years show more people of color have been stopped for...

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,...

Nearly 1 in 10 San Francisco Muni riders boards a bus or streetcar without paying, costing the city's transit agency an estimated $19 million a year in lost revenue. The system averages almost 700,000 boardings a day. The findings, outlined in a study to be presented to the Municipal Transportation Agency governing board Tuesday, echoes what many Muni regulars long have griped about: Fare cheating is commonplace. Previous studies also reflected that fare evasion is enshrined in Muni culture.

While Gallup and other polls continue to show Barack Obama with a slight lead over John McCain, the extremely likely voters at U4prez.com don't appear to be so enthusiastic. The bigger news is that the perceived huge gains in congress for the Democrats are clearly in danger of becoming much smaller gains, and could turn in to losses of a few seats. The issue is of course oil. If gas prices stay high, a few things are now becoming certain. -- If the trend continues it's clear that Obama isn't going to win in a landslide, and would probably lose...

WASHINGTON: Federal employees are going online to sell mass transit fare cards the government buys for them, congressional auditors say. Employees also are exaggerating their commuting costs, and some continue to receive transportation subsidies after leaving the government. Abuses in the mass transit benefits program for government workers are wasting tens of millions of dollars (euros) each year, says Congress' Government Accountability Office. Using seven agencies' mass transit records, investigators found at least $17 million (€12.5 million) in fraudulent transit benefits claimed in the Washington metropolitan area during 2006. That amount "could be millions more" if fraud exists in the...