The F5 button:
Posted on 04/13/2019 7:24:55 AM PDT by reaganaut1
The Q65 bus came to a stop along a residential block in Queens and a construction worker stepped onboard. He walked past the farebox without paying. The driver pushed the F5 button on his dashboard.
At the next stop, an older woman with a cane climbed on and gave the driver a hearty wave. She, too, did not pay. Again the driver pressed F5.
Over two and a half hours, the driver pressed F5 — the button that records fare evaders — at least 50 times, and there was still a half-hour left on his morning route.
“It’s getting worse,” said the driver, Luis, who declined to provide his full name because he did not have permission to discuss his job. “How many? On my bus, hundreds a day. Hundreds with an ‘s.’”
Transit officials recently announced a remarkable figure: One in five bus riders in New York City does not pay the fare. The statistic stunned even Andy Byford, the leader of the subway and bus system, who said it was “wholly unacceptable” and at least double the rate of other cities across the world.
“We look at what other transit authorities are suffering, and this now really stands out as an outlier,” Mr. Byford said.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that oversees the subway and buses, says fare evasion is on the rise on the subway and buses, costing the system $225 million in lost revenue last year. But the problem is far worse on buses, where nearly 22 percent of riders do not pay, compared with 3.4 percent of subway riders.
An informal survey on several routes found that fare evasion was widespread and the reasons varied. Riders did not have exact change. They knew they would not get in trouble.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The bus drivers are afraid to confront these fare beaters. Can’t say i blame them. They’re defiant. Saw it often on my Staten Island commute to Manhattan.
Still remember my first week of high school in August 1980 when a bus ride was a quarter and a phone call was a dime. Then on Sept 1 they jacked phone calls up to a quarter and bus fare to 50 cents.
Ah the rampant inflation of the Carter years...
Your idea is super! But The police claim they can’t handle the number of calls it would generate. And they also claim there are more important crimes for them to work on. And so forth. I think if your idea were implemented, the number of fare evasions would go way down. Oh yeah, the police and the transit agencies will also argue that stopping service for arresting passengers will cause service delays - and endanger other passengers. Those arguments I don’t have answers for
If bus fare is essentially optional, I’m surprised they can actually get 4 out of 5 people to pay.
In Phoenix, if you somehow manage to get past the driver he will stop the bus and not Move until the deadbeat gets off or until police arrive to drag him off. They usually leave.
An informal survey on several routes found that fare evasion was widespread and the reasons varied. Riders did not have exact change. They knew they would not get in trouble.
So with this information, what will they do?
> The F5 button should summon a police car where the evader is taken off the bus and given a ticket at the next stop. <
Let me tell you how stupid I am. When the article first mentioned the F5 button, I just assumed it was a call-police button. And it turns out that the F5 button is just a counter.
The Q65 bus came to a stop along a residential block in Queens and a construction worker stepped onboard. He walked past the farebox without paying. The driver pushed the F5 button on his dashboard.
At the next stop, an older woman with a cane climbed on and gave the driver a hearty wave. She, too, did not pay. Again the driver pressed F5.
It would generate a lot of calls - AT FIRST.
But that would be reduced if there was an announcement that enforcement action would be given and $50 tickets handed out.
OR the driver should refuse to move the bus AND call the police until they pay or get off.
Who the heck had the bright idea of putting a F5 button on the bus? You tell them “pay or get off”.
If they don’t you call the police and have them arrested for disturbing the peace.
I am so sick of these criminals who do this crap because they know no one will do anything. Like the ‘refugee’s’ who grab beer from a store and walk right past the checkout counter, waving at the clerk.
Free bus rides? Dallas has that beat. Shoplift up to $750 worth of a ‘necessary’ item and you won’t be prosecuted.
And if it isn’t a crime to steal it, it is likely illegal for the store personnel to detain you to get the items back. Assault, false imprisonment, kidnapping if they make you go to the store office...
The city is a cesspool, and anyone thinking of visiting should rethink it.
The drivers unions often won’t let the drivers confront anybody. Including making an issue of no payment or stopping the bus til fare is paid. I must say that in this instance the unions have a point. There are many more dangerous passengers nowadays. This - and all the smelly dirty beggars that literally live on transit vehicles — these are the primary reasons why many of us have stopped patronize public transit
“The F5 button should summon a police car where the evader is taken off the bus and given a ticket at the next stop.”
That won’t work because NYPD doesn’t have enough radio cars or cops to man them for that kind of an effort. Besides, the fights to get the fare evaders off the busses would ruin their schedules. Just equip the busses with an arm that is activated to let the passenger onto the bus after his fare is paid.
The F5 button:
Why do they do it?
Because they can.
They used to call New York the Calcutta of the West. Then Giuliani cleaned it up, and hard-working citizens were completely behind him. As a result, the city became so safe and affluent, that we have a new generation of woke White people who are too young to remember how run down the city used to be. So they will allow the bums and hoodlums to have free reign once again.
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