Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Eade
The idea that it is OK for you to evade paying your fare ‘because you are just going 300 metres’ is folly for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that you are not alone in doing it.
Let’s say that you illegally board a bus at Campus Station to ride the 860 metres (not 300m) to Mackenzie-King Station because the Rideau Centre has a nifty new food court that has all your favorite choices. Did you think that you are the only one who is doing this? There are undoubtedly many others who feel that they are only going a short distance so they don’t feel obliged to pay their fair share. Surely the incremental cost of one person taking a free ride is not significant; but what about the fifty people who do the same thing? Is it becoming more significant now?
On a parallel line, the 417 becomes so crowed such that it requires widening because individuals decide that they need to take their own car because … <insert reason here – maybe a person is just going two exits, and not the entire length of the road>. It is not a problem to have a lone extra car on the road; but it does add up fast to become an issue as many single cars are added.
Well, those free-loading transit-cheats can just squeeze on to a bus that is running by anyway, so there is no additional cost to OC Transpo, right? Well for a single person there might not be many additional resources needed (although it is not zero), but when the numbers start to climb, then there needs to be another bus and operator added, and the costs behind that. Then there is the idea that the extra bus likely doesn’t just run for the one trip between Campus and Mackenzie-King stations; it should probably be used for an entire shift – since we need to pay the extra operator for a minimum number of hours. Beside the people traveling from Campus Station, there are also the people taking a free-ride from Kent to the Rideau Centre to enjoy the food court, too. They might need an extra bus also. As more people see that others don't need to pay, more will think that it is alright for them as well; after all, who would want to pay if others get away with stealing a ride.
Our system is based on honour, with everyone paying a small portion of the cost. Realistically, there will always be cheats who think that they are above the law, or that the rules should not apply to them in some instance, but that needs to be kept to a minimum level. If it comes to a point that it is OK to scam the system, then there will be no system as it will break down. When people start to simply take what they are not entitled to, then society fails. The honour system only works when people remain honest. I find it very unfortunate that the dishonesty of a few has forced the City to spend additional millions on measures to ensure that people obey the law and pay their fare.
Our City has decided that the cost of our transit system will be shared by all riders (with some concessions for the young and elderly). You can disagree with the rules that have been put in place, but it is not OK to disregard them because you do not agree with them. If you feel strongly that the cost of transit could be divided more fairly, then you should be lobbying to have the rules changed.
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Well I think that we can both agree that you've expertly thrown my straw-man down your slippery slope
Ok, let's look at this: from what I understand from your argumentation, you're saying that
1. Fare evasion encourages others to do it
2. If more people do it, it further taxes the system
3. Space is at a premium, so fare evaders displace paying patrons
I'm not certain if the first argument holds up to scrutiny: there are regularly enforced dissuasive measures (fines, mostly) which prevent fare evasion from becoming a widespread problem. I cannot imagine that there is anyone who takes the bus every day without a pass because they can both justify the monthly cost and it's unlikely they won't get caught. As a freeloading entitled whippersnapper, I wouldn't take the bus more than a few minutes for the same reasons: if I'm going a distance I wouldn't otherwise walk, the $3 is probably worth the expense and even if it weren't, the risk that I might end up paying 20 times that in fines gets less and less tolerable the longer I'm on the bus. Conversely, if I'm taking the bus from Kent to Rideau, the ride is both less valuable and less risky. I might be biased, but I'd rather see the VALUE adjusted rather than the risk.
The second argument is interesting, but you threw it down a slippery slope: I don't think there have EVER been fifty fare evaders on a bus. I would be surprised if there were ever more than three or four at any given time, judging from how there isn't a stampede of people heading out the door whenever a fare inspector walks in.
Which brings me to the third point. The argument that space is at a premium only applies to the buses which are at maximum crush capacity. If there are more people who want to get on the bus than there is space in it, then it is true that every person not paying a fare is displacing someone who is. But scale matters here: if, as I think we can safely establish, there are rarely more than a handful of fare evaders on a bus at any given time (if that or even at all), I don't believe this to make a material difference in the system's capacity.
But there's also the question of whether fare evasion is more likely at peak hours when space is an issue: Since fare evasion is something which happens mostly on the Transitway trunk downtown (Bay to Lees), fare evaders have their pick of buses that they can take. At rush hour, when there are several buses every minute, I always opt for the most comfortable option, not the most crowded one, so no one is displaced. Another issue is speed: between Laurier and Bay, the buses are VERY slow. So slow, in fact, that the distances that I might othewise have taken the bus for (like Rideau to Bank) are just as fast on foot. In those cases, I'd rather walk than risking anything by taking the bus without a fare.
So yes, a fare evader on a bus which is completely full displaces a paying patron. However, that number is small, made smaller still by the fact that fare evaders are less likely to be on the crowded buses and less likely to be taking the bus at all for short distances at rush hour.
However, I think that your biggest problem with the idea of fare evasion isn't its potential for taxing the system or displacing paying customers - it's what you interpret as blatant disrespect for laws and people's work. There's nothing I can say about that other than to tell you that it isn't some grand gesture of defiance. People make decisions based on the total cost and return on things such as time, money, comfort, risk, etc. based on their personal preferences and thresholds. For my personal criteria, fare evasion between two or three stations downtown generally (but not always) makes sense based on the time that I save versus the risk that I run. I'm not sticking it to the system - I just want to get from A to B. Like with most things, if we want to address the symptoms, we should look at the wider issues:
- Why don't some people want to walk downtown?
- Why do people feel that the risk of being caught is low?
- Why don't people want to pay the fare for those distances?
etc.
We can have a very enriching discussion about many of those questions, but not on moral indignation.
We can address fare evasion (though I question whether it's big enough of a problem to warrant anything beyond what we already have in place), but we really have to ask ourselves whether we'd rather see the problem fixed or the transgressors punished - it isn't the same thing.
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