Transit police fare-evasion blitzes catch bigger fish, too
I found this today on the Financial Post but the story is taken from The Province.
This is the important bit:
Forty-two people were booked there for fare evasion in the one-hour blitz by 21 officers and two SkyTrain staffers on Thursday afternoon – an average of one evader for every 61 riders.
Or to put it another way, less than 2% of riders were evading payment. A pretty impressive result – and one which is consistent with experience across the system over time.
Estimates of revenue loss are higher than 2% – but that is all they are. Estimates. Someone without a ticket is not likely to be an especially reliable source on the number of zones they have travelled – or intended to travel – or how often they do that.
This is a typical random sampling – and there are differences at different places, times of day and days of the week. But it shows that there is, once again, absolutely no case for barriers and gates. Which also fail to catch “others wanted for more serious offences”
Stephen Rees's blog 
I take the SkyTrain and buses daily and am pleasantly surprised at the number of people I see buying tickets. This even includes some whose “look” might flag them as fare evaders. What bothers me the most is that while I am regularly checked by TransLink staff it is always in non-peak hours AND, in the 28 years I have been here, I have NEVER been checked on a bus!! unlike in other countries where buses are checked more often than the subway (likely because boarding is by all doors in buses). As I wrote in another blog I only travel infrequently to Paris, London etc. yet pretty much every time I see people jumping over the turnstiles or gates or-worse still –pushing against the person ahead of them in order to go through at the same time. I have also seen people in subways cars that were begging in a threatening way, including time when a wild eyed big guy started shouting “I have no money and no place to stay and none of you bastards give a s…but..” so much for the safety of turnstiles or gates!
Red frog
December 14, 2008 at 4:10 pm