This is actually a win-win situation, because the operator gets the money early on, and the employer can save parking spaces. Its not the far right or the far left, can we please keep these terms for the most radical 10-20% of the population on each side rather than for anodyne center-left and center-right politics? This really an area where the West should take lessons from Asia (though far integration, which is lacking in some Asian countries should of course still be encouraged). This, in turn, is because bus fares are enforced by drivers, who for years have complained that fare disputes lead to assaults on them and proposed off-board fare collection as an alternative. Theres something interesting going on with Chesa Boudins campaign: he wants to decriminalize quality-of-life crimes (okay) and deprioritize prosecuting theft and redirect resources to prosecuting sexual assault (prioritize violent crime) and train cops to be more responsive to victims. Berlin and Zurich both have farebox recovery ratios of about 2/3, I believe. with modern technology varying fares dynamically by distance is very straightforward (with 1990s technology) and westerners would adapt very quickly. Even though the Key card offers pay-per-ride functionality in addition to calendar passes, its $10 up-front cost and the difficulty of maintaining a payment balance force economically-marginal riders to use cash instead. Stores dont have gates. the Albtalbahn before it was converted to tram-train. Or visit an exhibition, see a show, a sporting event etc. WebSo fare evasion is a civil offence not a criminal one. Though, dare I say, and FWIW, it also perfectly correlates with the Anglosphere In contrast, the unlicensed churro vending is more a problem of city and state regulations making it too onerous to sell food. Multiple use of violence by these inspectors. So if someone rides a King County Bus, then a Sound Transit train, both Sound Transit and King County get money. The public transport system provides a certain level of constant service and a monthly pass is a right to use this service. You may then be held in custody until you appear in front of the next available court. widespread availability of payment kiosks and retail sales locations as well as a low or zero upfront cost would seem to be reasonable starting points. The consequences for me as regards my right to work in the UK were extremely high, and so this situation was cause for lots of stress. because it is so easy to do. In the US, trip chaining by car is relatively painless because of land use, highways, and ubiquitous parking. WebAppearance, the Court will schedule a Settlement Conference to occur within ninety (90) days of the filing of the Notice of Limited Appearance. This is just a very obvious example of many on how backwards transit is organized in most western countries. I use the discount punch pass (something that really should be eliminated ) instead of the monthly pass because my local network isnt good enough to consider using the bus for more trips. I seriously doubt the London system could, however I hope they have learned lessons from the Kings Cross fire disaster. Thatcher was pathologically psycho about it. Non-car owners would be able to buy an annual pass. For someone who has no previous convictions, it is, of course, a great shock to be facing a court appearance. I discussed the situation initially over the phoneand then met at the BSB office in Central London. it seems it's a RA1889 prosecution ie Fraudulent use of a Freedom pass with the intent to avoid payment of the correct fare. The German one is to make it easy to follow the law and then use enforcement to not make it so easy to break it. Its technically still a crime in Germany and repeat offenders Especially those who cannot pay do end up in jail. Right, but buses represent a small fraction of total pax, certainly in the centre but presumably more in the outer regions (where they will also be less cost-efficient). france.fr The official website of France. I didnt understand this the first time I read it. After a number of years of loss-leading the commercial company goes bust or worse (see UK, though admittedly there is little competition on a route basis; they have the worst of all possible worlds) and the debacle and chaos* makes more travellers choose alternatives to rail. Settling case out of court (fare evasion) | RailUK Forums. Viewed through a regional city perspective JNR was bad, the neglect of infill alone, I counted 15+ new stations on the Sanyo mainline alone all of them getting 2000 riders a day, and only a minority where in Hanshin area! No one will jump a fare gate 10 feet in front of uniformed police officer. I think what we really want to do bundle an annual transit pass, annual bikeshare, street parking pass, plus a local tolls discount, airport access pass, etc into a vehicle registration fee. Charging thousands of pounds per year but travellers being forced to stand the entire (hour long) journey? These people will start your core of users who ride everywhere and thus get other people who think about using your system instead of driving. Thats why there is lot talk of new ticketing options (3 or 4 day a week passes) but the future is some form of fare capping in cities at least. American transit agencies and activists resist calls for large monthly discounts, on a variety of excuses. Perhaps the approach shouldnt be to offer DISincentives for riders who dont have passes but rather to offer positive incentives for more people to use electronic, cash-free payment methods even if they fall outside the middle-class demographic. Its a godsend. After a brief waiting period, I received good news that the representations made were considered proportionate to a warning and a fine only. We are seeing more an more examples of clients being summoned to court over unpaid fares of as little as 1.50. Every dollar that doesnt come to us, in terms of fares that should be paid, is a dollar that we cant improve in service, he said at a news conference in September, according to AM New York. EDIT: Ignore that, the CAG thread states OP had an Oyster card, not a freedom pass. Broadly: smartcards/ticket machines that actually work and are easy to use, cleaner network/new trains/reliability and half-height barriers/visible staff will do ya. The most important maxim when addressing a low-level crime is to make it easy to follow the law. I would respond to them with a decent letter apologising and Andy Byford, New York Citys transit president, has maintained that fares are crucial in improving rider experience. And the London lessons are very applicable to NY. A postal requisition will display the date for a court hearing. However, again one should compare the compact arrangement of Ile de France versus what happens with Japan & Tokyos laissez-faire development policies. Tear down these faregates. NYCs subway, though a lot less user-friendly, at least has the virtue of fare simplicity. Excellent services. FA November 2020, Wonderful experience. As an operator you want monthly passes because people who have a pass are more likely to use your system in off hours when it is cheapest for you to provide service. This is hard to accept for our (moderate) right out of principle, but they now seem to be listening to solid arguments for operational efficiency. This is true for all of the major world cities and there encouraging efficiency is vital. What is really the moral logic in giving discounts to people that travel far, frequently, and during peak (at least 1 and 3 which also are regressive) a benefit over people that travel less and shorter? Of all the oddities thrown up by rail privatisation, this must rank among the oddest: a train company in the business of running fewer trains. Yes, though my employer (in as much as they paid my salary since a lot of the time I was on fellowship, ie. Or maybe it is part of a longer-term game by Pecresse and conservatives to kill the VT which was made more ubiquitous by Mitterrand (the Chevnement law). To Posters (it is important you read this section), Tell us whether you're in England, Wales, Scotland, or NI as the laws in each are very different. And thats before we get to lack of light-rail. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. The travelling public in the East seems a lot more happy with their experience than the travelling public you refer to in the West. Similarily just put a few machines on each bus that electronically can read transport cards, and let passengers get on and off as they like. Because the industry pushes such solutions onto the operators, and considering that the responsible ones have not much of a clue, they fall for it and get screwed. (Ile de France has a population density of 1010 people per sq km, that should say. Its empire stretches from Peterborough to Tonbridge to Bognor Regis and Brighton. Passengers need to swipe 46 times in a 30-day period to justify getting a monthly pass rather than a pay-per-ride. In fact, I think most US cities should be fareless anyway since their farebox contribution to revenue is so low. That Britain thinks monthly passes are old news does not mean that they really are old news. OK, youve nit-picked one thing from that report. Your first point is the more important one: absolute rate is way lower. In any case, major capital investment will always involve the government, but that is largely irrelevant for questions about using existing infrastructure efficiently. cheaper transit promoting sprawl. Monthly passes indeed encourage transit use, but thats not wasteful. If you do not reply, your case will be heard without you and this could mean you have to pay a higher fine. That doesnt make any sense. Fares are integrated between buses and trains (which is more than I can say for, say, London), and theres a schedule for fare by distance. As I pointed out in a recent post, Melun which is on the other side of the river Seine to Fontainebleu about 45km from central Paris, has 50,000 residents at density 5,000/km2. I can say with all my heart, that no matter the case, you can truly rely on this law firm, and you can expect the most favourable result. For Ile de France the versement transport VT payroll tax has at times funded 40% of StiFs operational costs (I dont know how that breaks down for different modes) and it sounded like they were proposing something like that for the UK. And you really have no excuse for not understanding this as I explained it all, here: have been recorded, including against people with mental disability trying to validate their ticket with their disability discount count, with fare inspector questioning authenticity of the disabled passengers proof of disability, and MTR have defended these actions by saying they are allowed to use reasonable violence against those who suspected to have violated their bylaw. Why should systems like the Washington Metro spend money to tear down their faregates and adopt Proof of payment, spending money to make it easier to avoid paying the fare? Andy McDonald, the [Labour] partys shadow transport secretary, said: Privatisation has created one of the most complex, exploitative and expensive ticketing systems in the world. In France and most places* it is highly correlated to poverty and recent immigration status. The only thing predictable about the service is that its always awful: the train you want is odds-on to be late or cancelled. It is the worst performing train operator of the lot. I dont see the benefit of making these trips really cheap for monthly pass users, while very expensive for everyone else. Germany is known for stereotypically being law-abiding, I am not sure how well their experience generalizes. This logic does not work the same way for people living in the retail-rich neighborhoods of New York, London, Paris, etc, where people are within walking distance of many of their destinations. Not being American I dont know my semi-automatic high-powered weapons at all well. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. (No doubt, partly econometric because of the cost-benefit calculation of replacing their antiquated coin-op turnstiles with something modern.). https://www.transitlink.com.sg/PSdetail.aspx?ty=art&Id=76, https://www.sbstransit.com.sg/transport/trpt_fares_concession.aspx. It is you who is artificially creating a them versus us war, which is reminiscent of London where there is definitely a class that would never use the Underground. Transit, even expensive transit, is nearly always affordable as is. As you wrote, passengers should be able to get on and off trains quickly, with minimum friction. BSB was my first choice when I faced the likelihood of prosecution after I failed to show a valid bus ticket when travelling in Central London. To you and others, it seems to be narrowly econometric efficiency and my experience is that it is anathema to passenger experience or satisfaction, and not least to the ease and functionality of transit in a big city. This is why the big % of habituals are male. With a modern system, there is no extra inconvenience is actually charging according to how much you use the system. @Sassy: If subsidized transit leads to people moving further out and leading more car oriented lives, it could even increase transportation costs, as people saved money on housing by moving to a further out area, but end up needing a car for many non-commute trips.. 250km2). If you want to talk about racial discrimination, lets talk about French incarceration rates. Transit agencies should aim at a fare system, including enforcement, that allows passengers to get on and off trains quickly, with minimum friction. What fare evasion offences could I be prosecuted for? Oh, and the new companies will of course order the cheapest rolling stock they can find which will mean Chinese, which in turn will reduce the profitability and scale etc of Alstom and Siemens (which arent allowed to merge to effectively compete against the likes of even more massively state-subsidised China rail companies). Like the time an older African-American woman got pissed off about younger African-American woman having a White boyfriend and decide to take it out on me, subjecting me to big rant on why African-American women can only really be sexually pleased by African-American men while hitting me with a plastic bottle. You will usuallybe asked to respond within ten days. Would certainly recommend. Its a comparable region to Greater Tokyo (the most common Itto Sanken borders) which includes a lot of farmland and is predominantly wilderness. If you through more honest pricing for the actual demand can avoid both things such as the Second Avenue Subway or horrible overcrowding that is a very good thing. No, simply untrue assumption, and I could easily make the opposite assumption, eg. WebOlliers Solicitors: Criminal Defence Law Firm Manchester & London Your use of induced implies travellers think how they can rack up long extended trips just because they dont cost anything! 2) Casual The sprawl exists. Its not very expensive at all! They did an excellent job and she gave me all the information Ineeded. @Phake Nick Sorry that narrative is wrong, the pro-car consensus was if anything more dominant 1950-1987, highways and railways were actually paired together e.g. The American moral panic about fare evasion regrettably goes far beyond New York. Passport-size photos, applications, visiting the ticket office. and then got arrested and taken to court when they refused to pay the outrageous fines. In Hong Kong MTR system, with both the gated heavy rail system and open access light rail system, the operator have employed a lot of additional fare inspector at all stations, to the point multiple of them are visible at every ticket gate, trying to curb down any attempts at undermining the systems revenue, following a trend of distrust against the political stance in operation of the MTR system. But no other American city has that excuse. Also, since you can technically board a tram with good intentions, if the ticket machine is full of cash already (or has a defect) you even have a good excuse. Eighty six percent of people in the UK do not fully understand the rules on rail penalty fares, and as a result and could have criminal sanctions made on them inappropriately, according to BSB Solicitors national survey. The third problem could be fixed if cities actually worked to provide public restrooms either free or at a nominal cost outside every station. Its really self-enforcing and does not need the extremely irritating British price-engineering. Pendeltg is the proper S-Bahn / RER after all and that started in 1968. Nordic public transport is generally based on German practice, but this is an exception. All sorts use the Paris Metro and even with its monthly card, is more expensive than either of those cities. 2) They think its cool Hmmm, Grenfell maybe not (when they renovated the building they actually removed one of the two stairwells ). In Paris everyone I knew used the Metro and most would have had a monthly card; and thus this is by far the dominant group in Paris with non-users being a pretty small minority and there was no class war over this issue. Compare with S$120 in Singapore or about 80 for Paris (all zones I believe): You give the keyword with that pass: Freedom. We are seeing violence directed at transit systems around the world which weve discussed here recently (link below). This is bad practice, especially for passengers who prefer to refill at a ticketing machine rather than at home or on their phone with an app, since it means passengers visit the ticketing machines more often, requiring the agency to buy more to avoid long lines. Even the Brits who have had to contend with such systems their entire life, get immensely irritated by it. That is a ridiculous and misleading claim. https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/other/atlas-urban-expansion-2016-edition. More recently, it trialed a new turnstile design that would hit passengers in the face, but thankfully scrapped it after public outcry.