Fare Beaters To Face $100 Tickets
The news is still coming in with regards to the Select Bus Service coming to the east side of Manhattan later this year. As I noted yesterday, the MTA is not worried about fare evasion on the upcoming service even though the agency admitted it would be a problem back in April.
Pete Donohue of the New York Daily News reports on how fare beaters would face $100 tickets from extra inspectors:
Here’s some bad news for fare-beaters.
While the speedier bus service coming to the East Side is based on an honor system in which riders pay at the curb, officials will hire more NYC Transit inspectors to ferret out cheaters and issue $100 fines when the new plan arrives in the fall.
That already happens in the Bronx, where inspectors on just one route issue more than twice as many tickets as the NYPD does on all other bus routes combined.
Still, some riders on the M15 route are skeptical NYC Transit can keep out the freeloaders under the new plan – designed to cut boarding time and shorten trips that averaged a snail-like pace of one block a minute in midtown yesterday.
“It won’t work here,” Jeff Rigby, 52, a graphic designer, said. “I don’t know if New Yorkers are trustworthy. They will ride for free as long as they can. It’s still a nice idea, though.”
Compliance will depend on enforcement, said therapist Michele Endich. “They need to fear the fine,” she said.
Mayor Bloomberg agrees.
“There always will be a handful of people who cheat,” he said. “When you start fining a few, then they’ll say, ‘Oops! I better not do that.'”
The Select Bus Service will affect the M15 on First and Second Aves. from Houston to 125th Sts.
Click here for the complete report.
Newsflash, $100 fines will not do the trick. It is one thing to issue a fine but will you actually see it paid by the perpetrators? I feel Mayor Bloomberg is living in a fantasy world to think that seeing a people fined will stop people from attempting to beat the fare. Fare evasion has been a long standing issue with buses for years. How many millions of dollars are lost every year from it on buses alone much less all forms of service that the MTA provides.
If they really want to curb fare evasion, real solutions must be put into place & a few extra inspectors are not it. One can’t possibly have enough inspectors to cover every single bus from beginning to end. What they should do is sit down with the NYPD & come up with long term sustainable solutions to address this problem throughout the entire system.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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