Metro has been testing locking the gates today at 7th/Metro station for the Blue Line, Red Line and Purple Line in downtown L.A. Testing is scheduled to continue until 4 p.m. and Metro personnel are on hand to help everyone get through the gates whether or not they have TAP cards.
This is part of the ongoing testing of locking the gates at Metro Rail stations. The gates were temporarily locked at several other stations this past fall.
How is the need to install turnstiles between the Subway and the Light Rail platforms going to be addressed?
Hopefully by doing like every other rapid transit system in the world does and having free transfers between rail lines. Not likely, for political reasons, but one can hope.
How is the need to install turnstiles between the upper platform red/purple metro line and the lower level platform going to be addressed? Suppose I board at Wilshire/Western and then xfer at Wilshire/Vermont and go downstairs to a Northbound Red Line, you don’t expect anyone to go all the way up the Escalator and back just to tap in o_O! ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave…’
Lack of foresights like these is the reason why LA Metro is always dependent on tax dollars.
Had they stuck to a fare gate system from the start like every other city in the world to begin with, we wouldn’t be in this mess. But no, we like being different and trying to reinvent the wheel, and it’s much more cheaper to keep it as a proof-of-payment honor system.
Then twenty years later we realized that it wasn’t such a brilliant idea after all, we then magically have the enlightened moment to realize the rationale of why other cities have been using fare gates, and then we end up paying more tax dollars to fix it. Brilliant!
With so many things wrong, you have to start wondering if LA Metro is purposely doing these as a way so that we continuously get screwed with taxes:
1. Purposely do it wrong and call it “we like to do things differently in LA”
2. Oops, that wasn’t a brilliant idea after all. We need taxes to fix it now, but it’s going to cost us billions more in taxes because we have more stations now.
3. Repeat from step 1.
Analogous question to the above! Let us say that one wants to travel from Long Beach via Blue Line to Culver City via Expo Line: at the Pico Blvd. station, one merely needs to cross the platform to make the transfer. Right? This would count as two (2) separate fares? Would it be necessary to re-TAP one’s card at the Pico Blvd. station just to wait for the other line going the opposite direction?
Needless to say, we still don’t know what type of transfer configuration the 7th/Metro station will have to enable one to go from Long Beach to Culver City.
Frank,
LA Metro’s own stats show that 4% of passengers do not pay. That was with no turnstiles either on Subway (Red/Purple) or Light Rail(Everything else). Keep in mind that not all the Light Rail stations will ever get turnstiles
In New York City, where they have some serious turnstiles and attendants at all their Subway stations, they have about 2% of passengers not paying (jumping turnstiles!). (There’s no Light Rail in New York City)
So again, LA Metro is spending huge amounts of money to try to capture 2% of the total ridership that does not pay and won’t jump the turnstiles. Except, guess what happens when you put up these expensive turnstiles? That group might now pay, but lets suppose half of them take up another mode of transportation? So now you’ve spent tens of millions of dollars to capture (maybe) the 1% that did not pay before. Does that make economic sense?
Tens of millions of dollars that could be spent on service extensions and improvements? And that figure assumes the stations don’t get staffed too.
“Had they stuck to a fare gate system from the start like every other city in the world to begin with, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
FALSE, both because many systems use proof-of-payment (“honor system”); I don’t hear people complaining about the San Diego Trolley, for a nearby example.
FALSE too because the fare gates were installed as a way to lock TAP in. Without sinking millions of dollars into fare gates, with all the problems TAP was having, it was quite possible that Metro could have ditched TAP altogether. Now we are stuck paying far more for the cost of implementing (1) TAP and (2) fare gates than the revenue lost from nonpayment. Remember, the idea was to allocate some of the savings from not having fare gates into paying for law enforcement to keep the system safe, which has mostly worked.
I suggest distance based fares and a system like BART. Please study that system in more detail.
What are they going to do about those of us that use th EZ passes?
@Erik G.
Percentage numbers give false perceptions.
2% of total annual ridership at NYMTA is GREATER than 4% of total annual ridership numbers in LA Metro because NYMTA handles A LOT MORE transit riders than LA Metro.
NYMTA: 1.6 BILLION transit riders in 2010 x 2% = 32 million riders not paying their fares. 32 million x $2.25 = $72 million in lost revenue for 2010.
LA Metro: approx 127 million riders in 2010 x 4% = $5 million in lost revenue for 2010.
Looking at percentages, it gives you the false perception that there’s only 2% difference. When look at the transit ridership number difference, NYMTA is losing out $72 million per year at a 2% fare evasion rate versus $5 million per year at LA Metro at a 4% fare evasion rate (which even then the 4% rate is a guess-timate at best).
@Fare Gates Unnecessary
Continued reliance on officers alone does not add to any safety or relieve taxpayer of the burden.
In all things considered, transit ridership numbers here in LA will continue to rise as gas prices increase. With more ridership numbers, adding more officers will become more of a detriment to taxpayers than they can handle. An officer would be better off patroling the station for illegal activity than wasting time just checking fares for riders which a machine can do.
San Diego Trolley argument is moot; LA Metro handles more riders than the San Diego Trolley. As ridership number rise, it is inevitable that a more efficient means of fare checks has to be implemented than relying on random officer checks.