The Board approved a motion by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky asking Metro staff to plan to lock the gates at Metro Rail stations within the next five or six months.
“I think the evidence is resounding and clear — there are a lot of people who have been avoiding paying their fares,” said Yaroslavsky. “We’re talking about millions of dollars here” in terms of lost revenue.
Yaroslavsky also disputed previous reports suggesting the fare evasion rate is as low as three percent.
Metro tested locking the gates at a variety of subway stations last year. Here’s a staff report about the tests — in which Metro staff said that revenues greatly increased when the gates were locked.
The Metro Board also approved a motion by L.A. Councilman Jose Huizar to establish a working group of three TAP-enabled muni bus operators, three non-TAP enabled munis and Metro executive staff. The group will be charged with solving issues that are preventing some agencies from adopting TAP cards as a form of fare payment.
The more agencies that use TAP, of course, the easier it will be to have a regional fare system and to ensure that all passengers get through gates on the Metro system.
Metro is still working with Metrolink and other agencies to make commuter rail and EZ passes TAP-enabled. We’ll have more details in the coming weeks.
Q: How long does it take Metro to figure out that fare evasion is rampant?
A: 22 years (Blue Line opened in 1990)
Q: How long does it take Metro to figure out how to lock the gates?
A: Six months.
And you wonder why America is the laughing stock of the world.
@KDee: I believe TAP cards use RFID technology. A magnetic strip won’t work.
As a LIFETIME METRO and predecessors user, I am waiting for what explanation Steve Hymon can come up with.
I am one of the original EZ Pass users and I do have a TAP card unused due to only 8 agencies using such and even that isn’t consistent between agencies.
I agree with many of the comments above and await more explanation on TAP (if that is possible).
I”m on the metro Accessibly advisory committee
the problem that come up what if the person doesn’t
have any hands? he cant very tap the card
they will need to have staff to assist at those stations
@Mark Panitz
So, why can’t you ask the zillions of other transit agencies that have turnstiles on how they handle that? What are we paying you guys with our taxes for?
The same people who were against locking of the gates also said “fare evasion accounts to ONLY 3% of all riders” with no data whatsoever to back that claim. And look how easily the tables turn when there is actual data. Now the EZ pass riders say 4% is STILL a lot when opponents to locked gates said fare evasion is ONLY 3%.
Metro, this is exactly why you should start collecting data more often than basing on assumptions. You guys have had 22 years to do all the data collecting to do this, yet you only waited until billions of tax dollars went down the drain to keeping the trains running by sucking taxpayer dollars to subsidize the system from freeloaders.
Metro should seriously start answering the questions that many have been making. They are all good questions that Metro purposely avoids answering because there’s really no hard data to back their claims.
First off, how much of our taxpayer dollars was wasted all these years from uncollected fares? And how are you guys going to make it up to us to give us that money back? I hear lots of companies are slashing the pays of their employees these days. How about giving us TAP riders more incentives as a way of saying “we’re sorry we’ve put faith in the honor system, it was a stupid idea.” Cheaper fares at the cost of slashing Metro employees’ pay and pensions by the same amount of uncollected fares for the next 22 years sounds like a great idea to me.
So Zev says that the loss of $4 million indicates a “failure” of the honor system…
Let’s see, 8.2 million riders a month on rail equals 98.4 million riders a year.
http://www.metro.net/news/ridership-statistics/
“$4 million” worth of $1.50 fares is 2.6 million fare-evaders.
2.6m into 98.4m is 2.6% of passengers dodging fares.
Or 97.4% who are paying.
97.4% is a failure?
(P.S. New York estimates a 1.5% fare evasion rate with their turnstiles and token clerks)
I didn’t hear anyone say that at today’s meeting.
I think it’s hard to work backwards with that number and figure out fare evasion. Remember — there are many different types of fares.
Steve Hymon
Editor, The Source
OK, lets double the amount of fare evaders, that’s still a 95% compliance rate.
Oh, well, the ridership numbers on Metro rail sure are going to get interesting.
Will the “18-22%” more tickets (see locking test report page 4 about 7th/Metro and NoHo) actually get sold or will those “18-22%” find another way to get around or just not make the trip?
Can LA Metro afford to take an 18-22% hit in ridership numbers being used to demonstrate the success of Metro Rail?
Where is this 4% figure coming from? If it’s from the staff report found here: ( http://www.metro.net/board/Items/2012/02_February/20120216EMACItem26.pdf ), you can see that it has EZ Passes as 4% but it measures Metrolink separately at 8%. That’s at least 12% which would be completely stuck if the gates were locked tomorrow. It’s also important to keep in mind this was almost entirely measured during non-peak hours at stations where Metrolink transfers would be underrepresented. I can easily imagine the same figure being significantly higher if they did a full count during peak period at Union Station.