Caltrans I-5 project
Caltrans to add truck lanes to I-5 for Santa Clarita commute (Glendale News-Press)
Good news for those who dread their daily truck-filled commute on the I-5 between L.A. and Santa Clarita. New truck lanes on both the southbound and northbound I-5 will separate heavy big-rig traffic from passenger vehicles and create a quicker, safer ride for commuters. It’s a Caltrans project slated for completion in 2014.
Do honor systems on mass transit work better in smaller cities? (The Atlantic: Cities)
As Metro moves forward on a plan to lock subway gates, “The Atlantic: Cities” ponders the notion that perhaps commuters in smaller cities are more honest about paying that folks in mega-cities. What do you think?
Good news for the Westside: New bike lanes appear on Sepulveda Boulevard (StreetsBlog LA)
And the lanes on Sepulveda will provide a safe connection to the Expo Line for people living south or southwest of the station.
No strangers on the train (Santa Monica Daily Press)
Music, theater and a whole new world of L.A. culture opened up for this writer last weekend, as Expo made it’s debut.
I think that as metrorail expands and gets higher and higher ridership, all stations (both HRT and LRT) will need to have turnstiles/fare gates due to the sheer amount of people using the stations. There is only so much random checking that can be done and the more crowded the system becomes, the easier it will be to get a free ride and not be checked because of the sheer difficulty of enforcement in crush loads. And at that point any fare inspection would be slow and cumbersome for crowds of people just trying to get where they are going. Basically, the proof of payment system will only work with today’s ridership levels and even that I am starting to doubt for a few reasons.
A city where there are only 10,000 transit riders use mass transit every day with a figure of a 5% fare evasion rate means potentially, 500 riders aren’t paying for their fares. That’s pretty much controllable with random checks by law enforcement, let alone if the area covered by public transit is small.
A metropolis like Los Angeles where 350,000 transit riders take rail, a 5% fare evasion rate equates to 17,500 freeloaders per day. At that point, it is stretching the capacity of random checks by law enforcement, nor does it make sense to hire more officers to do just fare checks. It’s also becoming impractical as the system expands considering the size of area that LA Metro Rail has to cover.
Now if it becomes like New York, London, or Tokyo where majority of the people take mass transit everyday, it’s next to impossible to do random fare checks with law enforcement officers. Eventually as more people move to mass transit, especially in a big city like LA, redundant tasks like fare checks do need to get automated to a certain extent to ease the taxpayer’s burden of hiring more law enforcement officers.
Honor system doesn’t work. Every large city with an efficient mass transit system uses a distance based fare + tap in/tap out. Revamp the fare system to calculate distances, and encourage TAP card use by giving a 10% discount.
Fumbling for coins should be a relic of the past. Look at successful systems in Asia for examples of how fare collection is done.
Steve Hymon on May 1, 2012 at 3:45 PM said:
Hi there;
Unfortunately, EZ passes are not available yet on TAP.
Steve Hymon
Editor, The Source
Honor system works fine. LA Metro has never disclosed the basis for the various amounts it claims it is losing.
And the staffing of the stations will cost how much?
I note with interest that the Expo Line stations didn’t appear to have turnstiles.
@Erik G.
You lost. Get over it. And where’s your proof that the honor system works? Where’s your proof that people are honest? Where’s your proof that it’s much more cheaper to carpet bomb the entire system with police officers to do just fare checks?
The way you keep dragging this issue means that you’re no better than the people at Beverly Hills who keep dragging the Subway to the Sea issue with more useless meetings and studies.
Next up, time to reform the fare system to tap-in/tap-out distance based fares.
“Where’s your proof that people are honest?”
Right here. The evidence suggests the vast majority of people are honest. Measured fare evasion rates are very low.
http://www.metro.net/images/oig/10-AUD-05%20Rail%20Fare%20Inspections%204-15-10.pdf
Check Page 6, Results of Overview, section A. Now let’s see your proof that riders are generally dishonest enough for the system to require fare gates.
If the honor system worked, then we wouldn’t need cashiers at supermarkets.
The problem is the MILLIONS spent on TAP ought to have been spent on projects instead of the confusing and inadequate and inconvenient (when transferring to muni’s) system really has been a waste and should not have gone forwared until they had nearly every other muni and Metrolink on board for a true seamless experience.
Let’s not forget that the MTA used to crow at much MORE effective the random checks were and always told us that the it resulted in virtually no loss and created a situation that required security (old MTA police, LAPD, and now Sheriff’s deputies) to would be very visible and that while doing random checks, could spot other problems (I have seen where a random check did indeed remove a “problem” on our trains in the past. Today, MIA, and one has to wonder if that was the motivation for TAP and the change in tune from MTA now citing that fare beaters rule and MTA is losing so much money, had been, from those not paying fare. PLEASE! Which is it, MTA? It sure makes a good reason or justification to hand out MILLIONS to the company re TAP while creating problems for riders for reasons the MTA told us didn’t exist in the first place. Somebody got rich from the TAP contract, and it was NOT the MTA from fare recovery.
“If the honor system worked, then we wouldn’t need cashiers at supermarkets.”
The whole phrase “honor system” used to describe proof-of-payment is misleading. It is not the honor system. There is enforcement of fares in the proof-of-payment system.