At the tail end of its meeting this morning, the Metro Board approved the staff plan on locking gates at rail stations and converting ticket machines completely to TAP. In other words, the ticket machines will no longer issue paper tickets with the conversion set to begin in a few more months.
As the Metro staff explains, the gates WILL NOT be locked all at once. Rather, the agency will aim for first locking the gates at the Normandie station on the Purple Line subway in late summer and then subsequently lock the gates in the remainder of the subway stations over the following seven months.
As the process continues, Metro staff will continue to work with other agencies — including Metrolink — on upgrading fare media so that passengers can pass through the gates.
Here is the staff report on the issue.
John M.:
Thanks for your observations. Did you stop and ask any of these 75% if they were traveling on paper Day Passes (they still exist), EZ passes, Metrolink tickets/passes or on paper transfers from the Munis who refuse to switch to TAP because Metro still can’t figure out how to allocate the collected money to the rightful recipients?
Steve,
They share platforms, but a trip from Wilshire/Western to, for example, North Hollywood via Wilshire/Vermont involves only one shared station.
Would that mean I could go from Culver City (when it opens) to Long Beach if I change at Pico/Chick Hearn?
I walk to the end of the platform when I transfer between the Expo and Blue lines, but as someone that has ridden mass transit around the US and the world, I can’t recall ever doing something like that anywhere else. You get off the train and are on the platform that you need and are expected to leave the restricted part of the platform, TAP, and then return. Like I said, I do it, but there are quite a few people that transfer and I’ve never seen anyone else TAP when transferring between blue/expo.
I know that you’re checking, but if tapping is required for blue/expo, then there is no answer regarding a purple/red transfer that wouldn’t be ridiculous. If we’re supposed to go back to the mezzanine, that’s completely crazy. But if we don’t have to TAP between the red/purple lines then why in the world are we expected to do so on the blue/expo lines? And what about people that accidentally board an Expo train and have to double back to the blue line from Jefferson? Is that supposed to be three trips?!?
Erik G: Hello Erik. Re the 75%: All the people I observed this one day came down the escalator from Figueroa St., went straight to the gates, passed through (as the gate light flashed red), and went either down to the subway or onward to the light rail. I could observe no evidence of fare payment…
To add one last comment… I don’t think it is the tourists that are the problem. They can be forgiven for misunderstanding this dismal system. The problem is the scofflaws that “work the system” day after day after day. And I stand by my 75% estimate. When I personally confronted a law enforcement officer on the subject, she said that she’d “given her share of tickets,” but she was “off duty now, and didn’t care.”
Good news John M! You wouldn’t see any evidence of fare payment if they were traveling on a:
1) Day pass they’d already purchased
2) Monthly EZ Transit Pass
3) Metrolink Ticket
4) Muni Transfer
Only if they were purchasing a new Metro ticket would you see them go to the machine, but a good chunk of people entering from Figueroa at that station are transferring to or from Metrolink or another agency. Of course lots of people aren’t “paying” at the station, they already paid elsewhere, often only once a month. If everyone had to pay at a TVM each time they entered a station we’d have a horribly inefficient system.
If you did in fact see 75% of people not TAPing, which sounds plausible for 7th/Metro, and if you accept that the vast majority of those riders hold valid paper tickets, then that goes completely against the ridiculously low figures Metro has been trying to use to convince us locking the gates won’t have much effect, claiming there aren’t that many people who currently use paper tickets from other agencies.
I still maintain if they had purchased proper fare gates (ones that accepted paper tickets too, ones that weren’t awkward narrow turnstiles, etc.) most of this mess wouldn’t be happening right now. Such a shame.
John M.: If the person was travelling with the kinds of fare media I described above, they were perfectly legal and were not avoid paying their fare. That does not seem to be understood by all the casual observers of the system who are not regular Metro riders, who then claim that they have seen massive fare-evasion.
IT IS POSSIBLE TO RIDE METRO LEGALLY HAVING PAID ONE’S FARE WITHOUT STOPPING AT A TICKET VENDING MACHINE AND WITHOUT TAPPING A “TAP” CARD AGAINST THE TURNSTILE.
And it is Metro’s own failure to understand this reality that will lead to one of its worst public-relations disasters as the turnstile-locking plan is implemented. The highlight will be the day when the Union Station turnstiles are locked, a station that has never been tested either outside of rush hour like all the other tested stations were and certainly not during rush hour as none of the tested stations were. You would think that even though 98% of Metro staff and 100% of the Metro Board of Directors do not commute on Metro, they might have once or twice sauntered down to see the mass volume of people going through that station’s two portals during the peak.
Finally Metro is now proposing to break state law by not selling discounted fares to Seniors and the Disabled, which risks having the state revoke $300 million per year.
All this to save a Phantom “$2 million” per year in alleged, but never proven, fare evasion.
Here’s a riddle for John M. and others with similar claims:
I enter the Purple Line at Union Station
I go straight to the gates
I pass through without validating
The gate lights flash red
I go down to the subway
…and yet I am doing everything legally and am not a scofflaw or a fare-beater
What am I?
(Hint #1: thousands of others each day are the same as me.)
(Hint #2: anagram of “kilometren spangarse”)
Whoa! This whole discussion of what requires a transfer and what doesn’t is very confusing and interesting! I think it deserves it’s own article on The Source, and perhaps an updated piece of language on the Fares page on Metro’s site. As it is, when I transfer from Red to Expo at 7th Street, I have to run around looking for a place to tap and run the risk of missing my train, so I’d be very interested to know when a transfer is and is not required.
Metrolink just tweeted this:
Metrolink @Metrolink
Notice:LA Union Station Ticket machines at the East Portal are not operational at this time-Please use West Portal machines or Ticket Window
Good thing Metrolink has a staffed ticket booth at Union Station to assist in dealing with this!