So if you live in Vancouver you’re probably aware that the “free ride” of being trusted to pay your fare before passing the paid zone is over. The new system will involve fare gates that will open and close based on a new smart card system being developed by Cubic Transportation Systems and IBM Canada.
Transit users will simply tap the card on special readers to board buses or open fare gates to be installed at SkyTrain and SeaBus stations. The purpose of the fare gates is to reduce fare evasion.
In 2009, transit police issued about 24,000 tickets for fare evasion, and independent audits performed in 2004 and 2008 estimated that the annual loss from unpaid fares at less than three per cent of all trips — between $5 million and $9 million.
A total of $170 million has been allocated for the project. TransLink is contributing $100 million, with $40 million coming from the provincial government and about $30 million being contributed by the federal government for capital costs.
There are numerous logical problems and assumptions being made for this project. Assuming TransLink is losing the higher end of revenues due to fare evasion, $9 million a year, it will take 19 years just to break even on the project. And that’s also assuming that those fare evaders who are costing the system $9 million in lost revenues will now suddenly start being good citizens. Which is sort of like assuming that shoplifters would pay for merchandise just because you add a security guard at the door checking bags.
At the lower end of the estimate, $5 million, it will take TransLink 34 years for this project to break even. And while 19-34 years is certainly a long-term investment with arguable benefits at the end of it, you have to assume that the technology will be obsolete by then. Just look at any 35-year-old technology and ask yourself whether it’s still cost-efficient.
It seems a little inconsistent with TransLink’s stated goal of keeping deficits in check. Perhaps they’re operating under the misapprehension that the kind of ridership they enjoyed during the Olympics will be around to save their budget every year.
You are missing the point . . . the real reason is to keep the pond scum level of humanity off the the system, the degenerates that hassle women and urinate in the cars.
These are the morons who don’t pay nw and are likely too stupid to figure out how to use a fair card, let alone pay for one.
Excellent move Translink . . . time to take back our transit system from the low life scum that ruin it now.
Sure. But let’s not kid ourselves about this being anything but a total financial loss.
Adrian MacNair says:
Sure. But let’s not kid ourselves about this being anything but a total financial loss.
No doubt, but those turnstiles should have been installed back when the system was first built. And of course the system should have been built 20 years earlier…
Let’s also remember that it was the current Liberal gvt (under then Minister Falcon) that imposed this ‘financially sound solution’ on TransLink. Any financial loses are the result of the provincial government’s dictates, and go against what TransLink bean counters had been saying for decades: faregates don’t make sense financially!