[Richard White]

Again, I really don't care if you choose not to believe the TTC's figures (and I sure hope you aren't one of the people who obsess over "evidence-based decisions"). Fare evasion doesn't cost them much money, no "hard line" program will ever recover more than a few million dollars of revenue, and it'll have a lot of drawbacks that I already mentioned.

My apologies.. I prefer not to piss away millions of dollars without getting accurate information. Just because a study is done does not mean it cannot be fabricated.

We will have to agree to disagree but I have seen it with my own eyes. People lie and cheat their way onto the TTC. That will never change.

 

[amnesiajune]

My apologies.. I prefer not to piss away millions of dollars without getting accurate information.

And when you get information you seem to decide whether or not its accurate based on your preconceptions (commonly known as confirmation bias).

 

[Richard White]

And when you get information you seem to decide whether or not its accurate based on your preconceptions (commonly known as confirmation bias).

Need I remind you how many studies have been "altered" to suit the needs of the moment.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

My apologies.. I prefer not to piss away millions of dollars without getting accurate information. Just because a study is done does not mean it cannot be fabricated.

We will have to agree to disagree but I have seen it with my own eyes. People lie and cheat their way onto the TTC. That will never change.

And when you get information you seem to decide whether or not its accurate based on your preconceptions (commonly known as confirmation bias).

Need I remind you how many studies have been "altered" to suit the needs of the moment.

If you think a study is biased, and you have proof, that's fantastic! Please come forward with it. However, its almost always the case, even right here on UT, that when people are claiming studies are biased, they have absolutely zero backing for their claims. It's just a hunch in their mind, And the "logic" of this hunch comes down to "I don't agree with the results, therefore the study is biased". This does not lend itself to productive discussion.

If you think a study is biased and if you have proof of it, please come forward with it. Transportation planning in Toronto is wonderful in that all of our major transpiration initiatives have hundreds, if not thousands of pages of supporting documents. If Staff have been cooking the books, go through the documents and point out the flaws to us. The studies and reports are written in plain English, and anyone frequenting the Transportation & Infrastructure forum should easily be able to understand them if they care. Some people, such as Steve Munro, have even made a career (or extreme hobby) of exposing the flaws of these reports.

That said, personally, I've found that when I've had doubts about the validity of a report, those concerns are typically resolved once I take the time to property understand the reports. For example, I was initially very critical of the decision not to grade separate any of Crosstown West crossings, but once I carefully went through the Environmental Assessment, not only were my concerns of bias erased, but I even came to agree that the lack of grade separations was the best option from a cost/benefit standpoint.

I'll close by saying that just because you and the report have an interpretive disagreement (that is, a disagreement on what is the best method of solving a problem), it does not mean the report was necessarily biased. Planning is a very subjective thing, and it is totally possible for two groups to come come up with two different, but completely valid solutions on how to solve an issue.

 

[Sandpit]

If you think a study is biased, and you have proof, that's fantastic! Please come forward with it. However, its almost always the case, even right here on UT, that when people are claiming studies are biased, they have absolutely zero backing for their claims. It's just a hunch in their mind, And the "logic" of this hunch comes down to "I don't agree with the results, therefore the study is biased". This does not lend itself to productive discussion.

If you think a study is biased and if you have proof of it, please come forward with it. Transportation planning in Toronto is wonderful in that all of our major transpiration initiatives have hundreds, if not thousands of pages of supporting documents. If Staff have been cooking the books, go through the documents and point out the flaws to us. The studies and reports are written in plain English, and anyone frequenting the Transportation & Infrastructure forum should easily be able to understand them if they care. Some people, such as Steve Munro, have even made a career (or extreme hobby) of exposing the flaws of these reports.

That said, personally, I've found that when I've had doubts about the validity of a report, those concerns are typically resolved once I take the time to property understand the reports. For example, I was initially very critical of the decision not to grade separate any of Crosstown West crossings, but once I carefully went through the Environmental Assessment, not only were my concerns of bias erased, but I even came to agree that the lack of grade separations was the best option from a cost/benefit standpoint.

I'll close by saying that just because you and the report have an interpretive disagreement (that is, a disagreement on what is the best method of solving a problem), it does not mean the report was necessarily biased. Planning is a very subjective thing, and it is totally possible for two groups to come come up with two different, but completely valid solutions on how to solve an issue.

Well we live in the Era of Alternative Facts, where any result you don't agree with can be dismissed as "fake news" because we are going to MAKE TORONTO GREAT AGAIN!

But back to fare evasion. I agree with amnesiajune that fare evasion isn't as big an issue as some people make it to be. It isn't even necessarily that fare evasion costs a lot in lost revenue. Rather, it's that the TTC's focus should be on providing quality transit service rather than on maximizing revenue. "A hard line on fare evasion" is going to put the TTC into a "for profit" mentality that you see a lot in places like universities, where a non-profit group starts acting a lot like a for-profit group, only instead of "maximize profit" it's "maximize revenue". So really the only reason to care about fare evasion is the "fairness" issue, which admittedly does matter a lot if you're the "law and order" type. If the TTC really wants more revenue, it should look to non-fare sources like real estate development.

 

[nfitz]

The free trips for kids is stupid... they need to be charged something but I think it was a PR move to avoid problems.

It's frigging brilliant. Ridership is way up; this will go a long way to creating future riders. The ticket for 6-12 was only 60¢. The revenue was barely worth mentioning, and the distribution costs to put the tickets in every outlet, and count them in the firebox ate much of that. So a few kids get on the streetcar to go 4 stops at lunchtime to the mall. Who cares. It doesn't even add to the peak point locations closer to downtown.

You won't believe how many times I saw people plop their "baby" (think 5 year old) into a stroller just so they can avoid paying a fare, when they get caught they claim he is under the age where he needed to pay a fare.

I'm not aware of a system in Ontario that still charges for under 6 years olds.

 

[amnesiajune]

I agree with amnesiajune that fare evasion isn't as big an issue as some people make it to be. It isn't even necessarily that fare evasion costs a lot in lost revenue. Rather, it's that the TTC's focus should be on providing quality transit service rather than on maximizing revenue. "A hard line on fare evasion" is going to put the TTC into a "for profit" mentality that you see a lot in places like universities, where a non-profit group starts acting a lot like a for-profit group, only instead of "maximize profit" it's "maximize revenue".

On top of that, a "hard line" isn't actually going to help revenue. It'll inevitably cost at least the few million dollars of extra revenue that it raises. No transit system can collect 100% of its fares, and the very few people who don't pay their fares wouldn't be paying a fare regardless of how harsh the punishment is - in the extreme case they just wouldn't take transit at all.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

It's frigging brilliant. Ridership is way up; this will go a long way to creating future riders. The ticket for 6-12 was only 60¢. The revenue was barely worth mentioning, and the distribution costs to put the tickets in every outlet, and count them in the firebox ate much of that. So a few kids get on the streetcar to go 4 stops at lunchtime to the mall. Who cares. It doesn't even add to the peak point locations closer to downtown.

On principle, I disagree with free rides for children, only because not all children are in low-income families. I'm not particularly interested in subsidizing the trips of a kid from a family making $200k annually.

However I do see where you come from when you say that free rides for kids can help create future riders. This isn't to different from how corporations will market products and services for children. I'd be curious to find out objectively if transit usage in childhood results in higher transit usage in adults, perhaps with auxiliary benefits such as lower obesity. If it does indeed result in higher adulthood transit ridership, then providing free rides to children might turn out to provide a fantastic return on the investment over the decades,

Of course, the TTC's capacity troubles do bring into question if its worth promoting transit when the service is physically full.

 

[amnesiajune]

On principle, I disagree with free rides for children, only because not all children are in low-income families. I'm not particularly interested in subsidizing the trips of a kid from a family making $200k annually.

However I do see where you come from when you say that free rides for kids can help create future riders. This isn't to different from how corporations will market products and services for children. I'd be curious to find out objectively if transit usage in childhood results in higher transit usage in adults, perhaps with auxiliary benefits such as lower obesity. If it does indeed result in higher adulthood transit ridership, then providing free rides to children might turn out to provide a fantastic return on the investment over the decades,

Of course, the TTC's capacity troubles do bring into question if it's worth promoting transit when the service is physically full.

It's very little money. In 2014 (the last full year with child fares) the TTC made about $7 million from them, and very few of those kids are from wealthy families. Since then, kids' ridership has doubled and practically none of that is going downtown during rush hour (for the most part it's weekend ridership when capacity isn't much of a concern).

You guys are overthinking this. It's not about marketing or "future riders" or anything like that. It's just a way to help people that costs hardly anything. When the child fare is 75 cents, a significant percentage is just going to the cost of fare collection. So even though the TTC is making $7 million, they're likely only making $5 million or so when you take off the cost of printing, distributing, selling, collecting and getting rid of all those child tickets. That's nothing to them but it's a significant cost to a low-income family that depends on transit and can barely make ends meet.

 

[nfitz]

Do you really think operators report EVERY instance of fare evasion or that people will admit to it? If anyone does a study to see if someone does something illegal chances are you will get a pretty convincing response saying it does not happen.

Most if not all bus operators let it slide and don't report it. If they report it they will only have paperwork to do later. It is not worth all the paperwork and reporting when it happens on a daily basis. THAT is why it does not show up in the studies.

What does what operators report have to do with anything? It's not like this would be a source of a study.

We will have to agree to disagree but I have seen it with my own eyes. People lie and cheat their way onto the TTC. That will never change.

No one has not said it doesn't exist. The debate is it pretty normal and tough to reduce at 2%. Or is it higher at 4%?

With inspectors randomly in streetcars they often don't find anything. Some like to claim everyone boarding at the back is not paying. But that's clearly not the case when you watch everyone pull out a transfer or pass. Sometimes they haul one or two people off; did that to me once, and then I finally found my pass hidden in the waller; so even that is conclusive.

 

[Johnny Au]

School boards do like free fares for children; it makes managing field trips much easier (and means less need for school buses for field trips if both the school and the destination have excellent TTC access).

 

[nfitz]

School boards do like free fares for children; it makes managing field trips much easier (and means less need for school buses for field trips if both the school and the destination have excellent TTC access).

Parents like it to. The endless requests for bus tickets, and then the teachers trying to track bus tickets for 30 children, etc. What a nightmare. And always having wads of tickets in your pocket.

That will likely not work as planned. My father has been an bus operator out of Birchmount and Eglinton for 30 years this January. There are certain routes like McCowan which run through high density, low income areas that are well known by operators for passengers being "unable to pay a full fare". Essentially there are repeat offenders who attempt to abuse the system by using invalid (old, wrong direction or route, etc) transfers or by claiming they can't pay a full fare for whatever reason.

Supplementing social assistance recipients to help with transit will not accomplish anything. They will still try to use their 3 week old transfer from another route as a metropass and still not pay a full fare.

Without getting racist, other routes such as Kennedy and Markham Road experience similar issues wherein older Asian passengers attempt to evade paying a fare by using an invalid transfer.

That is racist. How can you possibly say something like this?

I've seen it to; on the Sherbourne bus in particular, and on the 506 before it went POP. Most of the offenders were not Asian.

Not surprisingly the demographics match the demographics of the area. Toronto as a whole is about 35% Asian in the 2016 census. Some areas are much higher. To suggest that fare cheating is a racial issue is a far worse thing than cheating on a fare; I'm shocked that you'd come here and spout such extreme stuff.

 

[Richard White]

Parents like it to. The endless requests for bus tickets, and then the teachers trying to track bus tickets for 30 children, etc. What a nightmare. And always having wads of tickets in your pocket.

That is racist. How can you possibly say something like this?

I've seen it to; on the Sherbourne bus in particular, and on the 506 before it went POP. Most of the offenders were not Asian.

Not surprisingly the demographics match the demographics of the area. Toronto as a whole is about 35% Asian in the 2016 census. Some areas are much higher. To suggest that fare cheating is a racial issue is a far worse thing than cheating on a fare; I'm shocked that you'd come here and spout such extreme stuff.

I only spout what I've seen countless times with my own eyes. If I get banned for posting what I encounter but so be it. I refuse to pretend it does not exist simply because someone might get a tad butthurt.

I await and gladly accept my ban from the forums for being brutally honest and saying things people refuse to acknowledge.

 

[nfitz]

I only spout what I've seen countless times with my own eyes. If I get banned for posting what I encounter but so be it. I refuse to pretend it does not exist simply because someone might get a tad butthurt.

I await and gladly accept my ban from the forums for being brutally honest and saying things people refuse to acknowledge.

Bull.

You are clearly racist. The individuals I see doing this are often white; the same colour as most of the homeless you see on Sherbourne. It's a function of demographics, not of race.

We need to deport racists out of our great nation.

 

[Juan_Lennon416]

Bull.

You are clearly racist. The individuals I see doing this are often white; the same colour as most of the homeless you see on Sherbourne. It's a function of demographics, not of race.

We need to deport racists out of our great nation.

You have said a few racist things on UT in the past too. Please do not get into a fight about race or ethnicity on this thread!