From tomorrow the penalty fare for not having a ticket on trains increases from $10.30 to $20. It is part of Auckland Transports plans to reduce fare evasion. Here is their press release:
From this Sunday, 7 April, Auckland Transport’s Penalty Fare for anyone who boards a train without a valid ticket or a tagged on AT HOP card, will increase from $10.30 to $20.00. The Penalty Fare is managed by Auckland Transport’s train operator, Veolia Transport using on-board ticket inspection staff.
Auckland Transport’s Board Chairman, Lester Levy says, “We make no apology for this increase. Travelling on Auckland’s train services with the intention of travelling without a valid ticket or a tagged on AT HOP card, is not only theft of a service but theft from Auckland’s taxpayers and ratepayers who subsidise the service.
“Internationally penalty fares are seen as a civil debt and are used to discourage casual fare evasion and disregard for ticketing rules, the same applies in Auckland”.
Dr Levy says, “To put it simply, you must pay to travel on trains. Auckland trains operate on a pre-pay system which requires everyone to pay their way to ensure we can continue to invest in improving trains, stations and services for the benefit of Aucklanders.
“The Penalty Fare is only one of a range of measures Auckland Transport will be putting in place to deter fare evaders.
“If you have been unable to purchase a ticket for any reason that can be discussed with Veolia’s on-board staff”.
Single train tickets can be purchased from ticket machines at all stations. The other option is to use an AT HOP card. The AT HOP card can be purchased for $10 from staff on trains and at ticket offices at Britomart, Newmarket, New Lynn and Papakura train stations and loaded online.
Now I do agree with the need to target fare evaders and penalise those that don’t pay but my biggest concern is that even with the $10.30 fare, the enforcement simply isn’t happening. Of the times I have seen ticket inspectors on trains, I have yet to see one issue a penalty when a fare evader gets found out. Most of the time the evader tends to be a school kid who claims that they either don’t have any money to pay for the fare or that the machine wasn’t working (even though it was) and so the ticket inspectors let them off with a warning. A lot of them treat it as a game and laugh to their mates afterwards about the number of times they have gotten away with it. The other common trick is simply to argue with the staff for a while then just get off at the next stop, obviously with the intention of just getting on the next train and doing the same thing again.
Increasing the penalty fare isn’t likely to help with address these particular problems unless the enforcement of it is also increased at the same time. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the staff are effectively powerless to do anything about it. That will change when the MoT finally get around to updating legislation to help deal with the problem but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be a high priority for them.
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AT Hop is only going to work properly in this regard with gates at all station entrances. I know that is a long way off, but it’s how they set things up on real transport systems such as the Tube, Tokyo Metro, etc. You can get away with honour system enforcement in a culture like Switzerland. We’ll be waiting a long time for such a cultural shift to stick in NZ (more reasonable fares and a properly integrated fares might also help).
That’s so true. Even new stations like New Lynn don’t appear to be designed with gates in mind.
Yes I think that is a bigger issue than the absence of gates: The lack of consideration in the design of new stations for how gates may be needed in the future.
I agree, the fact that recently designed stations don’t include the provision to easily install gates is really stupid. I believe New Lynn has been designed for them though and is one of the ones they are considering gating.
Agreed, all of the stations need to be gated. I don’t understand why these installations are not part of the core station infrastructure.
There’s been a lot of discussion on the topic of gating stations. The general trade-off is costs (usually $2-5 million per station) versus the additional fare revenue that is raised (typically about 5-15%). This trade-off only makes sense at the busiest rail stations, where the increase in fare revenue covers the costs incurred. That’s why AT are doing what they are doing.
Over time, however, I would expect (hope!) that patronage will grow such that it becomes worthwhile to gate additional stations. But I would never expect “all” of Auckland’s stations to be gated. Not that it matters much, because you really only need a gated station at one end of a trip to be effective at preventing most fare evasion.
AT have said they are investigating installing gates at four more stations. They haven’t say which ones but we know they are doing Manukau when the MIT campus opens, they have said that they are looking at New Lynn, I suspect the new Panmure station is one of them but I’m not sure on the other one.
I would hope that it’s Papakura, but it might be tricky to gate.
How many gates would you get for 2-5 million?
Surely a gate can’t cost more than 100k, so is that 20-50 gates per station?
How can it possibly cost that much? I come from an industry not too far removed from this, and that just seems like a shafting amount.
It’s interesting the talk about gating stations. All stations on the tunnelbana and pendeltåg are gated in Stockholm, but now there is debate about removing them. It has been found that fare evasion in countries with similar cultures (Germany in particular) there is actually not more fare evasion than there is in Stockholm despite using the honour system. We rarely have fare clampdowns and inspections here and so people sneaking through the barriers after you is actually a big problem. So, having just completed a massive wholesale upgrade of all barriers to the glass doored barriers they now talk about hiring more staff to do random card checks and removing the barriers as they are seen as relatively ineffectual.
Would gates work in unmanned stations? surely there needs to be staff there to make sure people don’t simply jump over the barrier. I had thought that was why they were only in Britomart and Newmarket at the moment
I believe That several of the other stations are now permanently staffed by at least security and often ticket offices too. I have never visited an ‘indoor’ station, such as new Lynn or manukau and not seen security. I passed the panmure station development tho other day too- I had been unclear as to whether they were building the planned substantial station building now (or whether it was one of ATs distant plans), but it looks like it Is infact under construction. In that case it would probably need to be constantly staffed too.
At least with AT Hop and the resulting decrease in conductors, staff costs are probably still down despite all these manned stations
Under our system all gated stations will have to be manned, as people with paper singles will always have to show their printout to a staff member to be let through. One way to avoid that is to upgrade the singles to paper HOPs that have the same radio frequency chips inside, these are then used at the regular gates and tag posts but are only good for a single use or perhaps a day pass at the most. Several cities use this system, the paper cards do cost about a dollar a piece to produce but really we should be looking at a price differential of over a dollar for singles anyway.
However, even when single tickets can be used at gates there are still various reasons you want them manned. For example, adults travelling with young children (two bodies, one ticket) and people with wheelchairs, mobility scooters, bikes, luggage and parcels tend to have issues with fare gates closing on them. Then there is also the inevitable card and gate failures that usually require someone to let people through. And of course gate jumping, although this can be minimised with full height gates like they use in Paris.
At the end of the day, I think we really only need to gate (and man) around ten or fifteen stations to capture almost all trips at one end. We probably want to staff our busiest ten of fifteen stations anyway, and if the trains go to driver only (or even driver + TM) operation, staffing a few stations is still far more economical than staffing every train with clippies.
Other option would be an encrypted QR code printed onto the paper and have a scanner at the gate. Only requires a change to the ticket printing software, instead of purchasing expensive one-use tickets, and by having the code encrypted it avoids people figuring out how to print their own. The cost would be minimal because QR scanners that trigger a solenoid are dirt cheap while software tweaks to the ticket printing should cost next to nothing.
Agreed, this would be so much cheaper to do.
You guys are only thinking in terms of rail tickets, what about once all the buses are part of hop later this year?
What would be cheaper, modifying every gate on the rail and ferry, every tag post on the system and every single bus tag point to have a second optical scanner… or replacing the printer module on the rail ticket machines with ones that dispense paper RF tickets. Very easy just to spit out a blank and have a screen telling people to hold it to the reader, almost as easy to have it load the ticket internally.
On buses it would be as simple as the driver having a stack of paper RF blanks in their coin slot that they stick on the drivers console to load with a ticket. I assume the Thales gear on buses will have the ability to load credit onto cards, if only to do top ups on board.
It would still be cheaper to go with the QR code solution, because the ongoing OpEx will be precisely the same as now vs ongoing OpEx of printing RFID tickets on the road. Optical scanners are cheap (hand-held 2D scanners can be had for USD35/unit in bulk, as an indication). The media for doing on-the-fly RFID tags has a marginal cost per ticket that’s at least 100x higher than ordinary QR-on-paper.
Once all the buses are part of hop it isn’t a problem as the driver can check a qr ticket just as quick.
Amsterdam’ s metro has unmanned gated stations, where access can be granted by an operator that monitors the station remotely via video cameras.
Ok, but that only trades staffing the actual station with staffing a control centre operating a camera and intercom system, probably somewhat more cost effective on a less busy system such as ours though.
Given that there should be centralised video monitoring of all stations anyway…
There is technology now that works through CCTV to detect the number of people on a platform compared to tag on/tag offs – relays info to roving fare protection staff etc if large variations.
http://www.agentvi.com/21-Solutions-80-Transportation
The face detection for repeat offenders might be a bit too Stasi like though….!
Might be good for people on the tracks too. http://www.agentvi.com/movie11.html?KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=480&width=640
And for buses….
http://www.vixquestek.co.za/uploads/1/3/2/9/13296395/fare_evasion.pdf
So passenger counting stats should be pretty reliable compared to fare revenue.
Honour systems works fine here i Switzerland because …. If you get caught the inspectors have the right to ask for your nsme and address, demand the equvilent of nz$130 on the spot fine. If caught 3 times it is reported to police and you receive a court summons to explain why you are a repeat offender.
That might work in changing school kids habits!
I can’t see how honour would work in Auckland if the inspectors don’t have some right to force you to prove your identity and address so they can issue a fine.
Yes what is commonly overlooked when discussing ungated proof of purchase systems (POP) is that in the Germanic countries often pointed to as examples citizens are obliged by law to carry and present on demand an identity card. This make it a whole different paradigm for revenue control compared with countries like ours where we don’t have compulsory ID cards. For example I have read that in Melbourne something in the order of 40% of fines issued on trams are never paid. I wouldn’t use this to argue for compulsory iD cards here. Just that revenue collection systems can’t be looked at in isolation from the legal environment they operate in. Nothing special about the culture in Germany/Switzerland, just a different legal environment that makes POP easier to enforce.
The reason they are not paid in Melbourne isn’t a lack of identity, as the ticket inspectors have limited powers of arrest. If you cannot or do not prove your identity they are able to detain you until the police arrive to sort it out.
The reason many fines are not paid in Melbourne is that there is a clause that basically absolves anyone who is homeless, a refugee or of very limited means of having to pay the fine once issued, i.e. for anyone a series of fines and bad credit history isn’t an issue. There are certain serial offenders of this type that never pay, collect many fines and never pay them.
People with means have to pay otherwise they have the sherriff knocking on their door and eventually stopping them from getting finance, travelling overseas or in the worst cases, up in the dock.
“… The general trade-off is costs (usually $2-5 million per station)…”
Strewth, how come something like that is always so expensive? You could spend 500K on a flash station house and some turnstiles and pay a ticket seller 50k PA for forty years for that money!!!!
That does sound expensive. I’m thinking maybe it’s so expensive because gates weren’t planned for so there’s now additional cost involved in setting stations up for the gates.
There’s several costs involved.
1. Yes, the gates themselves are expensive because they are sophisticated pieces of equipment.
2. Gating an uncovered station costs more, because you either need to A) provide shelter for the gates or B) purchase weather-proof gates, which are considerably more expensive
3. As earlier comments have noted, stations that are gated will also often need to be manned – adding considerable operational costs.
4. The more access points the higher the costs, e.g. Grafton.
Gating stations are the perfect example of “economies of scale” in public transport. It’s something that is warranted when you have a lot of people using a station and/or very high revenue loss from fare evasion. But there’s many stations on Auckland’s network that don’t handle enough passengers to justify the costs of gating. Be selective would be my recommendation.
And progressively gate a few stations every year so that fare evaders get the impression that it’s just getting harder and harder all the time and stop bothering even trying to rort the system.
My wider point is really the constant search for the nirvana of technological solutions (automated all weather gates) to a human problem (fare evasion) sometimes blinds us to obvious solutions. If the problem is a classic catch 22 of the solution not being economic in proportion to the problem, then surely simply building a station house, putting up some fences and old-fashioned turnstiles and hiring a station master to physically sell tickets/allow people through the turnstiles is an obvious, low tech solution? Why are we so averse to creating a low tech job to provide a low tech solution? If the station house had an upstairs flat and doubled as free accomodation, then even at 500K for the building and paying someone 40k a year and allowing them to live rent free the total cost for a ten year solution is less than a million – and you get free 24×7 eyes on the platform, something I am sure would reduce vandalism and increase the perception of station security at night.
For one thing, if we expect services to run at no less than 15-minute intervals (and preferably more frequently) between 0500 and 2300 (or later) seven days a week, one person cannot fulfil the need. It’s a three-person job, realistically, so suddenly your $40k/year is $120k/year.
It’s actually not feasible to replace technology with people in this case. You missed that many stations just don’t have land available on which to build a house, or even a small flat, and the advent of electrification means it’s not just a simple matter of widening out the tracks for a hundred metres at one end of the platform and constructing something.
I know that you’re reflexively against the use of technology in place of people, but people require feeding and paying and you can’t make someone work 19 or 20 hours a day. It’s against the law, if nothing else. Technology doesn’t care if you run one train per day or a hundred.
Is there any available numbers of penalty fares issued? It seems that anecdotally the number is zero therefore 0 x $20.00 = $0.
How will the $20 fine be issued as the law does not compel passengers to hand over name and address details? I see this as a threat only, as surely if you are caught you only need to get off the train and catch the next one.
The lack of ability to detain or force evaders to hand over details is a problem. One option might be to take their photo and offer a reward for identifying them (especially those caught multiple times). If they are kids wearing uniforms then writing “wearing an XYZ School Uniform” will get the school reacting to protect their reputation.
If the evaders don’t pay then they can be sent a trespass notice.
So, if you can buy a AT HOP card on the train from staff, do you need to buy a paper ticket first? Or can you get on the train ticketless, then buy a $10 AT HOP card if you are questioned/caught without a ticket (instead of getting a $20 fine)? But then you would be traveling for free as it wouldn’t have been tagged on…?
Don’t think you can buy an AT HOP from onboard staff. Only at ticket offices is my understanding.
AT said at the last board meeting that ticket staff could now sell them directly but I haven’t seen any of them saying that yet.
well in the last sentence of the press release in this post it says “The AT HOP card can be purchased for $10 from staff on trains and at ticket offices at Britomart, Newmarket, New Lynn and Papakura train stations and loaded online.”
I don’t think we should call most of the platforms we have in Auckland ‘stations’. They are really just stops. A station implies some kind of building or facility or depot. What we have are grim, concrete, industrial style platforms with seemingly little regard for the passengers given the lack of seating and shelter provided. I think Britomart is the only one that comes close to being a real station. Even Newmarket and New Lynn are really just fancy platforms (with public toilets).
Simon
I was a student living in Germany and they have a pretty effective system to cut down on fare evasion. I know from experience 😉
The honour system is backed up by enforcement that involves a length trip back to the transport police’s offices where your time is wasted while they draw up the fine. Paying it involved physically visiting the local bank. The idea, I suspect, was to make getting caught more painful than just paying for a ticket in the first place – in time, public shame (it’s not that fun being escorted around by transport police) and cost (~$40).
They didn’t check often – I only recall being checked three or four times over a year of extensive PT usage, but when you’re busted it’s a much bigger deal. Far more effective, and cheaper, than installing expensive equipment everywhere.
They should make the transit police office based in Papakura and Swanson, you get taken wherever is furtherest!
…and (if you really wanted to take up their time) ban them from using any AT trasnport and tell them to make their own way home.
Encountered a revenue protection team today when I caught the train south from Newmarket. Several of them got on the Onehunga train, but I got off at Ellerslie so didn’t see if they were continuing out to Onehunga or were going to switch off to another service at Penrose.
Do you not have your ticket checked very often? I travel into Britomart and back every weekday from Kingsland, and I see the revenuers about twice a week. A $20 fine each time would definitely be more expensive than paying the fare.
I haven’t ridden a train for months. It was more that people have said in here that they’ve never seen a revenue protection officer before.
This hasn’t been approved by law. It’s freakking daylight robbery on auckland transports behalf. I’m sick of missing my train home because lines are too long and the machine keeps freezing.
Is that the ticket machine or the tag reader that’s freezing Paula?
Actually – the biggest problem is that the system is so flaky that you can think you have tagged on or off, and then find you haven’t, and it was the previous persons beep, or the person on the other machine, or it just didn’t pick up. When one has e a travel pass, like me, and the bus only travels within ones paid zone, to fine someone because the tag on or off failed means a fine because the system developers were too lazy to put in some basic rules based logic to manage such instances. People who are fare dodging don’t tag on OR off, they just avoid the machine completely.
I’d love to know the number and rate of complaints from people like me who are being targeted as an easy revenue channel, whilst fare dodgers continue to jump on and off deliberately avoiding the machines.