TTC Contemplates Fare Evasion
At its meeting of July 15, the TTC’s Audit & Risk Management Committee considered a staff report on the efforts underway and proposed to deal with the problem of fare evasion. This report, with amended recommendations, goes to the full TTC Board on July 17.
The debate video goes on for nearly three hours, and it revealed some troubling issues with the ARMC:
There is an overwhelming emphasis on recovering “lost” revenue with little sense of what target might actually be achieved, or the cost of reaching that level. At least one member of the committee, a Commissioner since early 2021, does not know how the “Fair Pass” program for low income riders works. In response to a question about how the Two Hour Transfer works, something any Board member or transit rider should know, management provided incorrect information about riding past the two hour line. In turn, that interpretation appeared to justify actions by Fare Inspectors that violate TTC policy. There was no acknowledgement that the TTC Board, when it acquired vehicles with multiple entrances (including articulated buses and streetcars) and implemented Proof of Payment (aka POP), was quite aware of the tradeoff between vehicle utilization, service efficiency, labour costs and potential fare evasion. Some Commissioners act as if they just discovered this problem. It was quite clear that some Board members have little sense of the dynamics of passenger movements on TTC vehicles, notably problems with congestion at the front of buses due to baby carriages, shopping carts and other impediments, and the need for centre door loading simply to allow riders onto vehicles. There was also no acknowledgement that some riders do not tap immediately on entry because they do not have their card at hand, but do so after they have boarded, and not necessarily at the location where they entered. Discussions about ways to increase payment rates through constrained entry and monitoring were based on a faulty view of actual passenger behaviour.Overall, the level of day-to-day knowledge of the transit experience was poor, and management was not particularly helpful in correcting assumptions made by Board members.
The report contains a lot of detail, and this obscures what might be useful work under a flood of activities that are shown as already completed. The table below shows almost 50 separate actions of which the majority are implemented (blue) or in progress (green). If they had any effect, this has yet to show up in a major bump from recovered fare revenue.
The basic problem is that some riders will habitually evade payment, and this will only be changed by practices that reduce opportunity or substantially deter their behaviour. This requires changes to passenger flow and enforcement regimes, but runs headlong into effects on system speed and capacity and consequences for occasional non-payers.
This list is somewhat different from the set of key factors from an industry report (TTC is a member of COMET).
Past studies of fare evasion and estimates of the problem scope appear in two tables. The evasion rate is highest on the streetcar system because of all-door loading, but the dollar losses are highest on the much larger bus network.
Note that there is no estimate of the revenue loss from walk-ins at subway bus and streetcar loops. When asked, staff replied that this is about $9 million, but it is unclear what the basis is for this number. “Partial fare” refers to riders who underpay their cash fare.
One issue revealing a fundamental misunderstanding of fare inspection is the low ratio of tickets issued per day per inspector. This implies that inspectors have no effect, and that their “job” is to issue tickets. That is completely wrong-headed. The idea is to deter non-payment by their presence or the probability that inspection will appear during a trip.
A related problem is the number of inspectors, currently under 100, and the locations they are deployed. How many inspectors would be required to give a pervasive presence on the system, and at what cost versus improved revenue? There are currently 99 fare inspectors of whom about 86 are active. The full complement is not in the field because a recertification program is underway.
A catch-22 in deployment is that for some high-volume locations such as transfer points in stations, a team that is busy issuing tickets cannot also scan the flood of passengers for non-payment. More inspectors per location are needed.
The TTC as an organization seems unable to make up it mind on just what function and powers Fare Inspectors should have. A common concern is that they have no power to compel people to provide identification or pay their fare. However, past experience using Special Constable powers has been poor with accusations of selective enforcement and excessive use of force. Should Inspectors be friendly representatives of the transit system helping riders in a variety of ways, or should they convey no-nonsense strength and a singular purpose.
Multiple door loading is essential to the use of vehicles with more than two doors (articulated buses and streetcars), and this trade off was understood by the TTC when they acquired these vehicles. Vehicle capacity can only be fully exploited, with associated improvement in the driver to passenger ratio, if the full length of the vehicle is available to riders. Over many years, with the move from high floor to low floor vehicles, the increase of baby carriages, shopping buggies and mobility devices can clog the front part of buses.
Without all door loading, stop service times will rise substantially, and route capacity will drop. Will the TTC run more service? Not very likely.
In a classic example of confusing coincidence with causality, Committee Chair Diane Saxe observed that the majority of disruptive customers don’t pay a fare. From this she jumped to the conclusion that these riders are a potential source of revenue. No. Many who do not pay behave just like any other riders. Indeed the last thing responders need to do with an ill-behaved rider is to go after a fare when the real need is to protect other riders, or to protect someone from their own actions such as walking at track level.
Commissioner Jagdeo, who spent part of the meeting apparently dozing in full view on the meeting video, admitted that he does not know how the Fair Pass program works. This City program offers reduced fares to low income riders, but is difficult for some to access and of no benefit to riders who already quality for a reduced fare like seniors.
Many stations have problems with people walking in off of the street unchallenged. It is common to see this occur even when TTC personnel (staff or contract) are present because fare enforcement is not their job. Indeed, over the years TTC has attempted to reduce potential employee assaults by placing them out of harm’s way with barriers and changing the fare system to eliminate complex disputes such as whether a transfer is still valid. The recent increase in staff and security on the system is not intended for fare inspection, but at overall passenger reassurance and monitoring of all parts of stations, not only potential fare evasion locations.
The Station Transformation program shifts the Collectors out of their booths and is intended to shift them more to a general role for rider assistance and station management. Leaving aside how successful this has actually been, the scheme falls apart if they are redeployed as monitors for fare evasion at entrances.
Legacy fares (the remaining tokens and tickets in circulation) and cash are seen as impediments to locking down entrances because provision is made for entry via “crash gates” with an honour system of dropping fares in the farebox at a collector’s booth. There is also the matter of cash underpayment, and of the lack of machine readable fare receipts/transfers. The “solution”? Get rid of these fares except on surface vehicles, and install new fareboxes capable of counting the fare and issuing receipts. Anyone who has dealt with fare machines on streetcars know how time consuming this can be. Again, the question is what new cost this would represent versus the revenue gained especially for those who simply don’t pay.
Commissioner Osborne floated the idea of getting a revenue per passenger number, looking at riders from a business analysis point of view. This idea has been around for a long time, but it runs aground on the fact that trips have segments and the revenue per segment (or “boarding”) is influenced by many factors. The other side of that coin is the cost per boarding, and this varies immensely particularly depending on route length. Long routes have longer trips, and so a rider consumes more service for their fare. Fare policy has moved over the years to charging on a bulk basis for transit use all the way from monthly passes down to the two-hour transfer. Asking for revenue per ride betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of this evolution.
Another issue is the question of where revenue from fines goes. Today it flows to the City’s Court Services as a matter of City policy (this applies to any City agency), but some Board members would like to see this revenue come to the TTC to offset the cost of enforcement. This could have unintended consequences such as the implication that ticketing is a revenue stream and should be encouraged. Quotas for issuing tickets would not be far behind.
One option raised at the meeting is to have an “administrative fee” charged on the spot for non-payment rather than issuing a ticket for the offense. It is not clear how this fee would be collected from a rider who does not have a Presto card, or whose card does not have adequate funds. This would especially be a problem for graduated “fees” which require history of past behavior.
Some Commissioners advocated targets for improved revenue as an indication that enforcement activities are working. How this would be tracked separately from other improvements, notably ridership recovery, is hard to explain.
A big problem lies in the absence of fare enforcement on the bus network, and plans to expand enforcement are not proceeding quickly. Part of this, of course, is a budget issue, and one must ask whether it is more important to have more inspectors or to have more service. Buses are notoriously difficult to navigate when they are full, and it is unclear how fare inspectors would actually operate in cramped quarters.
The largest group of “opportunistic” fare evaders are students, although the lost revenue per rider is lower thanks to their discount. How the TTC would handle inspections, as opposed to simply challenging each rider as they board to tap on, is unclear, not to mention the problem of challenging students to prove they are younger than the 12-year “child” cutoff.
Commissioner Osborne asked if there could be a detection mechanism so that someone boarding would be challenged by a message. Commissioner Jagdeo asked if there could be some sort of sound when someone does not tap.
Again this betrays a lack of knowledge of how riders actually behave. Some do not tap immediately on boarding because they do not have their cards at hand, but rather board and then tap, possibly at another location. Some riders legitimately board without paying including children and those who will move to a fare machine elsewhere in the vehicle.
Josh Colle, the newly minted head of Customer Service, made a passing remark about tracking riders via their digital devices. This is the narrow Metrolinx-type view of a typical rider that everyone has a trackable smart phone. The idea raises privacy issues, not to mention the problem of associating individual taps with specific riders and their devices.
A deputant at the meeting raises the issue of a forced re-tap within a paid area triggering an extra fare charge because the two-hour transfer window had passed. Once passengers are in a paid area — on a vehicle or within the subway system — their fare does not expire.
Commissioner Saxe, not knowing how the two-hour transfer works, asked for an explanation. Management — incorrectly — stated that there was a 20 minute grace period after which a rider would be deemed not to have a valid fare. This directly contradicts TTC policy as shown on their own website.
From TTC Two Hour Transfer on PrestoAt the end of a lengthy meeting, the Audit Committee amended staff recommendations to include a status update report in Q1 2025, and a collection of other measures shown below.
The Audit & Risk Management Committee can provide a useful function in oversight for the transit system and in challenging management to account for their actions. They are hobbled by their lack of knowledge about and familiarity with the transit system and how it actually works. This might be excusable in a rookie member, but those who have sat on the TTC Board for some time should do much better. It is time for some housecleaning.
