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ChineseMetro Reconsiders Proof-of-Payment
Image of New York City Transit turnstiles courtesy Go Clipless.
Busy week in the news for Metro. Today’s LA Times reports that Metro is considering adding fare barriers and staffing stations.
There is growing discussion among MTA board members and other local officials about a major overhaul of how the stations work — adding barriers and possibly gate attendants as well as more security officers. Some officials say the mercury incident proves that the agency’s reliance on closed-circuit cameras to show what’s going on underground is inadequate.
I’m not quite sure what’s going on, but what the Pershing Square issue indicated to me is that the folks at Central aren’t properly trained as to how to respond. I’m not quite sure how this move would improve that (in fact, I think it would harm preparedness), and here’s why (not necessarily the opinion of other contributors here):
Other systems (Boston and New York) rely on their own in-house police force. New York’s is… ehh… ok. Not bad by any measure. Boston’s, however, makes the Keystone Kops proud. Poorly trained, underpaid, the MBTA scrapes the bottom of the barrel for its Transit Police and Inspectors. I have never had a good interaction with an Inspector; they’re all poorly trained and on a power high; I’ve even had a friend threatened by one.
In contrast, LA’s system, while you visibly see less people, is probably no less safe (I’d love to see some numbers on this, but I’m not feeling like looking this up). Instead of being staffed by poorly trained “police” who are only working there because they washed out of the local academy, the County Sheriff’s Deputies are real security personnel with a real power to really arrest people. They can run a tighter ship with fewer staff.
I’d hate to see LA give up its PoP system, as this is really a time-saving measure for pass-holders. One thing LA again does right is have artificially low prices for passes, compared to single fares, which means more people buy day or monthly passes rather than fiddling with single fares. Sure, there’s fare evasion, but no barrier system is perfect. To see a (lengthy) critique of Boston’s, check out Charlie on the MBTA’s blog. In short, it doesn’t work. The gates look high tech, but every day you watch people walk through the gates in a row of 10, a veritable fare-evasion conga line. No fare collection system is perfect, there will always be evasion, but I haven’t yet seen a solid reason why LA’s system doesn’t work. Let’s not let security theatre get in the way of this.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Fare evasion is lowest on the subway, the escape route is much more challenging than at a light rail station, and many riders are pass users. I just don’t get why this is an issue. This seems like one of those speculative conventional wisdom things that is completely off base and drifting into urban mythology. Basic research demonstrates how costly fare gates are. Why should taxpayers have to spend $18.52 just to collect $1? That was the estimated ratio of cost to additional fares collected in a relatively recent study done by Maryland MTA for the Baltimore rail system. The former SCRTD decided in December 1986 not to spend money on gates for well researched and prudent financial reasons - I’ve read the report. The transit industry is moving away from gating and using technology for proof of payment instead. I’d rather have personnel and cameras for safety and security. Gates are one nasty hazard in a real emergency, I’d rather not be crushed to death or die of smoke inhalation trying to get out. After 9/11, the Straphangers started lobbying NY MTA to get rid of their gates. They put in a few “emergency exit” doors instead. No thanks.
6000 fare evaders times $3 = $18,000.
Good luck finding one turnstyle for that much. And make sure it will not impede a stampede ala the Coconut Grove fire. And then you have to tunnel a connection from the Red to the Gold Line at Union Station to ensure that day-pass holders can transfer.
It’s a nice knee-jerk rection Chicago Tribune, but it makes zero sense.
Matt: I still remember being lost in the horrible tiled maze that is Penn Central between the IRT and IND in NYC. Those iron maidens are so unsafe, and they continue to be a huge hazard in NY’s system.
Erik: Yup, hardly seems like they’re going to get meaningful returns on this.
Right on. This smells like something cooked up by lobbyists working for the massive new post 9/11 security industy that is currently being high-octane fueled by Bush Administration grant money. I have yet to see any research that shows how floor to ceiling and side to side fare collection gates improve safety or security. Would it stop a paroled male hooker from pouring mercury on a station floor? No, absolutely not. If the security industry were truly serious about rider safety in case of chemical, biological or incendiary device attacks in subways, wouldn’t removing all barriers to evacuation be in our best interest? Locking us in during the inevitable stampede that such an event would cause seems like an unbelievably BAD idea.
The whole logic behind this is pure Balderdash.
Here’s a simple way to correct the problem and eliminate that embarrassment of the Mercury spill.
Instead of having the majority of the Sheriff’s patrolling 7th/Metro and Union Station have them at Pershing Square, Wilshire/Vermont, Hollywood/Highland, you know the stations with all the foot traffic.
I’m surprised that they’re aren’t any patrols at the Pershing Sq. station. That station is as busy as 7th/Metro.
And then for all of the stations including the at-grade/elevated Light Rail lines, a simple thing like they have at College campuses by having a blue light at the top of all of the Intercoms would help aid passengers in case of an emergency or even wiring cell phone access in the tunnels would be cheaper and more convenient because if there are more than a few people calling 911 at one time usually that’s a clear sign that an emergency has just occurred.
But the biggest flaw isn’t not having the security booths, but this county/city not having enough Public safety officers (sheriffs and Police) available in times of a potential crisis and the lack of communication between Metro and Sheriffs.
That will be the difference between maybe a couple of people hurt in an incident and 500 people killed because of lack of officers and communication
crazy future pandemonium explosion murder death killz aside, i still disagree with the turnstiles. it has nothing to do with quick escape or fear of getting trampled and the rest of that, i just think LA metro has to move past the goal of becoming the same as the legacy systems. which we aren’t anywhere near to being anyway. as we all know, LA is a whole different set up than chicago or nyc and therefore metro has to go about its plans in a different way. granted, we’re decades behind where we should be (we could go on for hours about why we don’t already have a subway under wilshire to the sea) but with building in the present we have the advantage of going a different and possibly better route than the legacies went. one such issue being turnstiles, or the lack there of. however, for safety what really matters most is actually having a presence of security on the trains. and yes, not just at union station and 7th/metro. and as for fare evasion, when the tap cards do finally get implemented, having even more officials patrolling with some sort of device to prove or disprove where and when you “tapped” your card would slow fare evasion more than any honor system would ever do and probably no less than the turnstiles if what aaron says is true. none of them are full proof.
Tyke: If you mean my much earlier comments about TAP and Boston PoP when you say “if what Aaron says is true,” I was subsequently schooled at Charlie on the MBTA and learned that LA picked the system OTHER cities use, including Chicago (and maybe New York, don’t hold me to that!), not Boston’s heavily flawed system.
At the moment I can’t claim any meaningful knowledge as to what kind of proof the TAP cards will produce.
But Boston came about its PoP system by accident, and my prediction was right; in recent weeks they largely abandoned it by stationing additional employees at the rear doors of streetcars to check fares at rush hours.
sorry aaron, i didn’t mean to impart doubt by any means, possibly worded that wrong is all. i agree with the rest of wut you said though, if its done poorly with waste of space employees it’ll just be a failure.
No apologies necessary; I realized after posting that I probably replied to the wrong thing and was going too far back, but any attempt at clarification would’ve made things more confusing ;p. You didn’t word wrong, I read wrong.
Forget it!
I will be attending MTA meetings to FORCEFULLY oppose construction of a barrier system.
However, I will be supporting permanently stationed guards at each stop on the Red Line. 1 guard per station, per shift, whenever the train is running. The guard will not have a little booth to sit in and sip coffee. They will be expected to be WALKING from platform to mezzanine to street entrance THROUGHOUT their shift. This would mean about three officers per day per station, probably about 60-70 officers total including weekends and substitutes for the whole Red and Purple lines. Much cheaper than the $50 million mentioned to build barriers, AND, would give “eyes and ears” in the stations at ALL TIMES.
When and where scott cuz i’m in complete agreement. not to mention it’ll create some jobs for more people which is always a good thing… even if some of those jobs are preventive maintenance of escalators that are contantly broke down. (tee hee)
Two questions:
1. What would the presence of turnstile have done to prevent an incident like the mercury spill?
2. Why are turnstiles needed in order to have a security presence at each station?
Methinks MTA is trying to their failure to respond to the call of the person who accidently spilled the Mercury on the lack of turnstiles. And, by the way, why haven’t they arrested the person who illegally placed the mercury in a trash recepticle for any scavenger to pick up?
It’s your typical post-911 over-reaction to an under-reaction. The mercury spill story happened a month or so before it got picked up locally (and then nationally) and became a “big” story. No one even really batted an eye for a month to the incident or to MTA’s snails pace reaction to the incident. If you do a Google News search for mercury spill, all the articles are from January 19th and onward, even though the even happened on Dec 22. LA times story on the incident on Dec 24 is less than 100 words. Then, a month later… slow news day I suppose… “any potential terrorist plots we may have missed?”, asks the news media. A-HA! The rest is history.
Merritt: My guess is that there’s folks over at MTA who did want turnstiles (like every organization, not everybody agrees with everything), and they started talking “well, if we’re going to increase security, let’s do this too” and all of a sudden we were talking about solving a different problem ;p. It was probably also what happens when an institution thinks it has to respond in some broad, sweeping way when in reality tweaking (tweaking: more deputies) will get you an acceptable result.