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ChineseDeconstructing Fare Gates
Photo courtesy of redpopaccidents.
Recently on MetroRiderLA we discussed the fare gates to come on most Metro Rail stations in the near future, as well as the TAP Card’s role in enabling fare gates.
The Metro Board, despite plenty of criticism from fellow Board member Richard Katz and testimony from transportation expert Richard Stanger, have continued to pursue their gating strategy, and have responded to some of the criticism regarding fare gates. They came up with a presentation to be shown to the Metro Board today responding to some of the criticisms. Here we deconstruct some of the myths that Metro staff uses to justify fare gates.
Statement: Gating Improves Public Safety
The justification is that “large crowds rushing train platforms pose a public safety hazard.” In situations where there are large crowds, Metro staff routinely staffs the platforms and meters entry. You see this at rail station openings, at the Rose Parade, and where there are protests in Hollywood. While gating may provide the metering into the station, it also constricts flow out of the station in the event of a emergency.
While the Metro system is getting more used every day, it is not at the level of being “congested.” It should be noted that, in addition to the Red Line, where there are legitimate passenger flow concerns, that gating is being contemplated on the Green Line, Blue Line, and Gold Line as well, where there are none of the inbound surges alleged. (The real problem on the Blue and the Gold is the outbound surges at the Downtown ends and how a station handles that.) Indeed, virtually no light rail systems in North America use gated entry.
Statement: Gating Improves Security.
Staff claims that gating will correlate to a reduction in criminal activity, claiming that “offenders stopped for fare evasion are wanted on warrants for serious crimes.” Unfortunately, Metro staff anticipates cutbacks of fare inspectors as a result of gating. Thus, fare evaders who jump the gates will never be caught. In addition, it is unikely that a fare would deter graffiti on the rail system. After all, bus riders pay drivers fare too, and there’s still plenty of graffiti and scratchitti on the buses.
“Jumping the turnstiles… means the offender must also jump out.” Semantically,all they have to do is push the emergency exit bar at the station. On a broader scope,only the Red Line will be fully gate controlled. The light rail system will still have plenty of open access stations where passengers can come and go as they please, with fewer fare inspectors to boot. CCTV cameras are of minimal use of the amount of data captured is huge and the individuals mostly anonymous. After all, cameras have been on buses now for over a decade and while graffiti and scratchitti are down from their peaks, there’s still plenty out there.
“Future homeland security devices” can work just as easily without gates, as long as individuals are forced to walk through the devices. This could be done with the crowd barriers that you see at the airport.
Security on trains is likely to be reduced as Metro staff assumes the gates will keep out the riff-raff, and as “roving station agents” are called to deal with the problems with individual fare gates, and not riding the system. The light rail stations that are ungated will be well known to criminals and they will just get on and off the trains at those location, bypassing all security.
Statement: Gates accomodate cash riders.
According to staff, cash riders would purchase paper smart cards similar to MARTA. The problem is that these paper cards cost money. MARTA charges 50 cents for a limited use card and $5.00 for a longer life plastic card. This could deter the occasional rider. In addition, this would be a fare increase and as such would require a public hearing if any fee were to be imposed.
In addition, what happens if there is a technical problem with the card? Since the plan has “roving station agents”, what will a passenger do? Stand there for up to half an hour while a roving station agent is dispatched, gets on the next train (or into their car), and clears the jam? Or will Rail Operations staff just buzz people through based on how honest they look over the video monitor?
Statement: There are significant added risks for the contractor for any “stop work”.
That is why you want to be careful and consider all the impacts before embarking on gating.
Statement: Metro staff have been in discussion with Metrolink.
The Metrolink Board (the majority of whom are not in Los Angeles County) is very concerned about the impact it will have on their passengers, especially since a majority of Metrolink riders would not be affected by gating (since they take bus shuttles, walk to their destination or get off at locations other than Union Station). In fact, the Metrolink Board has become concerned about the rapid pace that Metro is moving toward this project and directed its chairman and CEO to come to the Metro Board on February 28 to urge that they slow down the runaway train. Metrolink prepared a comprehensive document was prepared analyzing the impact on gating and contemplated that Metrolink would break the existing transfer agreement and stop giving free transfers if the gating system was implemented.
Justifiably so, riders and other transit agencies are concerned about the speed that Metro is moving towards gating. Let’s slow this down and think of the issues before wasting millions of rider and taxpayer money.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Ugh. I really hope someone gets accurate figures on the costs of faregates. MTA is going by what appear to be totally lowball estimates.
again it still does not address patrons with INTER-AGENCY TRANSFERS
(Iie a inter-agency transfer from Santa monica) how will those
passengrs get into the gates?
A great write up and deconstruction….too bad no one who could institute proper change and consideration will read this.
I just wish Metro would be honest about their reasoning behind fare gates. As you noted, security, public safety, fare recovery, etc. are all a joke! It doesn’t take a genius to see that. But anyone who has used TAP will instantly realize that, on the rail lines, it’s absolutely pointless without gates. I think a cheaper option than gates is to send TAP back to the drawing board and figure out how to make it functional on rail lines without gating.
PLEASE, everyone who cares about this issue and is able to, come to the Metro Board of Directors meeting next Thursday the 28th, 9:30am at the Metro headquarters building adjacent to Union Station, and bring these points up during public comment!
Richard Katz and I can’t block this alone!
I believe the intention is that (once implemented system wide), that TAP would be able to handle that.
For monthly pass holders, TAP without fare gates isn’t very useful (although it can still be used, but it does seem pointless except for Metro’s statistical purposes). For people who pay per fare, TAP can still be useful, in that instead of having to stop at a ticket machine and buy a ticket, you can just stop by a TAP machine and TAP your card. It would work best if they implemented better TAP readers than they have now, perhaps with a taller red/green light indicating a successful read/payment, and nicer screens that are easier to read if there is an issue of some kind.
Why not simply equip fare checkers with scanners, like they use in Boston? Then monthly pass holders wouldn’t have to scan their TAP when boarding the subway. Boston, when they switched to their half-assed proof-of-payment system, suddenly had a fairly massive litter problem because patrons would simply drop their tickets upon exiting the stations rather than throwing them out. I’d hate to see that happen here when even monthly passholders would suddenly have disposable tickets.
I think they will. But still, fare checkers with scanners cost more than fare checkers without scanners (ie. what we have now). And how often do you get your fare checked on trains here, really? So once again, TAP (as it works right now) offers virtually nothing new but more expenses. I do think TAP can work though, without gates or scanners, but I’ll write about that later.
And how often do you get your fare checked on trains here, really?
About twice a week, if you go through Imperial/Wilmington. I’m honestly surprised that they haven’t set up a donut stand at that split-level between the Blue Line and the Century Freeway.
I dislike this concept. I understand that it’s really just to implement the TAP system, but so far the TAP system seems designed just to bring about distance based fares, which really suck and would discourage use of a system that already needs a better image.
the idea of TAP works – the idea of Metro successfully implementing a new system without costly screw ups and nominal (if at all) improvements, doesn’t work.
it’s destined to be another botched project that runs way over budget and way under expectations. if i can go into work late next thursday, i’ll be there kymberliegh.
The only time I saw a crime on a train was in Philly. They had fare gates. They even had these metal turnstiles that went from floor to ceiling, and could not be jumped. This containment architecture did nothing to prevent the purse snatching.
I ride the busses a few times a week and inevitably, one of the fare boxes on one of the busses is out of order. Instead of spending extra money to catch fare evaders on the rail system, I say spend the money to fix the fare boxes and capture those missed fares.
Which of course, leads to the question, how often will TAP readers be out of order?
lolz… oh man, fred. that’s the best part of it all. the budget for escalator/elevator maintenance will pale in comparison. i can’t wait to see yellow flags set in cones surrounding a TAP stand. MetroRiderLA kudos to whoever captures the first image of this!
And TAP readers are nothing… just wait until the fare gates inevitably fail!
Fred:
That’s what I’ve been yelling all along, but I don’t think people have been hearing me. Most people will be able to “just use another gate” but when Boston put in those awful “charlie card” gates, when the only wheelchair-accessible gate at Ruggles on the Orange Line failed, I had to walk to the Green Line to even get to work.
The fewer moving parts, the less that can break. The same thing that applies to children’s toys applies to capital construction projects.
Even for non-wheelchair riders broken gates present an issue. Obviously, it creates the potential for a bottle neck during rush times. Also, what happens when you TAP to open a gate and the gate doesn’t open, you have to TAP at the next gate. But did you just get charged for two TAPs? People aren’t going to be too happy about that.
At the Metro Operations committee meeting this afternoon, it was reported that the portable TAP readers have already been purchased and the fare inspectors are presently being trained on them.
[...] Fare Gate Reasoning Deconstructed (Metro Rider) [...]
[...] Ricky from Woodland Hills asks about fare gates, Pam responds by repeating Roger Snoble’s lie that LA is the only subway in the world without fare gates, a lie that LA Weekly exposed on the day the Long Range Plan was publicly released. She claims there is a “range of reasons” to go to a gating system but only gives two reasons: “safety” and stopping fare evasion. Both of which have been disputed here on MetroRiderLA. [...]