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ChineseMetro Takes Courageous New Security Steps
Contributed by aaron on February 28th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Photo courtesy of redpopaccidents.
New Metro fare gates will require prospective muggers, terrorists, and other unwashed patrons to buy a ticket before descending upon defenseless commuters. Al Qaeda, flush with oil revenue from Iraq, decides that LA’s subway fare is too expensive to warrant terrorism and decides to barbecue pork rinds instead.
(sorry, I couldn’t even try to be serious with this one, the logic is too ludicrous.)
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
This begs the question: when do we get distance-based fares?
Tony: I hold out hope that the answer is “never,” especially because the area Metro covers is so large, and unlike, say, BART, our buses cover an even larger area, rendering distance-based fares a little ridiculous. Aside from the obvious concern, has there been official rumination from the Metro board on the subject of distance-based fares?
My favorite part about the Metro Press release, the headline:
Lol. “Selected” light rail stations. So I’m assuming those stations are allowed to have fare evaders and terrorists. Typical cop out. Can’t even do something wrong right.
Oh, please. It makes no sense to force the vast majority of bus riders, who are making relatively short trips of 10 or fewer miles, to pay extra in order to subsidize the minority who are traveling long hauls.
BTW, BART covers a huge geographic area. Downtown SF to Pittsburg is 45 miles.
Operating costs:
Bus $0.57 per passenger mile, Average trip 3.7 miles
Light Rail $0.38 per passenger mile, Average trip 5.0 miles
Heavy Rail $0.44 per passenger mile, Average trip 7.2 miles
I’m thinking the BRU is gonna like distance fares.
Pete, that was precisely my point re: BART. Most cities with major rail systems (NYC, Boston), the subway or other rail goes further out than the bus network. It’s reversed here. Are we going to charge distance-based fares on the 720 too? If not, it’s kind of silly.
Metro isn’t in the classical economics business, they’re in the public transportation business, and they have incentive to attract that rider from Sierra Madre with the same low fare for any distance trip (ignoring the transfer issue). Distance-based fares discourage ridership, which seems antithetical to the whole purpose. The idea of good governance is to encourage certain behaviors, and here the behavior sought to be encouraged is not driving single-occupancy vehicles.
The idea of good governance is to encourage certain behaviors, and here the behavior sought to be encouraged is not driving single-occupancy vehicles.
Why?
Hey Rob,
I’ll consider answering your questions when you answer my question about Expo vs. Boston Green Line.
No, I’m not letting the point go this time.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
This isn’t Tokyo or New York you chuckleheads. Fare evasion shouldn’t even be on the minds of Metro while the purple line sits there like a premature baby’s screwed up mutated undeveloped arm.
This is a complete joke.
Well, one thing that Rob Dawg has argued for will be realized… for the cost of $5 million a year, we will be able to find out how many people actually ride the Red, Purple, and Green Lines (since every revenue trip taken will pass through the gates). Of course, the Blue and Gold Lines will just become more unsafe as the minimal police presence on the trains will drop to zero when fare inspectors are manning stations.
I remain agnostic about the safety issue. When Portland expanded their Fareless Square the newly incorporated light rail stations experienced a massive increase in crime. The turnstiles themselves have a deterrent value. The lower incidence of fare violations may possibly make even a reduce force more effective.
As to “ridership.” We already know how many people use MTA. Less than 430,000. I would guess that turnstiles could make that less than 410,000 but no one except the BRU and data geeks like me are going to make anything of that. Transit advocate will probably get a big boost from the information. It will most likely show a tremendous advantage to more interconnectivity giving credence to the radical concept that rail transit lines should meet. Critics will likewise get something out of this. No doubt once the data are available you will hear a new phrase; “super user” and they will emerge as a contentious issue.
Having argued before the Metro Board at every step of this debacle, I am all talked out on this subject.
Suffice it to say that I believe this is going to come back and bite them, big time, and will be referred to, years from now, as “that mess Yvonne Burke got us into before she retired”. Some legacy.
Could you expand on your thoughts on this? In what ways specifically do you think it will come back to bite them?
Not necessarily the end of the world (at least as far as the Red Line is concerned), just a colossal waste of money.
Blue/Green/Gold is a different story, since those stations aren’t designed for gating.
cph: Every city I’ve lived in has been colossally unable to operate gates without frequent breakdowns.
Boston – old gates: The old fare gates were just turnstiles, with a single door that opened upon the pressing of a button by the station agent. If the button failed, which it did on a regular basis, a disabled passenger had to go to the next station. If the rider, like a girl I was dating in Boston, had skeletal problems which precluded going through the turnstile without a lot of pain, asked to use the accessible gate, they were denied because they weren’t “visibly disabled,” even after showing the minimum wage “station agent” her disability ID card. I wrote letters to the City and MBTA to no avail.
Boston – new gates: Ooh boy. Don’t ever ask the MBTA to build something if you want it to work. They installed shiny new fare gates, but the shiny gates again only had one that left enough space for a wheelchair to go through. That one gate broke on a regular basis. Additionally, when it was working, it stayed open much longer then the others in order to let the disabled passenger through – and all of the little jerks in Boston figured this out and I never entered the subway without having at least 3-4 fare jumpers follow behind me. Boston Globe columnists started making jokes about people doing conga lines through the new gates to avoid the fare. Although I left before studies were done, most officials in Boston were estimating that fare evasion would rise rather than fall. The gate at Ruggles broke so often that I had to give up on the Orange Line entirely. I can’t tell you how embarrassing it is to have to call into work and say that you’re going to be 30 minutes late because the turnstiles broke again.
New York: ADA? We don’t need no stinkin’ ADA. They have turnstiles like the old Boston ones, and the gate for wheelchairs required the use of a special card, which you had to apply for through paying a fee and providing doctors notes. Most likely violative of the ADA, but I’m not going to sue them, not worth my effort. Stations weren’t always manned, and if you didn’t know to get the special fare card (which takes 3 months to process), then you could only use stations that were staffed. As a result, I couldn’t use all of the accessible stations in NYC for the first few months I lived there. Because the gates opened only with this card, even from the inside, if your card didn’t work, you were trapped in the station. They have only now started putting in emergency exit bars, which sound an alarm that can be heard in New Jersey.
So, yes, cph, for a disabled person, if Metro doesn’t do this right, this has the potential to be the end of the world.
How about BART or WMATA? Those seem to work without a lot of trouble.
Of course, a manned station would be a must for any gated system. I’m not defending the practice, though.
I don’t think LACMTA will ever get to the same level as New York, with their jail like High Entrance/Exit Turnstiles. Rather, they are going for the PATCO model, where somebody in a remote control center watches the stations and buzzes people in or out who have problems. The problem is that the PATCO model doesn’t scale for a subway with three times as many passengers, not to mention the entire rail system.
CPH: BART was just as bad. You got access, but not without ducking the system. There’s no free-standing validator in the Market Subway stations so you had to find a station agent to run your card through a regular turnstile. There’s no gates on the elevators at Powell and Embarcadero so you could just duck down the elevator without anyone noticing. I’d love to know the fare evasion rate on that. Probably not hugely high because most people I imagine are traveling beyond the Market subway.
I went from Powell to Embarcadero and was able to do it, but with substantial drama because it took a long time to find a gate agent at Embarcadero and we blew past our dinner reservations. We returned from Embarcadero to Powell on one of the last trains and there was no longer any staff at Powell to swipe me out, so I had to forfeit the value of the ticket. Suffice to say I took MUNI for the rest of the trip. It left me really very angry, but since I only visit SF I’m not going to fight their battle.
I’ve taken WMATA a long time ago but I don’t remember how that worked or didn’t work, but I do remember that I got a lovely multi-colored bruise on my arms at Pentagon City when I didn’t scoot through the gate quickly enough
.
I understand now. I missed it for a long time. Aaron isn’t about effective transit but universal transit.
I am sorry that my 3rd generation or more ancestors were not able to predict survival nor utility.
Aaron is correct that the MBTA has proven incapable and/or unwilling to spend the tens of billions of dollars necessary to make their system lowest common denominator.
I’m personally pissed at my inability to get to the moon because I was variously born too late, physically inadequate, tempermentally unsuited, etc.
Sorry Rob, but you crossed the line. To make personal attacks on a contributor in the way that you did is unbelievable. Don’t bring that trash to this blog. You could have left it at “Aaron isn’t about effective transit but universal transit.” But no, you went to disgusting new lows. It’s sad really.
You are a troll.
The following content is backshadowed by “do not feed the trolls:
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Operating costs:
Bus $0.57 per passenger mile, Average trip 3.7 miles
Light Rail $0.38 per passenger mile, Average trip 5.0 miles
Heavy Rail $0.44 per passenger mile, Average trip 7.2 miles
I’m thinking the BRU is gonna like distance fares.
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Who is so angry and sick that they think National Transit Database data is trolling? Sad.
Oh, I get it. The do not feed the troll background comments are automatically applied by the website and not as advertised as being a popular vote. Sadder.
Sorry Rob, but you crossed the line. To make personal attacks
Personal attacks? I was admitting that I didn’t previously understand Aaron’s perspective.
on a contributor in the way that you did is unbelievable.
Unbelievable? Surely you overstate.
Don’t bring that trash to this blog. You could have left it at “Aaron isn’t about effective transit but universal transit.” But no, you went to disgusting new lows. It’s sad really.
You are a troll.
Yep, and what do you call people who stuff ballot boxes? Something worse I hope.
Indeed.
Yes sir. You have been branded by the blog gods. The MetroRiderLA comment policy makes exceptions to the democratic model for personal attacks, especially those at the level you lobbed. Thus you wear our version of the Scarlett Letter.
The violin is so very small, and the song, so so sad, and Rob, it plays just for you.
Do you have any facts that ridership will decrease with the new fare gates? I think this is all speculation. Talking to the laymen (i.e. not us transit nuts who love to post comments on blogs), they think it’s a pretty cool idea. If they ride it, I don’t know. But, it seems generally the laypeople are happy; whereas the transit nuts here are against it. Interesting……
I suspect it’s that the typical transit nut confuses ridership maximization with effectiveness maximization, the same way that most businessmen mistake revenue maximization for profit maximization (this is a well-documented phenomenon).
On the disabled-access tip, note Ed Koch’s remark that it would have been cheaper to provide car service for every wheelchair-bound person in NYC than to make all of the NYCMTA’s transit vehicles and stations ADA-compliant. I’ve seen it derided as “snide,” but from a long-term cost perspective it’s true.
Most people, the disabled included, care more about being able to get to their destination than about the mode by which they access it.
aaron, could you please define an argument against fare gates in terms other than “fare gates bad”?
I didn’t think older systems like Boston or New York needed to make *all* their stations ADA-compliant, just certain “key” stations.
aaron, could you please define an argument against fare gates in terms other than “fare gates bad”?
Fare gates are expensive to install and expensive to maintain. They will not come even remotely close to paying for themselves as the MTA has suggested. Many, if not most, of the scofflaws are “joy riders” that don’t have to ride Metro. We won’t be replacing their free rides with paying rides on a 1:1 basis.
Plus the gates will be difficult to integrate with current riding patterns. How do Metrolink riders keep their free rides? How do gold line riders leave the system and go back in to catch the red line without paying a higher weighted fare? What about the riders that use the barrier free stations? Or use both in the same trip? Metro is going to work all of this out, but it’s going to be a big convoluted waste of effort and money.
First, sorry for the delay in responding to Fred’s request. I gave myself a weekend off from blog reading.
My first concern is that the gates will not provide the kind of protection against fare evasion as has been claimed, and that Metro will end up having to rehire uniformed personnel to staff the system (remember that it has been said, by no less than Metro CEO Roger Snoble, that some of the savings under this scheme comes from the elimination of uniformed fare inspectors).
My second concern is that lowering the number of uniformed personnel on the rail system will also result in a lower level of security on the system. I rather doubt that anyone intent on lawless behavior is going to be deterred by having to buy a ticket to get past the gates. I only hope it won’t take something like a murder or rape to bring this fallacy to light.
My third concern is that, inevitably, there is going to be a technology failure which impacts a disabled patron from accessing (or even worse, leaving) the system. It won’t take too many ADA complaints or lawsuits for the media to start pointing out that this wouldn’t have happened if Ms. Burke had left well enough alone. Aaron’s warnings, with the examples of Boston, New York, San Francisco and Washington should be sufficient to illuminate this issue.
Did anyone read the CityBeat editorial on the subject? I find it interesting that in their opening sentence they imply — as I have suspected as well — that this is an attempt by Yvonne to get a “legacy” before she leaves office … oh, yeah, I said that already, didn’t I?
Oh, and if anyone would like a chance to ask pointed and embarrassing questions of the Metro staff person who was the chief architect of this plan, Roger Moliere, he happens to be the guest speaker at this Saturday’s So.CA.TA meeting. (We had invited him before all the gating nonsense started, to talk about Metro’s development deals around rail stations, but I figure the gates are fair game now as well.) 1:00pm, in the 4th floor meeting room at Angelus Plaza, just north of Pershing Square Station on Hill St.
Always a good idea.
And I agree with all of your potential outcomes. It’s exactly my thinking as well that a TRUE implementation of fare gates would require a massive increase in personnel, not a reduction as Metro has prescribed. Also, the technology failures are inevitable in my opinion, and without personnel to handle the issues immediately, it will result on chaos not only for the disabled, but for every other rider.
Thanks for stepping in, Kymberleigh, I appreciate it. I’ve also taken a break from this blog, and probably won’t contribute anymore, but I will plan on trying to attend the meeting on Saturday to try and put the disability questions to him before they get too far in the “planning” stages.