Abstract
Before 2005, the city of Edmonton's transit security staff served only its Light Rail Transit (LRT) not its buses. During 2005, the city redeployed the security staff to serve the buses as well. This meant that fewer ticket checks could be made on the LRT, which operates an ‘honor’ system of fare collection. Subsequently, in early 2007, it was decided to issue more fines and fewer warnings for evading fares on the LRT – a decision that was not publicized. Using weekly data for 163 weeks, this study examined the effect of these two changes on rates of LRT fare evasion. By the end of the period the risk of being checked for fare evasion had declined by a factor of nearly four, whereas the risk of being fined, if caught without a valid ticket, increased by a factor of 15. Despite these substantial changes in levels of enforcement, no clear trends were apparent in weekly evasion rates during the entire period. Possible explanations were explored for these results, including that the changes in levels of enforcement were not perceived by potential fare evaders. The implications of the findings are discussed for situational prevention and for transit authorities using ‘honor’ fare collection systems.
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Notes
Fourteen out of 18 light rail systems, mostly in Europe, surveyed by Dauby and Kovacs (2007) used honor systems.
The much lower evasion rate for buses was due to the fact that bus passengers have to pay on boarding the bus or show a pass. The main methods of fare evasion are to ‘short’ the amount paid into the fare box, rush past the driver or hand the pass used to board out of the bus window for someone else to use.
Unpaid fines are registered against vehicle registrations, or proceed to warrants for arrest.
Another change resulting from Edmonton's review of fare evasion was the introduction of a detailed weekly record of checks made and fines imposed on the LRT. No similar record system was established for fare evasion on the City's buses because tickets are not checked once passengers have boarded the bus and paid their fares.
Two weeks 08/03/06–08/09/06 (evasion rate 25 per cent) and 08/10/06–08/16/06 (evasion rate 14 per cent) were removed from the analysis, because they were outliers. The spikes in values were unrealistically high (for the first week the evasion rate was almost five times higher than the mean value for that period and, for the second week, it was almost three times higher), suggesting a recording error.
It might be expected ticket checks in the winter would decrease significantly due to the extreme cold, but an analysis of data showed no seasonal effects.
See Bijleveld (2007) for a thoughtful discussion of the reasons why fare evaders might not pay fines.
Dauby and Kovacs (2007) conclude from their survey of 18 light rail systems that to achieve a fare evasion rate of less than 5 per cent on an honor system, at least 8 per cent of passengers need to be checked. However, this takes no account of the rate of fines imposed or collected.
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority also recently decided to install automatic ticket gates in its subway and in many light rail stations (Archibold, 2007), after a consultancy study found that about 5 per cent of passengers were evading fares on the Authority's open systems. However, the Toronto Transit Commission (2000, p. 51) concluded after a careful study of fare collection systems in many other cities that ‘there is not, at present, business justification for implementing an automatic fare collection system in Toronto’.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Tana Vea who helped to develop the fare evasion crackdown and to Mike Derbyshire and Ron Gabruck, respectively, the former and current Director of Transit Security, Edmonton Transit System, for their support of this study. Finally, we thank Michael Maxfield and Joel Miller for statistical advice and Phyllis Schultze for her considerable help with the literature review.
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Clarke, R., Contre, S. & Petrossian, G. Deterrence and fare evasion: Results of a natural experiment. Secur J 23, 5–17 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2009.15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2009.15