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Metro Loses $62,000 a Week to Fare Evasion

Politics   May 18, 2010 at 5:31 pm Erica C. Barnett

According to a report that will be released to King County Council’s regional policy committee tomorrow, about 53,000 Metro bus riders per week refuse to pay any fare, and another 33,000 pay only partial fare.

According to the report, “The total of 88,000 is about 4.8 percent of total Metro boardings … of which 2.9 percent paid no fare and 1.9 percent paid a partial fare.” Fare evasion costs Metro an estimated $62,000 a week, or about $3.2 million a year. King County Metro faces an estimated budget shortfall over the next two years in the hundreds of millions.The routes that had the highest rates of fare evasion were: The 7 (8 percent; represent!), the 26 and 124 (7.9 percent), the 358 (7.2 percent), the 120 (5.6 percent), the 2 and 13 (4.9 percent), 3 and 4 (4.9 percent), the 1 and 36 (4.7 percent), the “family of 15 routes,” (4.7 percent), the 5, the 54, and the 55 (4.2 percent), and the 71-74 and 76-79 (2.8 percent). Those numbers don’t include counterfeit passes, transfers given by one passenger to another, faulty ORCA equipment, or people who get off the back door outside the ride-free area.

Drivers aren’t supposed to challenge people who refuse to pay. According to Metro spokeswoman Rochelle Ogershok, “We don’t encourage them to get in fights with people over fares, and that’s the bottom line.”

The report recommends a number of steps that could reduce fare evasion. Among them: Simplifying fares and transfers between Metro and other agencies; studying the extent to which the downtown Ride Free Area contributes to fare evasion; putting transit police on fare-enforcement duty for a limited time and studying how it works; and studying proof-of-payment on new RapidRide bus routes, along the lines of Sound Transit’s fare enforcement system on light rail.

The study also surveyed bus drivers about what they’d like to see done to reduce fare evasion. Fully half of all drivers said Metro should eliminate the downtown ride-free area, thus eliminating the “pay-as-you-leave” policy. Drivers also recommended making all of King County one zone and getting rid of higher peak fares, eliminating paper transfers, and adding more transit police.

The RTC will get a briefing on the report tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 in King County Council chambers.




  • sigh

    Pay as you board, one flat fare, end ride free zone and actually enforce fare payment (drivers will need to have some backbone, AND Metro will have to have the driver's backs for this one to work).

    The whole pay as you leave is ridiculous. Once you've been on a bus for half an hour getting into town, what are they going to do when you don't pay? Make you ride the bus back to where you started? It's just begging for fare evasion!

  • johnmocha

    It would pay to have fare enforcement officers on the 7 – 8% of $62K/week = $256K/year. Should fund an officer or two. Same for the other routes with this concentration of fare evasion.

  • bread and roses

    It's not about backbone. The drivers don't fight with the passengers because they have been told not to. And I don't want to tell them to, personally. The bus driver getting in a fight with someone over their fare is the last thing I need in my bus ride. It slows the whole bus down, produces an atmosphere of acrimony, and exposes the drivers and other passengers to potential violence.

  • East Coast Cynic

    Considering the tough crowd that boards metro in some south king county communities during the evening, the drivers will not only need backbone, but they'll need a faceguard and a bulletproof vest.

  • Barleywine

    Off topic, but I'd like to see something done about the drivers who refuse to pick up a passenger that they KNOW is there. Like the black guy near the McDonald's in Rainier Beach yesterday, banging on the door & watching the bus drive away. Sick.
    Like the time a driver in the U District bypassed a guy in a wheel chair waving his hands wildly, and the whole bus cheered! Sick puppies.

    Most of the time passengers would alert/yell at the driver. Not always.

  • Jason_Mitchell

    Erica: any info on how these numbers compare to national averages, hopefully for similarly-sized systems?

  • Windy Citier

    They'd never put up with that crap in Chicago. Make everyone pay, and make them pay when they get on. Enough of this coddling the cheapskates and crazies.

  • onlythinking

    This is not news. We have known this for years, You can not be PC and fair at the same time

  • Trevor

    I don't ride it more than once a month, but I haven't seen anyone enforcing fares on light rail in a year. And I've never seen anyone pay for it at the airport.

  • jev

    I ride light rail almost everyday and was checked for fare just this morning.

  • http://www.orphanroad.com Frank

    Three words:

    “BACK DOOR, PLEASE!!”

  • seandr

    Bingo.

    1) Make everyone pay when they get on.
    2) When someone gets on and refuses to pay, thus holding everyone else up, they need to feel the heat from the other passengers, not just the bus driver.

    I think Seattle lacks the chutzpah for number 2.

  • true that

    No–that would take reporting–I suspect it is not too different from other major systems. Erica also doesn't report on how much it would cost to increase fare compliance. Or the safety issues for drivers. This is a very one sided post.

  • MikeP

    I think that was 8% of all riders of the 7 (an unspecified number) don't pay.

  • Monk

    Metro isn't losing much money because of fare evasion, they are losing much money because of their lack of wisdom (putting it nicely) in getting rid of monthly passes and going over to this amazingly inaccessible ORCA system (less bus riding, less money and not that complicated).

  • morning

    One pays when one boards in-bound. I'm guessing, you don't actually ride a bus, ever.

  • morning

    How did they do the analysis?

    How many of the non-payers would be riding if they had to pay?

    How will the non-frequent user transfer? Will we require everyone to use ORCA?

    If we want people to use transit and some won't/can't pay, shouldn't making people pay be looked at like taxing bicycles, as a negative?

  • Grahm

    For reference, Muni in San Francisco was up at about 10% fare evasion system wide (costing the agency about $19 mil/yr) until recently when increased crackdown on fare evasion (along with streamlined fine collection) brought it back down to about 3%. http://bit.ly/bsyCrJ

  • Matt_the_Engineer

    Adding to your list:

    How many didn't pay outbound (pay as you leave) compared to inbound (pay as you enter)?

  • Matt_the_Engineer

    Getting rid of the magic carpet zone would slow the system way down downtown. Slowing buses down reduces service (each bus will make fewer runs in the day), which will decrease ridership, which will lead to lower fare collection. Even if it would fix the entire 2.9% of unpaid rides (which it won't), it might decrease fare collection by more than that.

    Making King County all one zone will further decrease the incentive to use the bus downtown. A working couple that lives in the city already pays $10 a day to ride the bus, which takes twice the time of driving. Bump that up to the same as 2-zone and that $9/day parking lot starts looking really attractive.

  • http://www.joeszilagyi.com/ Joe Szilagyi

    Why not just put a cop on each of the problem lines on random days of the week? It would pay for itself. Assign cops to randomly ride the top 5 lines in here during the peak shifts when the theft of service happens, and have the cop be plainclothes. He always stays up front. When someone acts up, he flashes the badge. Problem solved.

  • morning

    But what cities will boycott King County businesses for our treatment of the poor?

  • T_Chen

    Enforcing fares is not important just for the revenue, but for the ancillary benefits as well. In my experience, fare evaders are more likely to be unpleasant riders; they are disproportionately drunk, crazy, belligerent, or prone to harassing other riders minding their own business. Note that the routes mentioned as having high fare evasion are also among the most prone to other problems I mentioned (#7 and #358 stand out)

    Putting some random plain clothes officers on these routes would not only reduce fare evasion but would set a tone that METRO expects passengers to follow ALL rules, including those against eating on the bus, leaving garbage, putting feet up on seats, loud music, threatening and loud profanity, sexual harassment etc. In turn, an improved and safer environment will draw more middle class “choice” riders, increasing farebox recovery and improving political support for public transit, which is really important for the “no choice” riders.

  • bread and roses

    totally agree.

  • Amaliada

    One thing the Greeks do well in Athens, the only metro area with a real bus/metro service, is collect fares. They have large signs on the buses and on the metro saying that if you are caught without a valid ticket, you're going to be fined 60 times the cost of the 1 euro fare – 60 euros or the equivalent of $63.80. And then they have ticket inspectors who get on the buses in random spots and write the tickets on the spot. And everyone has a national ID card and they keep a copy so they do get the money. Occasionally when you come up the stairs or escalator from the metro you're also met by a ticket inspector. So, while there aren't millions of ticket inspectors there are enough of them to keep the losses down.

    From all the crime I read about people being robbed of their i-phones and i-pods, having inspectors might cut down on robberies, too

  • johnmocha

    Happy to see a more detailed analysis but I think there is enough money to fund at least one inspector on the #7.

  • johnmocha

    Stealing and being poor are two different things.

  • doug_in_seattle

    Both times I've ridden light rail in the last month I was checked for fares.

  • Barleywine

    Frank, you should have entered that in the Lusty Lady last sign contest!

    Some random thoughts on all this:
    ORCA cards are here, and they work well most of the time. No more change, or paper transfers, or wondering about proper fare. Best thing until we all get chipped.
    Very few people don't pay as they board. The main problem here is the expired monthly pass. Driver waves them on.
    The people that don't pay on exit are those who find nothing but a twenty in their pocket, and those who give the universal pocket-pat and shrug. In both cases the driver has little incentive to push it. Better to keep to the timetable. Only newbie drivers fuss.

    The amazing thing is the percentage of people that pay. The honor system works pretty freakin' well here!

  • jeffw66seattle

    Another great way to save money – fire “Communications Manager” Rochelle Ogershok, who according to King County earned a salary of $105,000.00 last year. I earned $24K as a part-time bus driver working all the hours I could get my hands on – and could have told Publicola (and others) what she did.

    Want to save money in King County government?

    START AT THE TOP
    http://pstransitoperators.wordpress.com/2010/04…

  • Art Busman

    Enforcing fare is their job plain and simple. You don't go to the convenience store and barter over the price of a candy bar or refuse to pay anything. It is theft of service, a crime, and for a bus driver to allow it happen is called being an accessory to a crime. If there was a zero tolerance policy, you wouldn't have this problem. But since criminals know if they pull a big hissy fit and threaten violence, they can get away with not paying fare. It's just like a kid. You let him get away with it once, he'll tell all his friends and keep doing it, pushing the boundaries which leads ultimately to battery of bus drivers. Imagine if convenience store clerks allowed customers to pull hissy fits and not pay for candy how many customers would start using that tactic to get free candy. I may even try it!