Good Morning

Please find below the talking points regarding Sound Transit’s Fare Enforcement program and our desire to maintain the core program as it is currently designed. I attempted to put together a series of points that cover a variety of situations that might arise from questions. These talking points are not in any particular order.

Ken

·         Sound Transit’s Fare Enforcement Program is a well-designed combination of policy and procedure. The program was created with input from many entities and has been implemented with procedures that ensure fairness and equity. Sound Transit’s policy and procedures are applied equally to all persons regardless of their age, race, religion, sex, sexual identity, economic status, immigration status, access to housing, and physical or mental disabilities.

·         Our current Fare Enforcement Program is simple in it is application, simple in its fine structure, simple in the due process it provides evaders, simple in the measurement of performance and is simple to explain. We can be assured that our program, which we provide direct and consistent oversight of, is both fair and consistent. We also have over 9 years of experience and data to support these claims.

·         Sound Transit has one of the transit industry’s lowest (if not the lowest) fare evasion rate and has since the inception of the fare enforcement program. Also, more than 93% of our riders surveyed feel safe while on our rail services. Both of these are directly attributed to our fare enforcement program. Couple this with that fact that we had 1.3 million fare enforcement interactions last year and only 4 substantiated complaints.

·         Should Sound Transit attempt to adopt a King County Metro Transit approach to Fare Enforcement and adjudication; the following business decisions would have to be considered:

• The KCM newly adopted process is untested. Procedures have not yet been fully developed or vetted.
• Scaling penalties and fines add a layer of complexity to the fair and consistent application; considerable oversight would be needed to ensure not just equitable fare enforcement but also the equitable adjudication.
• Adjudication (court) would have to be developed, staffed and be accessible to the public in addition to the previously mentioned oversight to ensure equitable and consistent resolutions of penalties and fines.
• Community Service would have to be monitored, tracked and verified when completed. There is no mechanism for non-compliance to community service orders currently and would have to be developed. There might be legal questions and authority issues regarding Sound Transit’s ability to compel compliance with community service.
• Sound Transit may not have the legal ability to adjudicate civil infractions as written in current RCWs. Sound Transit would either have to change the RCW and get authority or forego civil infractions as the mechanism to issue notices to fare evaders.
• Without the properly adjudicated civil infractions and the established pattern of intent; criminal theft of service charges would no longer be an option to deal with habitual fare evaders. Suspension and Expulsion would become the only viable means to deal with habitual evaders, increasing the number of suspensions and expulsions issued and incurring additional suspension appeal boards (resources and staffing impacts).
• Sound Transit would have to develop a mechanism to collect fines, audit and account for fines issued versus collected, and provide a mechanism to refund fines if necessary. This is a significant body of work and resources.
• Sound Transit would have to develop the ability to send an individual to collections for failing to pay fines and there may be a legal question as to the authority to do so.
• At an average of 10 citations per day, Sound Transit would not have the economies of scale or mechanisms in place that the District Courts have to efficiently adjudicate, render decision, collect fines and/or send to collections each one of those citations. 
• Fare Enforcement would be a revenue generating activity. This would require an additional layer of revenue collection, accounting, auditing, and reporting.

·         By establishing a different set of standards and rules to individuals based on their economic standard is a form of bias and discrimination. With economic status, there is no test to confirm an individual’s economic level nor a set threshold. Fare enforcement activities would no longer be fair and consistent; FEOs would have to make a judgment call based on appearances and/or through the use of invasive questioning. This is the definition of bias-based enforcement. This type of enforcement is demeaning to the individual under question but also encourages discriminate attitudes from fellow riders not privy to these different set of standards and rules.

·         It is unknown what the impact on fare compliance will be when fare enforcement is not consistently applied. The reasonable assumption is that farebox recovery and ridership will be negatively impacted as adenoidal evidenced by light rail and street car systems that do not have either a consistent fare enforcement program or after a fare enforcement programs were reduced in scope and scale.