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Thoughts on new MBTA policy
Today's Metro had an article titled "Fare jumpers, beware: T officials now ticketing". Further quotes, with my comments, below.
"If a person fails to pay their tickets, MBTA officials can forward their names to the Registry of Motor Vehicles to have their licenses suspended..." Think about this for a few minutes. What about people who *have* no licenses? Heck, they're the ones with the most incentive to use the T Ywith or without paying) in the first place. And if you take away someone's ability to drive, again, you're just increasing their incentives to steal T service.
"The [fare jumper] will now have to think about the fact that at any time during their trip they can be approached by a T official and asked for proof of payment," said MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo. "You might think you got away with evading a fare when you get on ... but two stops later you might be checked." OK, this is both dumb and scary. It's dumb, because the system still allows you to buy disposable Charlie Tickets (as opposed to Cards), so someone can have a perfectly legitimate reason for not having any "proof of payment", yet still be at risk of being arbitrarily fined and/or tossed off the train.
The scary part is that they apparently *do* have some means of checking "proof of payment" on the ubiquitous Charlie Cards. That suggests that these cards must not just keep track of their current balance, but also of their transaction history -- which in this case is also a history of where you've been. Moreover, if every station has officials with a device that can read that transaction history, those devices must be common enough that anyone wanting to do some privacy violation could probably get their hands on one.
"Currently, the MBTA loses approximately 3 percent to 5 percent of its anual revenue to fare evasion..." I hope they're not spending more than 1 to 2 percent on this new program, then. Otherwise, they could easily end up losing money on the proposition.
And that's assuming that this "lost" revenue is actually realizable. Like the arguments about IP piracy, there's a question of how much of this is really "lost revenue", in the sense that people would have bought the offered service if prevented from taking it for free. If I knew more about economics, I would probably talk about "market elasticity" here, but I'm not sure that's the right concept.
It's not that I'm in favor of fare-jumping or anything. Most fare-jumpers are young thugs who scare me, and I'd be glad to see fewer of them. The MBTA provides a valuable service, and it's reasonable of them to want to be paid for it. I just don't think their new policy is terribly well thought out...
"If a person fails to pay their tickets, MBTA officials can forward their names to the Registry of Motor Vehicles to have their licenses suspended..." Think about this for a few minutes. What about people who *have* no licenses? Heck, they're the ones with the most incentive to use the T Ywith or without paying) in the first place. And if you take away someone's ability to drive, again, you're just increasing their incentives to steal T service.
"The [fare jumper] will now have to think about the fact that at any time during their trip they can be approached by a T official and asked for proof of payment," said MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo. "You might think you got away with evading a fare when you get on ... but two stops later you might be checked." OK, this is both dumb and scary. It's dumb, because the system still allows you to buy disposable Charlie Tickets (as opposed to Cards), so someone can have a perfectly legitimate reason for not having any "proof of payment", yet still be at risk of being arbitrarily fined and/or tossed off the train.
The scary part is that they apparently *do* have some means of checking "proof of payment" on the ubiquitous Charlie Cards. That suggests that these cards must not just keep track of their current balance, but also of their transaction history -- which in this case is also a history of where you've been. Moreover, if every station has officials with a device that can read that transaction history, those devices must be common enough that anyone wanting to do some privacy violation could probably get their hands on one.
"Currently, the MBTA loses approximately 3 percent to 5 percent of its anual revenue to fare evasion..." I hope they're not spending more than 1 to 2 percent on this new program, then. Otherwise, they could easily end up losing money on the proposition.
And that's assuming that this "lost" revenue is actually realizable. Like the arguments about IP piracy, there's a question of how much of this is really "lost revenue", in the sense that people would have bought the offered service if prevented from taking it for free. If I knew more about economics, I would probably talk about "market elasticity" here, but I'm not sure that's the right concept.
It's not that I'm in favor of fare-jumping or anything. Most fare-jumpers are young thugs who scare me, and I'd be glad to see fewer of them. The MBTA provides a valuable service, and it's reasonable of them to want to be paid for it. I just don't think their new policy is terribly well thought out...