Teams of fare inspectors in plain clothes began patrolling the transit system and issuing tickets on Wednesday as part of the TTC’s efforts to reduce the estimated $140 million lost to fare evasion each year.
All plain clothes inspectors are carrying ID and are equipped with body-worn cameras to record customer interactions, the transit commission said in a release.
It added that inspectors will use discretion, whether in uniform or plain clothes, to ensure tickets are predominantly issued in cases of “willful evasion”.
Tickets for not paying for a bus, streetcar or subway ride range from $235 to $425 depending on the nature of the offence. That money goes to the courts, not directly to the transit service.
The transit service said the approach was previously tested in 2018 and re-introduced three weeks ago with plain-clothes inspectors “educating” those found to be riding illegally.
The move to now begin writing tickets is part of a pilot project that will be reevaluated in January, according to TTC media relations.
I’d like to know more about how they estimate financial losses due to fare evasion
In Prague CZ (supposedly the 2nd best public transport system in the world) the “PID” has been employing “pain clothes inspectors” aka “revizori” for I suspect most of it’s 100+ year history. There are currently 140 of them employed full time, they don’t have body cameras and they come in pairs. Some of them are women. Comparing the sizes - 1.4 billion trips /year for PID and 600 million trips for TTC - it wouldn’t be unreasonable to have few “inspectors” employed full time. Of course I don’t know how significant fare evasion is in Toronto. Also - Public Transport should be free anyway.
How about…hiring staff at all gates, like they did back when I lived in Toronto. It’s been nearly 20 years, but I recall it being somewat difficult to get into a station, and only marginally easier to get on a streetcar or bus, without having paid a fare.
Or am I missing something?
How much far evasion do you think there actually is?
20 years ago the system had to support half the people it does today and it doesn’t look a hell of a lot different (Eglinton any decade now). Making everyone get on at the front of the street car is a massive waste of time for all involved.
These types of things are a balancing act always. No enforcement means people will stop paying, a lot of enforcement costs a lot and bogs the system down.
That’s actually what I was trying to understand. I recall evasion being less of a thing when I was living in Toronto (so much so that I used to get in trouble with late transfers sometimes) so I was wondering what changed.
It sounds like a combination of increased ridership and decreased staffing.
I’d note that I also don’t see inspectors on the GO with the regularity that I used to, either.
The significant change in the last 20 years - 5-7ish years - has been the replacement of people at the gate observing fare payment with automated systems - turnstiles in stations, rear entry on buses and streetcars. Fare inspectors ballooned afterwards
How about just making the public transit free to use? Would be cheaper than staffing and technology to stop fare evasion.
Free public transit should be a right.
Want another lane on the road? No problem heres a couple million in taxpayer money.
Need functional transit? Sorry, we don’t have the funds, maybe you should buy a car?
OK, but how much do they cost? It’s kind of self-defeating if you’re paying someone dollars to find missing pennies.
I’m not in Toronto, but in Vancouver I see enough fare evaders that if well-positioned I think they could pay for themselves. Especially because they’re plain-clothes, so the fare evaders will go through and then have to pay the large fine as opposed to just pay for the one ticket because they saw an inspector.
Better use of resources would be to ticket all the drivers blocking streetcars with various stupid behaviours
Give streetcars priority, there is no good excuse for making a streetcar full of people wait so a handful of people in cars can turn left. How long is the typical delay of an emergency vehicle passing through an intersection? A couple seconds? That same delay would be how long a streetcar takes to clear an intersection with priority. Streetcars shouldn’t be forced to wait to save a handful of drivers 5 seconds on their commute while causing delays and unreliability throughout the streetcar system.
Since you mentioned it, expect dough boy Ford to rip up the rails.
Streetcars have priority on king st., but drivers keep ignoring the rules.
Perhaps modern technogy could ticket them with cameras, similar to a red light or speed camera.
Lol
Drivers in the toronto area are so entitled to drive like shitheads, they literally destroy any cameras enforcing speed/red lights
Put the cameras on the trams and heavily fine anyone that attempts to vandalize it.
I don’t work for TTC but another transit agency. I mentioned to my union rep that we should be using the cameras WE ALREADY HAVE (in case we get into accidents) to record when people do shit like this in front of our buses, and they said that was a really good idea. I also submitted a service enhancement form to management to suggest this very idea.
You know what their response was?
“It is a privacy concern.”
Yes, taking pictures of license plates, WHICH ARE LEGALLY REQUIRED TO BE DISPLAYED WHEN ON PUBLIC ROADS, is somehow considered to be a PRIVACY ISSUE by a PUBLIC TRANSIT AGENCY.
This is what our management is like. Suffice to say, I’ve given up on expecting anything better anytime soon.
Wouldn’t it already be a privacy concern if you’re currently recording people? How would this be any different than footage of someone driving into the side of your bus?
Toronto will do anything other than inconvenience drivers or hold them accountable
I’d like to know more about how they estimate financial losses due to fare evasion
they count the feet of all passengers on the surveillance cams, devide by 2, and subtract the number of tickets bought.
This seems a bit more sensible approach than chasing after a guy and shooting at him and everyone around him.
