Reducing fare evasion

[quentisl@leaves.qjc.cjb.net (OgO)]

Hi everyone,

While sitting on a train with nothing better to do, I put my mind to the 
problem of fair evasion, and how to stop it.

The idea I had, which I like most is frequent traveller points, which 
would work in much the same way as frequent flyer points.  If there was 
some sort of decent incentive to collect points, that might encourage 
people to buy tickets.

I also had the idea of rather than buying a paper (cardboard, whatever - 
throwaway) ticket every time you travel, you have a plastic card which can 
be recharged with more credits.

I thought this was a good idea simply because of the amount of used 
metcards I see lying on the ground - but I did think of a way you could 
further this idea to reduce fair evasion, though i doubt it will catch on:

When you get on the train in the morning, and validate, it reduces your 
credit by the cost of a 2 hour ticket - if you then use it again in the 
afternoon, it takes the difference between a 2 hour and a daily ticket (I 
don't know how much it is).  If you use it the next day, same, until you 
use it enough during the week for the cost of a weekly ticket - then you 
don't get charged any more that week.  This could go on for monthly and 
yearly tickets too.

The bonus for commuters is that the more you use it, you get charged the 
best price - encouragement to use it more.

Hopefully the bonus for the train company is that people will use it more 
often rather than not buy a ticket at all, so it works out for them too.

I don't know, they were the two ideas I came up with which I thought were 
pretty good and I thought i'd share them with you.

Regards

Ogo
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