Re: Yarra Trams Article in Sunday Age

["Dave Proctor" <daproc@spambait.ozemail.com.au>]

"Anthony Morton" <amorton@mudguard.ee.mu.oz.au> wrote in message
957mjp$oke$1@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU">news:957mjp$oke$1@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU...

> So you would employ armies of hostile ticket inspectors at great expense.
> Why not just go back to the old system of one conductor per tram?  Then
> every tram traveller gets their ticket looked at, you don't have to have
> staff travelling in packs of three for their own safety, and the
travelling
> public will be grateful to be able to buy a ticket with a $5 note again.

That is just the trams - you would not need as many RPO's as you would
conductors on every train. You also have to take into account those
travelling on concession fares without concession authorities - even when
there were conductors, they never looked at concession cards when checking
tickets, only when selling them. So using RPO's will get around people
borrowing friends cards to purchase tickets.

Conductors also were not very good at checking whether or not a ticket had
expired - there were countless times I showed an expired ticket to see if
they were awake - they weren't (I had a valid ticket already if they did
notice) - this is something that RPO's would help to prevent, but ONLY if
the chances of being checked were reasonably high.

And the only reason why people consider RPO's to be draconian and
overbearing is because fair evasion is so rampant, and so many people are
being caught. If the chances of being checked were greatly increased, fare
evasion would drop, hardly anyone would be caught, and they would not have
to be so overbearing.

Dave