Re: Yarra Trams Article in Sunday Age

[amorton@mudguard.ee.mu.oz.au (Anthony Morton)]

Dave Proctor <daproc@spambait.ozemail.com.au> wrote:

>That is just the trams - you would not need as many RPO's as you would
>conductors on every train.

While I'm in favour of having roving guards on trains (on the V/Line model),
they're not really necessary to combat fare evasion.  Just make sure there
are (closed) barriers under staff supervision at all City stations and those
in suburban District Centres.  Then the majority of train travellers will
have to pass through at least one set of barriers on any trip.  I'm also in
favour of staffing all stations; not only does this improve safety for all
concerned, it also works as a form of 'passive revenue protection'.

>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.

So we make the conductors look for concession cards.  You don't need RPOs
for this.

>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.

In the days of the old paper tickets there was a distinct pattern of punched
holes for every day and every time of the day.  Many conductors got quite
adept at recognising these patterns and distinguishing them at a glance from
those that were one day old.  A real disadvantage with Metcards is that you
need to look quite closely to tell an expired ticket from a current one -
they're designed to be read by machines, not by people.

Of course we've had lazy tram conductors, but some of the RPOs I've observed
are no better.  Many will stop looking as soon as they've found just one
person to make an example of.  Laziness is not an inbred characteristic of
conductors any more than of RPOs (in many cases they're the same people).

>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.

I submit that it's because people are pissed off at having an inconvenient
new ticketing system forced on them that there's a general community hostility
toward ticket inspectors.  In any case the argument stands, that the funds
required to employ enough ticket inspectors to make fare evasion on trams a
genuinely risky activity probably exceed those required to reinstate the
conductors.

Regards,
Tony M.