Neither lowering fares or simply increasing enforcement can solve fare evasion alone. Investing in better services and winning public trust are just as important.
Neither lowering fares or simply increasing enforcement can solve fare evasion alone. Investing in better services and winning public trust are just as important.
I think the main reason to not make it completely free was so they could track information via the tap on. That way they have data to plan route adjustments in the future.
They could quite easily do this with a driver manually counting on and off passengers. It wouldn’t need to be accurate, they could ballpark any numbers above 5. It could also be done with surveys are stops or on board, or with security camera footage. All without the infrastructure need. We also seem to be able to plan roads and spend even more than in public transport, without any need for registering trips.
Drivers don’t even have to manually count by hand. They already have a button that they’re meant to use to track fare evaders, to collect data on which routes have the most evaders. Just repurpose that button to track all users.
i love adding facial recognition to every single thing we have
It doesn’t need facial recognition. If it’s for statistical purposes, it only need numbers in and off, not to track us. That’s the point.
how are you getting data on the trips people make then?
As in, their connections rather than just simple trips? Why is that necessary for buses and not for cars?
Remember our whole transport network and all others worldwide used to be plan services prior to centralised tracking. Most would think services have worsened, not improved despite increasing population density and worse car traffic making public transport more attractive.
So, the tracking they already do doesn’t seem to be improving service. However, that’s subjective.
You don’t put data of people’s trips, you count how many people entered in x stop and how many left in y spot to see which stops are getting more use and thus could require another route in the future, you don’t need to individualize the data, the point of interest is the stop, not the individual person using the bus
They could still have taps. I lived in another country that made bus fares free, but you still had to get a card and use it to tap on and off.