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rndljfry t1_jdciyvs wrote

Reply to comment by DanHassler0 in SEPTA hopes new vertical gates will deter turnstile jumpers by APettyJ

>I'm super excited to see Septa actually start doing something potentially meaningful and visible to help solve their problems.

I find it odd that the article says there are about 2,800 fare jumps in the year. At $2.50 per jump it seems like we are chasing about $7,000 in free subway rides.

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NoREEEEEEtilBrooklyn t1_jdcjhjn wrote

That sounds very, very low.

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rndljfry t1_jdcvq6t wrote

Sure, and "reported" is obviously a huge consraint on that number.

At $2.50 per evasion and $925,000 for two stations' worth of gates, it seems like it's going to take a long time to recoup this investment.

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AbsentEmpire t1_jdd72g4 wrote

The investment is more about keeping the problems that fair jumpers bring into system out of the system. The homeless drug addicts smoking crack on the subway drive away multiple more users than just their one fair.

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rndljfry t1_jdd7tly wrote

>The homeless drug addicts smoking crack on the subway drive away multiple more users than just their one fair.

The thing about someone who can pull together enough money for a score is that they can pull together enough money for a fare if it gets them on the train for unlimited time.

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AbsentEmpire t1_jdds7xf wrote

Yep, which is also why SEPTA needs to start kicking them off the system.

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randym99 t1_jdd7los wrote

To be fare (ba-dum-tsh), that math isn't factoring any increase in ridership SEPTA might expect to experience from improving conditions on the trains (by say deterring homeless etc. from living in stations / on trains)

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randym99 t1_jdd6hob wrote

I was at Cecil B Moore the other day, mid-day, and watched probably 10 people skinny past or hop over the turnstile in the span of like 10 minutes. Let's conservatively call it 10 jumps an hour at CBM, only consider 12 hours per day, and use the 2018 "weekday ridership" numbers by station from the BSL wiki. That's ~3.5% of total riders that aren't paying (and maybe higher since ridership is way down from 2018); does that sound directionally correct? Applying that to annual BSL + MFL ridership of ~35M (2022 stats; waaay tf down from pre-COVID haha wow) suggests an annual fare jump count of ~1.2M. At $2 per, that's $2.4M in evaded fare (assuming 100% of fare-jumpers turn into fare-payers) which is not close to immediate payback for these new gates. But I'm still for the move because it ought to significantly improve the SEPTA experience and hopefully help increase ridership.

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WikiSummarizerBot t1_jdd6jmz wrote

Broad Street Line

>The Broad Street Line (BSL), also known as the Broad Street subway (BSS), Orange Line, or Broad Line, is a subway line owned by the city of Philadelphia and operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA). The line runs primarily north-south from the Fern Rock Transportation Center in North Philadelphia through Center City Philadelphia to NRG station at Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia; the latter station provides access to the stadiums and arenas for the city's major professional sports teams at the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, about a quarter mile away.

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dirtymatt t1_jdd4nzy wrote

There's no way the number of fare jumps is that low. I see multiple on a daily basis, and it's not like I'm camping out there watching. This is just what I observe in the few seconds I'm near the turnstiles.

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rndljfry t1_jdd69vm wrote

Of course it's under-reported, but people are also seriously overestimating how their personal experience relates to the whole picture.

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dirtymatt t1_jddgset wrote

Let's just assume I'm right and that I see 2 fare jumpers per day. That's 10 a week, or about 520 per year. That's more than a sixth of the quoted number that one person is witnessing at one station in a small window of time. Admittedly, I'm primarily travelling during rush hour when there are more people travelling, and probably more fare jumps are happening during that time, but I just don't see any possible way the quoted number is close to accurate. It wouldn't shock me at all if the real number was 100x higher.

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_token_black t1_jdd86fi wrote

There's usually somebody just sitting at the handicapped gate at Norristown to let people on the high speed line. Probably happens more than 2800 times in a year just there.

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rndljfry t1_jdda7q2 wrote

It seems like that could be addressed for less than a million dollars if it’s so obvious, no?

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AbsentEmpire t1_jdds1to wrote

Here's where SEPTA's getting that number:

>Nearly 2,800 fare evasion cases were reported on SEPTA last year — an increase of more than 800 from 2021. Busch said the new gates would more accurately track the number of fare evaders on the system.

>“Right now, we have the numbers to go on from police in terms of how many citations they’re issuing. We know that doesn’t fully capture the picture with fare evasion,” Busch added.

The reason it's low is because they have almost zero transit police on the system at any given time. So with that handful of transit cops they caught 2,800, which means you can easily multiply that number by 3 to get close to the real number of fair evasions.

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mistersausage t1_jdf2nxt wrote

It says "cases" so I assume they mean prosecutions or tickets given out.

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