Farebeating on MetroNorth & LIRR

[bobtehpanda]

Well, I still think different about that but let's hear some LIRR commuters on it.

 

I actually do commute on the LIRR. Trust me, a lot of these people would hold their noses up at the notion of going to a racetrack to gamble. (Everyone on the LIRR has conversations with each other, which I just thought was very uncomfortable at first. The amount of times I've heard people talking about packing for the Hamptons and how their friend is only getting paid 100K+ a year is extremely high. They would stick up their nose at the notion of going into the outer boroughs, let alone the area around Aqueduct.)

[Vistausss]

@bob: I was talking the intra island travel argument, not the racetrack argument.

[qjtransitmaster]

LMAO! TRAPPED!  The looks on their faces must be priceless. 

 

I find that surprising though because if the collectors are getting the tickets as they should be at all stops, I don't see how one could beat the fare aside from hiding in the john. lol  The only other excuse that I've seen used was that their ticket was already collected in another car.  That one I've heard a few times.  Sometimes I wonder if I should get my receipt printed when I buy tickets as proof just to cover myself because sometimes I decide to move to another seat after my ticket has been collected but it's usually so immediate that they would have to be really dense not to remember getting my ticket.

 

I don't think you realize how easy it really is to farebeat the railroads it's harder to farebeat a bus in Staten island than it is to farebeat the LIRR if your making a short trip.

That's the first time I've heard of short-drop/drop-back crew on the LIRR...how common is that?

 

Also, by the tone of your post, intermediate fare-evasion is higher than zone 1/3 fare evasion? I'd imagine the opposite since intermediate fares are comparatively very cheap.

Want to know why intermediate fareevasion is so high cause it's so easy that's why.

 

I've been on trains where they've closed the first two or three cars at Little Neck, presumably to make ticket checking easier.

 

 

Paradoxically, the LIRR would probably get more fares by lowering the insanely high city fares... most of the people i know pay for the CityTicket when it's available, but an off-peak from Little Neck is $7.

 

The thing about Little Neck and Douglaston is that the LIRR is actually more convenient than the bus, which takes at least a 20 or 30 minute walk to get to, before the waiting time.

lowering the fares would increase ridership and wipeout QM3'S ridership completely. and give the MTA an excuse to kill it off. 

 So DO IT MTA!!!! Mwahaha

In Italy you can go from Pisa to Florence without anyone checking your ticket at times.  It happened to me the first time I flew in to Italy and took the train.  The difference there as opposed to here is that you stamp your ticket BEFORE you board the train, where as here the ticket collector punches your ticket.  It was a distinction that cost me 5 € on my second trip.  I explained to the ticket collector in Italian that I wasn't aware of the policy because I was an American.  I figured he'd give me a break because he'd just think I was a dumb American, as some Europeans perceive Americans that way, but it didn't work.  He wrote the ticket anyway, explaining the rules to me in Italian and was quite firm on charging me the 5 €, even after I explained my situation and showed him my ticket to show him my good intentions if you will, so I just paid and gave up. 

 

 

 

lol... Wow, that's pretty funny... My question is do you think that the loses a lot of money on MetroNorth from farebeaters? In other words how bad do you think the problem is?

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW EASY IT IS TO FAREBEAT THE RAILROADS.!!! If they did a count on the lost revenue it would make the Staten island bus farebeating look insignificant it is really really bad I would say the farebeating on LIRR/MNRR is worse than subway and local bus altogether it is too easy.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

I don't think you realize how easy it really is to farebeat the railroads it's harder to farebeat a bus in Staten island than it is to farebeat the LIRR if your making a short trip.

Want to know why intermediate fareevasion is so high cause it's so easy that's why.

 

lowering the fares would increase ridership and wipeout QM3'S ridership completely. and give the MTA an excuse to kill it off. 

 So DO IT MTA!!!! Mwahaha

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW EASY IT IS TO FAREBEAT THE RAILROADS.!!! If they did a count on the lost revenue it would make the Staten island bus farebeating look insignificant it is really really bad I would say the farebeating on LIRR/MNRR is worse than subway and local bus altogether it is too easy.

Actually it's easier to farebeat on the local buses on Staten Island because instead of hiding or scheming, you just walk on and have a seat as I've seen many entitled and/or ghetto Staten Islanders do. 

[qjtransitmaster]

Actually it's easier to farebeat on the local buses on Staten Island because instead of hiding or scheming, you just walk on and have a seat as I've seen many entitled and/or ghetto Staten Islanders do. 

You can do the same on LIRR if your not going to Penn station. On metro north it's pitifully easy to do. 

[bobtehpanda]

@bob: I was talking the intra island travel argument, not the racetrack argument.

 

Two words: West Hempstead.

 

There's also a fair amount of north-south travel in Long Island, which just isn't possible on LIRR unless you want to go all the way back to Jamaica before heading out. NICE is generally better suited for intra-Nassau trips, and SCT is a demonstration of how much Suffolk cares about its transit.

[Amtrak7]

Going E/B with a Penn to Little Neck ticket and "missing" their stop (happens a lot on weekends with city ticket) to get off at Great Neck. Going W/B with a ticket to Flushing and also "missing" their stop to get off at Woodside. Happens every single day.

 

One thing I just realized: how do you know where people were ticketed to? You've collected the tickets already, so you can't ask for them again, and I've never seen seatchecks on eastbounds.

[tun]

I admit it, coming from Bayside, getting off at flushing to get on the back to Astoria, if I see someone get up from a seat with a Zone 1 punched seat check i'll plop my butt down for the quick ride to woodside. 

 

People have monthlies to Penn, so the collectors punch the check for Zone 1, even though the passengers are really getting off. If I rode past woodside I'd have to show the ticket again, but getting off there I know it wont' be checked. 

 

Ethical? Hard to say. I'd get to woodside one way or the other. I have an unlimited metrocard, it's not as if I'm saving money. Just saving a bit of time on the dime of the person who's monthly got that seat check punched. Bear in mind I had already paid for my intermediate trip. I'll call it ethically ambiguous but far from theft of service. 

I don't really have a problem with the scenario you described. It's just an unavoidable flaw in our system. There's no such thing as 100% fare collection.

 

The first one I understand—the second one is a bit strange since you can transfer to the at either stop and the time between Flushing and Woodside is much longer than Great Neck-Little Neck.

 

How many cars' worth of fares can you check between Great Neck and Little Neck anyway? It's only a couple minutes.

Like itmaybeokay illustrated, a lot of W/B Flushing riders take the   to complete their journeys, so they'd love to save that time between Flushing and Woodside.

 

I've been on trains where they've closed the first two or three cars at Little Neck, presumably to make ticket checking easier.

 

 

Paradoxically, the LIRR would probably get more fares by lowering the insanely high city fares... most of the people i know pay for the CityTicket when it's available, but an off-peak from Little Neck is $7.

 

The thing about Little Neck and Douglaston is that the LIRR is actually more convenient than the bus, which takes at least a 20 or 30 minute walk to get to, before the waiting time.

Port Wash trains would be bursting at the seams with people if they had CityTicket available at all off-peak times. That high price barrier is somewhat necessary to control ridership at a level where we can actually collect the tickets.

 

And if you open up that can of worms on the Port Wash branch only, you'll have the Jamaica riders demanding their off-peak CityTicket prices as well. And you would not want to see thousands of and train riders piling onto the railroad.

 

Port Wash really just needs a separate fare zone structure like the New Haven line does, but with all stations being in the same zone. The zone system just doesn't work when Port Wash to Great Neck is $3 but Great Neck to Little Neck is $5.25.

 

One thing I just realized: how do you know where people were ticketed to? You've collected the tickets already, so you can't ask for them again, and I've never seen seatchecks on eastbounds.

Some conductors are ticket nazis so I'm mostly just retelling their stories here. But a few days ago on an E/B train, I had a girl get on at Bayside and she gave me a Bayside to Little Neck ticket. So I punch it and think nothing of it. We get to Great Neck and I open the doors and I see that girl get off. Obviously at that point it's too late to do anything, but I can't really blame her. Why should she pay almost double the price to go exactly 3 miles when you can do a 4.3 mile trip from Great Neck to Port Wash for only $3? Or a 17.3 mile trip from Rockville Centre to Babylon? The $3 intermediate fare is great in the Long Island fare zones, but Port Wash riders get hosed simply because most of their stations are in Queens.

 

And we do seatcheck on those morning E/B Port Wash trains. There are tons of reverse commuters getting on at Woodside and Flushing.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Some conductors are ticket nazis so I'm mostly just retelling their stories here. But a few days ago on an E/B train, I had a girl get on at Bayside and she gave me a Bayside to Little Neck ticket. So I punch it and think nothing of it. We get to Great Neck and I open the doors and I see that girl get off. Obviously at that point it's too late to do anything, but I can't really blame her. Why should she pay almost double the price to go exactly 3 miles when you can do a 4.3 mile trip from Great Neck to Port Wash for only $3? Or a 17.3 mile trip from Rockville Centre to Babylon? The $3 intermediate fare is great in the Long Island fare zones, but Port Wash riders get hosed simply because most of their stations are in Queens.

 

And we do seatcheck on those morning E/B Port Wash trains. There are tons of reverse commuters getting on at Woodside and Flushing.

lol... Maybe she got confused with all of the "Necks".... Great Neck would be the opposite of Little Neck. 

[bobtehpanda]

Port Wash really just needs a separate fare zone structure like the New Haven line does, but with all stations being in the same zone. The zone system just doesn't work when Port Wash to Great Neck is $3 but Great Neck to Little Neck is $5.25.

 

I do know that in other countries, they just bin the zoned fare system and go with a "pay by distance fare". The only downside to this is that this requires calculating a more complex fare system, since the set of stations 1, 2, 5, 10 miles away is different for every station.

 

Port Wash could potentially carry enough to be converted to an actual subway line at some point in time, but that is decades into the future if that's ever happening.

[Vistausss]

I do know that in other countries, they just bin the zoned fare system and go with a "pay by distance fare".

 

Well, I could enlighten you a bit how it's done here in The Netherlands and how it's done in Belgium.

 

The Dutch Railways (the biggest in The Netherlands) doesn't have a zone system but they calculate it by some weird kind of distance system that only few people seem to get. It's a fixed fare. The Belgium Railways also have that system.

Arriva, Veolia, Syntus and Connexxion (the other 4 in The Netherlands, Arriva is the second biggest, Veolia the third biggest, etc.) calculate it per kilometer. So you check in at station A and when you check out at station B it automatically knows how many kilometers you have travelled and you pay the calculated price. It's not a fixed fare. That same system is also used on all buses, subway and street cars in all of The Netherlands.

[qjtransitmaster]

I don't really have a problem with the scenario you described. It's just an unavoidable flaw in our system. There's no such thing as 100% fare collection.

 

Like itmaybeokay illustrated, a lot of W/B Flushing riders take the   to complete their journeys, so they'd love to save that time between Flushing and Woodside.

 

Port Wash trains would be bursting at the seams with people if they had CityTicket available at all off-peak times. That high price barrier is somewhat necessary to control ridership at a level where we can actually collect the tickets.

 

And if you open up that can of worms on the Port Wash branch only, you'll have the Jamaica riders demanding their off-peak CityTicket prices as well. And you would not want to see thousands of and train riders piling onto the railroad.

 

Port Wash really just needs a separate fare zone structure like the New Haven line does, but with all stations being in the same zone. The zone system just doesn't work when Port Wash to Great Neck is $3 but Great Neck to Little Neck is $5.25.

 

Some conductors are ticket nazis so I'm mostly just retelling their stories here. But a few days ago on an E/B train, I had a girl get on at Bayside and she gave me a Bayside to Little Neck ticket. So I punch it and think nothing of it. We get to Great Neck and I open the doors and I see that girl get off. Obviously at that point it's too late to do anything, but I can't really blame her. Why should she pay almost double the price to go exactly 3 miles when you can do a 4.3 mile trip from Great Neck to Port Wash for only $3? Or a 17.3 mile trip from Rockville Centre to Babylon? The $3 intermediate fare is great in the Long Island fare zones, but Port Wash riders get hosed simply because most of their stations are in Queens.

 

And we do seatcheck on those morning E/B Port Wash trains. There are tons of reverse commuters getting on at Woodside and Flushing.

ok a separate structure for port Washington can work