Law enforcement to crack down on NYC subway assaults, fare evasion: Cuomo

[bobtehpanda]

You don't need to look very far to find effective fare gates:

The best part is that ultra-wide fare gate at the left; the fact that you can only let strollers, wheelchairs, luggage, etc. through the emergency exit is just asking for fare abuse.

[Uncle Floyd Fan]

The effectiveness depends upon a persons ethics and their ability to jump / climb. Now, if a loud alarm can sense a climber or jumper, then the fare gate would be even more effective. A loud piercing alarm might scare off some fare evaders.

[MassTransitHonchkrow]

On 6/24/2019 at 9:44 PM, JeremiahC99 said:

Like the 7 inch paddle gates I suggested in the ESI topic?

If I may ask, what's a paddle gate? or is it another name for a full body turnstile?

[MassTransitHonchkrow]

2 hours ago, Uncle Floyd Fan said:

The effectiveness depends upon a persons ethics and their ability to jump / climb. Now, if a loud alarm can sense a climber or jumper, then the fare gate would be even more effective. A loud piercing alarm might scare off some fare evaders.

What a shame the MTA turned them off in 2014. It's kinda like someone wanted this to get out of hand.

[JeremiahC99]

1 minute ago, MassTransitHonchkrow said:

If I may ask, what's a paddle gate? or is it another name for a full body turnstile?

Yes. Something like this:

However, for New York, they need to make the doors full body instead of half height to somewhat stop people from jumping them.

[EastFlatbushLarry]

firstly, I'm an employee that honestly appreciate cuomo at least addressing the assaults on employees, regardless of union, title or seniority. personally, i taken the stance (as I've previously stated in other topics) over the past (now) 10 years that i will never address anyone regarding the non payment of the fare. i press F5 and keep it pushing. with that said, there's personnel in place to address fare beating. whether or not they (the powers that be) choose to utilize said personnel is management's issue/problem. whether or not said personnel is utilized effectively is a tactical problem... again, not my problem, so to speak. that's not what I'm qualified or paid to do. i can make suggestions like anyone else or offer opinions. unless they deploy officers, be it MTA police, NYPD, NY staties, MTA B&T, eagle team (MTA security) whatever... on every run on every bus line or at/in every station, there will never be an end to fare evasion. i understand that may not be the goal (an absolute end to fare beating) and if certain measures can be taken to significantly reduce the amount of fare evasion while preventing employee assaults, I'm all for it. to be honest, anything that can be done to reduce the amount of negative interactions between the knuckleheads and transit employees needs to happen. will it be effective? possibly. but doing nothing or tying things up due to rhetoric and expecting things to magically change is insanity. my issue regarding the subway system is the NYPD's efficiency. for example, NYPD officers being deployed at Euclid Avenue to deter fare beating is all well & good. however, people (criminals/fare beaters) aren't stupid. one stop away, grant avenue, there's rampant fare beating... has been for years. i can't remember the last officer I've seen there. the cops have to be willing to deploy/investigate trends. if incidents of fare beating drop at a station where it once was an issue, logic would dictate that it's migrated elsewhere... usually extremely closeby. do the homework, and be a constant deterrent. 

Edited June 26, 2019 by EastFlatbushLarry

[Lex]

6 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

You don't need to look very far to find effective fare gates:

The best part is that ultra-wide fare gate at the left; the fact that you can only let strollers, wheelchairs, luggage, etc. through the emergency exit is just asking for fare abuse.

The only thing I would suggest is making those gaps a bit narrower (assuming that enough space is still left for people to get through while open). That'll make it harder for people to attempt to slip through.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought of these gates. They're better than the turnstiles (especially those damn HEETs, which are a real nuisance to use on occasion, to say nothing of the day-to-day).

[MassTransitHonchkrow]

20 hours ago, JeremiahC99 said:

Yes. Something like this:

However, for New York, they need to make the doors full body instead of half height to somewhat stop people from jumping them.

I think expanding on existing technology (like full body turnstiles) might be more cost effective.

[bobtehpanda]

21 hours ago, MassTransitHonchkrow said:

I think expanding on existing technology (like full body turnstiles) might be more cost effective.

Just because the technology is in other places doesn't make it nonexistent.

The full-body turnstiles are a joke and riders hate them, they're slow and honestly feel unsafe.

[Maxwell179]

On 6/25/2019 at 11:00 PM, EastFlatbushLarry said:

firstly, I'm an employee that honestly appreciate cuomo at least addressing the assaults on employees, regardless of union, title or seniority. personally, i taken the stance (as I've previously stated in other topics) over the past (now) 10 years that i will never address anyone regarding the non payment of the fare. i press F5 and keep it pushing. with that said, there's personnel in place to address fare beating. whether or not they (the powers that be) choose to utilize said personnel is management's issue/problem. whether or not said personnel is utilized effectively is a tactical problem... again, not my problem, so to speak. that's not what I'm qualified or paid to do. i can make suggestions like anyone else or offer opinions. unless they deploy officers, be it MTA police, NYPD, NY staties, MTA B&T, eagle team (MTA security) whatever... on every run on every bus line or at/in every station, there will never be an end to fare evasion. i understand that may not be the goal (an absolute end to fare beating) and if certain measures can be taken to significantly reduce the amount of fare evasion while preventing employee assaults, I'm all for it. to be honest, anything that can be done to reduce the amount of negative interactions between the knuckleheads and transit employees needs to happen. will it be effective? possibly. but doing nothing or tying things up due to rhetoric and expecting things to magically change is insanity. my issue regarding the subway system is the NYPD's efficiency. for example, NYPD officers being deployed at Euclid Avenue to deter fare beating is all well & good. however, people (criminals/fare beaters) aren't stupid. one stop away, grant avenue, there's rampant fare beating... has been for years. i can't remember the last officer I've seen there. the cops have to be willing to deploy/investigate trends. if incidents of fare beating drop at a station where it once was an issue, logic would dictate that it's migrated elsewhere... usually extremely closeby. do the homework, and be a constant deterrent. 

trust me , the cops at Euclid do not care about people walking through the gate 😂😂

[EastFlatbushLarry]

1 hour ago, Maxwell179 said:

trust me , the cops at Euclid do not care about people walking through the gate 😂😂

oh, trust me i know. just because they're supposed to be there as a deterrent, doesn't mean they're actually being proactive and/or effective.

[Trainmaster5]

23 hours ago, EastFlatbushLarry said:

oh, trust me i know. just because they're supposed to be there as a deterrent, doesn't mean they're actually being proactive and/or effective.

I tried to post something similar about fumigation of trains at terminals and that seemed to go over many posters heads. Sometimes I wish they would stop fanning or swallowing the agency's press releases and come spend 8+ hours in the real world.  Carry on. 

[Mtatransit]

Like like said before, maybe we need a vancouver model.

 

For the Subway

Tap in

Honor system during the ride (get caught not tapping in is a $300 fine)

and tap out. (if you did not tap in fares will double)

 

For bus is

Tap in through any door

Random inspection during anypoint in transit (not tapping will incur a $300 fine) 

 

Something needs to be done about fare envasion. I am literally seeing it withmy own two eyes every single day. If I pay my fare, others should too.

[Uncle Floyd Fan]

On 6/30/2019 at 12:17 AM, Mtatransit said:

For the Subway

Tap in

Honor system during the ride (get caught not tapping in is a $300 fine)

and tap out. (if you did not tap in fares will double)

Tap in - yes, I agree. No need to tap out. I'd prefer to keep the NYC subways a 'pay at point of entry' system, only. The honor system seems better suited for a place like Vancouver or Berlin, not NYC. 

[Lex]

48 minutes ago, Uncle Floyd Fan said:

Tap in - yes, I agree. No need to tap out. I'd prefer to keep the NYC subways a 'pay at point of entry' system, only. The honor system seems better suited for a place like Vancouver or Berlin, not NYC. 

Tapping out doesn't necessarily mean paying again. All it would really be needed for is confirmation of certain data (how much needs to be taken off, points of origin and destination, trip time and distance, etc.).

[Uncle Floyd Fan]

I gotta say I'm not a fan of 'tapping out'. I know it's not a matter of 'paying again', but it's the principle of being tracked that bothers me. What happens if there is a malfunction while tapping out? Will the commuter get a fine? Also, isn't the NYC subway a 'pay to enter' system (for one price w/o regard to the distance traveled) as opposed to a 'pay by zone' system? Do we really want the MTA building in zones for subway travel?

In a city that in the past has prided itself on a literary, film noir, civil-liberty type of a right to anonymity in a locale of 8 million+, do we really want to tell a govt agency where we are traveling at all times? Granted, EZ Pass (for motorists) and mass surveillance have made us more subject to being tracked. However, as this thread was started as way to reduce fare evasion, let's stop the fare evaders at the point-of-entry into the subway system, and not give the MTA license to track our every move. We should not have to worry about this tracking data being misused by any govt agency or any tech company.

 

[Connie]

As long as Cuomo uses subway funding as a political tool, fare beating is a non-issue - it's a laughably small problem. 

[RR503]

On 7/1/2019 at 11:10 PM, Uncle Floyd Fan said:

I gotta say I'm not a fan of 'tapping out'. I know it's not a matter of 'paying again', but it's the principle of being tracked that bothers me. What happens if there is a malfunction while tapping out? Will the commuter get a fine? Also, isn't the NYC subway a 'pay to enter' system (for one price w/o regard to the distance traveled) as opposed to a 'pay by zone' system? Do we really want the MTA building in zones for subway travel?

In a city that in the past has prided itself on a literary, film noir, civil-liberty type of a right to anonymity in a locale of 8 million+, do we really want to tell a govt agency where we are traveling at all times? Granted, EZ Pass (for motorists) and mass surveillance have made us more subject to being tracked. However, as this thread was started as way to reduce fare evasion, let's stop the fare evaders at the point-of-entry into the subway system, and not give the MTA license to track our every move. We should not have to worry about this tracking data being misused by any govt agency or any tech company.

Tracking of origin/destination flows is already done. MTA uses AFC data to figure out where people may be traveling, while others (the census, NYMTC, etc) rely either on surveys of workers or information provided by employers to construct O/D models for commutation. None of these systems are all that accurate; some assume that our next station entry is at the station from which we exited after our last entry, while others fail to capture the significant non-commutation travel flows extant in the city. I understand a want for privacy, but there are some pretty big upsides to accurate O/D tracking, whether that be vastly more rider-attuned service planning, better demand and crowding models, a better understanding of rider behavior and demand elasticities, or simply better accounting of station usage. I understand concerns about privacy, but the fact of the matter is that your trips are already trackable (if they really wanted to, CCTV reels could theoretically be used to match entrances and exits from the system), and that information on your trip has been repeatedly established to be in the category of "things that are within the bounds of reason for a transit agency to track." 

[Uncle Floyd Fan]

45 minutes ago, RR503 said:

Tracking of origin/destination flows is already done. MTA uses AFC data to figure out where people may be traveling, while others (the census, NYMTC, etc) rely either on surveys of workers or information provided by employers to construct O/D models for commutation. None of these systems are all that accurate; some assume that our next station entry is at the station from which we exited after our last entry, while others fail to capture the significant non-commutation travel flows extant in the city. I understand a want for privacy, but there are some pretty big upsides to accurate O/D tracking, whether that be vastly more rider-attuned service planning, better demand and crowding models, a better understanding of rider behavior and demand elasticities, or simply better accounting of station usage. I understand concerns about privacy, but the fact of the matter is that your trips are already trackable (if they really wanted to, CCTV reels could theoretically be used to match entrances and exits from the system), and that information on your trip has been repeatedly established to be in the category of "things that are within the bounds of reason for a transit agency to track." 

Oh, quite true about the benefits of point to point tracking. However, I'm still weary of such detailed, almost personalized surveillance by the government. I know we're all being watched by CCTV's and the like (especially if one is a motorist crossing an MTA bridge or tunnel). But still, I don't think we should ignore such surveillance either. Do we really want to make it that easy for the govt to watch people who wish to go about their day without every step being watched?....I mean, its almost like a science fiction nightmare come to life.

Also, will the big upsides of tracking for the public's benefit really be realized? I tend to doubt that.

[Trainmaster5]

22 hours ago, Uncle Floyd Fan said:

Oh, quite true about the benefits of point to point tracking. However, I'm still weary of such detailed, almost personalized surveillance by the government. I know we're all being watched by CCTV's and the like (especially if one is a motorist crossing an MTA bridge or tunnel). But still, I don't think we should ignore such surveillance either. Do we really want to make it that easy for the govt to watch people who wish to go about their day without every step being watched?....I mean, its almost like a science fiction nightmare come to life.

Also, will the big upsides of tracking for the public's benefit really be realized? I tend to doubt that.

The tap out provision isn't necessary unless you are thinking about a zone based system IMO. As RR503 said there are other ways of gathering that information.  Carry on. 

[RR503]

On 7/11/2019 at 4:13 PM, Uncle Floyd Fan said:

Oh, quite true about the benefits of point to point tracking. However, I'm still weary of such detailed, almost personalized surveillance by the government. I know we're all being watched by CCTV's and the like (especially if one is a motorist crossing an MTA bridge or tunnel). But still, I don't think we should ignore such surveillance either. Do we really want to make it that easy for the govt to watch people who wish to go about their day without every step being watched?....I mean, its almost like a science fiction nightmare come to life.

Also, will the big upsides of tracking for the public's benefit really be realized? I tend to doubt that.

Surveillance certainly isn't to be ignored, but it's also not as if this is revolutionary. Public spaces beget interactions and exposure, and for years they've been exploited by people good and bad to gather information about others. All that's really changed over the last few years is facility: we don't need someone to tail a person of interest these days, as cameras can do the work for us. Those technologies happen to scale better, which raises valid concerns over mass surveillance, but otherwise the difference is merely technological. This certainly applies to tap in/tap out. People already has plenty of means through which they can track specific people, albeit ones which do not lend themselves to mass data collection. But I really don't think that mass collection of O/D data is a bad thing. Beyond being useful for transit planners (and it really is useful -- one of the major challenges with the bus redesign efforts I'm told is tracking O/D effectively given spotty AFC data), it's also a datapoint that could be provided in anonymized form (which I believe is how AFC is collected anyway) to people researching transportation generally. Imagine how much more informed and productive conversations about route changes on this forum would be if we had that info, for example. 

[Deucey]

On 6/18/2019 at 7:55 PM, Uncle Floyd Fan said:

While I can't speak about the Bx12 as I've only been on Pelham Pkwy occasionally - headways of 2 min in rush hour should work with a normal size bus (40-45 ft).

Umm, the Bx12 SBS runs roughly every two minutes and bunches even when the Artics are packed worse than a 40ft S40/44 going to St George.

Bx12 local runs less frequently and still has overcrowded conditions.

Only time 40 footers work on Bx12 is snow days.