Ross: Sound Transit’s new fare enforcement policy is less ‘light touch,’ more out of touch

Sound Transit’s board is moving toward what is described as a “lighter touch” on fare enforcement.

According to Seattle Times reporter David Kroman, if you’re caught not paying, you’d get a warning. If you’re caught again not paying, you’d get a second warning. If you’re caught a third time not paying, you’d get a $50 fine, and so on.

The problem is, the non-payers don’t have to show ID, so there’s no way to keep track of who’s been warned.

This isn’t a light touch, this is out of touch, based on the idea that poor people shouldn’t pay for anything – which is ridiculous.

In 2005, we visited Niger, where my daughter was in the Peace Corps. Annual personal income in Niger that year was less than a dollar a day — poorest country in the world. And when we piled into our bush taxi, everybody had to pay the fare.

If you had a goat, you also paid a cargo fee to tie it to the roof rack. You might have to save up for a month to afford all this, but you were expected to pay. No money, no ride.

That needs to be the rule for Sound Transit.

Here’s the sign that should be posted at the stations: You need an Orca card to board this train. Riding without the proper fare is a criminal offense. If you need a subsidized card, one will be provided for you by calling this number. If you do not pay your fare, and do not have ID, you will be escorted off the train at the next stop. Thank you for keeping Sound Transit a safe, financially viable service.

Just like a conductor on Amtrak, fare enforcement officers should roam the cars checking fares and providing a security presence.

If that doesn’t work, it’s time to go full New York and put up gates and turnstiles, or go full Paris and arrest people who don’t pay. That almost happened to us once when we lost our ticket – they weren’t fooling around, and that’s in a for-real socialist country.

Why do fares have to be enforced? Because otherwise you’re saying it’s free, and if it’s free, it’s not only poor people who will stop paying. Even people who can afford it will stop paying. And why should they?

Pretty soon, the homeless will start living on the trains, and once that happens, the middle class will go back to their gasoline cars, global warming gets worse, Sound Transit becomes a constantly-moving tent city, taxpayers get tired of subsidizing a service they don’t use, until finally we just park the trains and pave over the tracks.

The bottom line is that we need to stop treating poor people like they’re four years old.

Everything comes at a cost. The way to help the poor is to give them money so they can pay for things, not make everything free.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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