Sound Transit picks social justice over fare enforcement

There was a curious article this week about Sound Transit’s decision to use a “proof-of-payment system” over turnstiles at their light rail stations. The claims of Sound Transit just don’t add up and I suspect it’s because they’re picking “social equity” over fare enforcement.

RELATED: Sound Transit loses more than $550K annually to fare jumpers

In The Seattle Times, Sound Transit spokesperson Geoff Patrick (the one who keeps CEO Peter Rogoff from the media) claimed they chose proof-of-payment because they are cheaper and better at preventing fare-evaders.

Are they cheaper? That claim is spurious. Sound Transit’s argument is that if the agency used turnstiles, they’d need staffers posted at each station to handle any issues that arise. Indeed, in London, for example, they have at least one staffer at every entrance and exit as the machines don’t always accept the tickets. But is that much of a cost? You wouldn’t need as many fare enforcement officers riding the trains. You could reassign them to be stationed at the turnstiles. And, you’d be preventing fewer fare evaders from riding light rail for free, which should make up for any added revenue.

You see, according to Patrick, they only check about 8 percent of riders per month. That means you have a 92 percent chance of getting away with riding for free, though they claim only 4 percent of those who are checked are evading fares.

I’m not sure this is an accurate reflection of the people who ride. As someone who takes light rail semi-frequently, I almost always see people riding for free. How do I know? Well, I see them running onto the light rail without tapping an ORCA card. There’s almost always one person walking each train asking for money, which I assume means he hasn’t paid to get on. And there’s usually at least one person who, when checked by an officer, hasn’t paid and gets kicked off.

But if you’re only checking 8 percent of riders, how do you know how many are actually paying the fares? To say it’s cheaper means you know how much you’d likely get if you checked everyone.

Bizarrely, Patrick claims that turnstiles would lead to more people evading fares, arguing they’d have to staff the turnstiles to “avoid high rates of fare evasion through people jumping turnstiles.”

So the turnstiles lead to high rates of fare evasion, but a 92 percent chance of never engaging with a fare enforcement officers leads to less fare evasion? That makes no sense. If they installed turnstiles and there were a rash of evaders hopping over them, doesn’t that mean they’re just currently using light rail without paying or jumping over turnstiles? Do turnstiles just magically turn people into fare evaders? That’s nonsense.

So what’s this about? I suspect they are taking an institutional position that they’re OK with scores of people using the service for free if they’re low-income or homeless.

Last week, when a Metro audit came out indicating up to 30 percent of fare evaders were homeless, there was an outcry because King County’s mission is to “improve social equity.” King County Executive Dow Constantine serves on the Sound Transit board. So it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s doing the bare minimum to mostly catch fare evaders who actually can pay while doing what they can to make sure they’re letting everyone else go with low chances of being caught.

That may be a good deal for the people using the service for free, but is a bad deal for taxpayers subsidizing it.

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