Curley has new idea for light rail fare enforcement as Seattle ranks #1 for ridership: ‘No standing, only seats’

The Seattle light rail took the top spot in the U.S. for ridership in April, according to Axios Seattle. While light rail and streetcar ridership totaled 4.8 million trips in the Seattle area, KIRO host John Curley pointed to a lack of fare enforcement.

Curley provided his own idea for enforcing fares on the light rail: No standing allowed, and only seats that fold down with a ticket.

“Imagine this on a bus, you get on the bus, you got your little stupid card that you paid for, and you swipe it, or you touch onto something, and then the seat folds down, and you can sit down,” he explained on “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “There’s no standing, zero standing. It’s only the seats. So, if you get on and you don’t have a little card, whoop, there’s no place for you to sit — whoosh, out the back.”

Paid seats better than turnstiles for light rail fare enforcement?

Curley said his idea is better than spending money on turnstiles that people jump over.

“You get on the bus, there’s no place to sit if you don’t have the little card that folds the seat down,” he reiterated.

“I get it. I would just argue that the mechanical folding seats would cost more than the turnstiles,” KIRO producer Joe Wallace countered.

“No, because you can jump over the turnstiles,” Curley responded. “I’m trying to make it so that the person … there’s no reason to get on the bus, because if you don’t have the card, the seat won’t fold down, you can’t sit.”

“Put a force field on the turnstiles that electrocutes you if you don’t pay,” Wallace quipped.

When asked if people could just manually force the seats down, Curley responded, “Yeah, and then why don’t you just have a bunch of people come up with clubs and just beat each other. Well, they do that already.”

Axios Seattle noted that while Seattle was No. 1 in light rail ridership, cities where residents rely heavily on subway systems, like Boston and New York, far outpaced Seattle.

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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