Fix fare evasion by selling tickets
New figures obtained by Victorian Greens Leader Greg Barber show the infringements system for public transport tickets is not working, so we should replace it with staff who sell tickets.
“Ticket inspectors are unreliable and are getting worse. About 14% of the people they book don’t end up paying a fine; up from 11% two years ago. If our speed camera system had a 14% failure rate, it would be shut down tomorrow.”
“The Authorised Officer system doesn’t work. We should bring back the ‘Connies’ – the tram conductors who sell tickets – and put on more station staff. If someone is caught without a ticket, we should sell them one.”
“Other documents show that only 2% of tickets are checked by ticket inspectors, and of those, 2% of those are issued a fine. If we wanted to employ enough ticket inspectors to catch the 15% who the government says don’t have a ticket, we might as well put a conductor on every tram and a station master on every train station. Now, there’s an idea – sell people tickets.”
“The figures I received in Parliament show that of the reports made by Authorised Officers, 3% don’t even make it past the Quality Control Officer. 15% of Infringement Notices are reviewed by the Department of Transport and of those, 56% are knocked out – so a person querying an infringement has a better than even chance. Another 9% end up in the Infringements Court, of which 21% are waived. All up nearly 20,000 people had their public transport fine ‘forgiven’ in one year.”
The content above from the originating party/author(s) may be of a point-in-time nature and edited for style and length. The views and opinions expressed are those of the original author(s). View original.
AusPol.co Disclaimer