I took economics in my college days and this is a very stark example of people who are bad at economics.
Everything costs money. You can relate everything to a dollar amount in business. From labor, to time spent, to equipment and it's use, the cost of fuel for transportation etc. Knowing the full cost of selling an item including the time spent making it, the supplies used, the failure rate where you need to replace it at no cost to the customer, everything should be able to be factored in. From there you can set the cost of something, taking the overall price for all involved aspects of creating the thing, and adding some profit margin.
Spending a dollar to make a dime is adequate. If your economic costs are a dollar and you sell the thing for $1.10 then you make money. Sell enough and that's business.
With all that being said, the cost of transit fares should be set with the expectation that there will be unavoidable times where people will ride for free. Whether that's because of gate jumping, or other fare avoidance, or that someone simply entered into the system in an unexpected way that bypassed the fare system, or if it's simply that a fare was given out as courtesy, it's all baked into the fares that everyone pays.
The only time chasing down the people intentionally skipping their fare, makes any sense is if that amount of loss because of fare skipping is significantly above the expected losses from fare skipping. Googling it, the NYC transit system has a gross revenue around 5.8 billion dollars. Which means the amount of revenue to be gained by chasing down ~$100k in losses is around 0.0017%
If, the process of chasing down the fares costs over 1000% more than the fares are worth to do it, then the simple answer is: don't do it. That's basic economics.
In addition, they garner so much negative publicity in that process that they damage their reputation needlessly, which may lead to additional spending to improve their public image.
Finally, if you don't have more than 0.002% of your earnings set aside for losses like this, then you shouldn't be running the business. In reality, that number should be much, much higher than 0.002%.
To conclude: the whole thing is stupid from the outset. Tracking the losses makes sense, so you know what the figures are. Once you know the figures, crunching the numbers to see if pursuing action against the perpetrators is trivial, and should show a very clear picture of whether to take action or not.
In this case, no action was appropriate. Instead, they spent $150 million to get their public image ruined chasing after a bit more than $100k, and they will likely spend $100M more to try to repair their public image.
The losers in this situation? The people.
They're not bad at economics, they're simply lying about what their goal was. That $150mil didn't just blip out of existence like in a video game, it ended up in people's pockets.
I would bet good money that many of those pockets belonged to friends and family members. Neoliberals have been using this tactic for decades as a way to turn public funds into private profits.
Something I read in discussions about San Francisco Bay Area transit which I did not see in your comment: perception of fare jumpers being responsible for an outsize proportion of antisocial behavior lead to commuters feeling unsafe.
For the record, I support UBI and like the sound of free transit.
That's more of a social issue than anything.
It may be the case that those who are unable to pay fares, are also those that are likely to have no income or homeless or something. The "dregs" of society if you will.
I don't want to dive into this too deeply, because homelessness and poverty are another issue than what I was driving at, but it is something that we're not doing well with and it's something that needs to be addressed. I also support UBI and free transit would be nice but I don't think that's going to happen unless things change significantly. Even UBI is a long shot as is. Giving away services for free to everyone like transit access is basically anti-capitalist and a difficult thing to persuade others (especially conservative leaning individuals - specifically the capitalists) to agree to.
Regardless, there may be some association between the so-called "dregs" of society and criminal and antisocial behaviour. I understand drug addiction and how it starts well enough to know that people who are in -for all intents and purposes- "hopeless" situations, are at high risk of drug seeking behavior and looking to drugs to relieve their mental suffering. Of course this can lead to a whole slew of other issues, but it can be caused by social factors including unemployment, job loss, and homelessness. It can go the other way, that drugs lead to homelessness, job loss and unemployment (among other things), but that's neither here nor there. The fact is, antisocial, criminal and addict behaviors are often correlated to the poor, destitute, homeless, etc. Whether that correlation is accurate or not is up for debate, since it is difficult to keep any records for those that are displaced, nevermind records that are good enough to really say such correlations are fact. Nevertheless, the general viewpoint of the average person is that the homeless/drug addicted/criminals are going to more often be the ones doing bad things, such as dodging fares. Again, that may or may not be true, but it is the perception that matters in this case.
In the absence of any evidence, it is hard to say that the antisocial types are the majority of fare dodgers. The intent that I derived from the limited information provided by the op, was that they were seeking to end fare dodging. There was no other significant stated purpose for the investigation. In that context, pushing forward with the investigation, given the economics of the situation, the decision was ill conceived, and should have died in the meeting where it was proposed. If the intent was to "clean up" the transit from undesirables doing antisocial things like the example you posted, then that should have been clear in the statements of intent by the NYPD and NY transit authority folks.
I don't have the context for it to say that was one of their stated intents, as I'm not a person living in New York State, nevermind NYC, and I have no reason to, nor desire to follow the happenings in New York. So if the understanding I have is wrong, I would invite someone to please correct me.
The perspective I was seeking to explain in my previous post was that of an economist (in a very general sense - I have economic background and understanding, though my understanding would be massively overshadowed by anyone with a major in economics), and explain not only that their reasoning was flawed, but that the idea was faulty from the outset.
Unless there was an alterior motive that I'm not aware of, the people running the show over there, and anyone responsible for making this happen, should be fired, since they basically just took $150M and set it on fire for no reason whatsoever.
You also neglected to factor in the economic benefit of people taking a trip they don't pay for vs not taking that trip at all because they can't pay. Those people might be taking the train to work, which increases economic activity and value of the entire system, or to school, which is an investment into the future of the system, or to do shopping or eating at restaurants, both of which add value to the system. But I'm also one of those people that think public transit should be free since giving people the ability to freely move around an area can only have net positive outcomes.
Subway fare dodgers steal $285 million per year, so spending $150 million to try to stop or prevent that in the future isn't that unreasonable. It turns out to have not paid off because they only caught people who owe an equivalent to $100k.
I imagine that they assumed the increased surveillance would prevent some unknown amount of future fare dodging which can't be quantified because the overall trend seems to be increasing.
it's a nicely written post and although I do believe the costs made to reduce the faire skippers is out of proportion I also believe you should mention another important fact.
That is that the more money that is being put in to prevent it the lower the damage will be. A good example is tax evasion. The bigger the chance of getting caught is, the less people who will attempt it. Thus if you reduce the preventive measures this will automatically go up. But yea again I do not believe 150m weighs up to 100k.
Actually I might've forgotten another factor. I believe and please do correct me if I'm wrong. Is that a lot of misbehaving people on the trains also skip the train fair. So it be 2 birds in one stone, safety and revenue.
The struggle here is that you're talking about money earned after the fact and not including game theory. It would be a tough experiment to conduct, but say you spent $150 million to save $104. What if you didn't spend that $150M? Would you have an extra $40k in the bank? Or would the $104M in losses actually end up more like $1.2B because, slowly, everyone realised there was no reason to pay a fare?
I don't know what the case is here, but I imagine some economists have determined that $150M is enough to balance between actually getting people to ride the subway (increasing fare will eventually drive down revenue) and a substantial enough threat to prevent jumpers (no cops in the way means tons more jumpers).
104k loss, not 104m. It would take 150 years of no change to be worth the tax money wasted.
The fact you didn't even realize the difference factor of 1000x between the two values is enough to show your argumentation is worthless :D
This is so serendipitous, but the same day this post hit Lemmy, a Hidden Brain podcast episode titled "Broken Windows" started playing. The topic of this podcast hits home pretty hard with regards to how the NYPD managed transit fares in this story.
Broken Windows refers to a theory proposed in 1982 following the eponymously titled experiment. In this experiment, researchers placed 2 cars near the same area in Palo Alto, California and watched to see what happened. One of the cars was new, while the other was poorly maintained and old. Both were left unlocked.
The public started interacting with the old car, opening it, stealing from it, and eventually trashing it. The new car was left intact.
That was until the experiment's author broke the window of the new car. People started noticing that this car wasn't so new or maintained, and they started to steal from and vandalize it too.
This Broken Windows theory led to a lot of police reform in the ensuing 80s and 90s, to the point where Rudy Giuliani picked up the theory so his NYPD could follow it.
The idea is that where disorder lies in society, those bad actors who seed more disorder tend to go. Ironically this Hidden Brain episode also talks about rider fares like this article.
So, even though disadvantaged people may skip the fare for a public good out of dire need or poor life circumstances, the thinking is that intentionally chaotic people definitely skip the fare and seek it out. The idea is to catch bad actors who have other, larger crimes registered on their profile by focusing on the smaller ones.
I'm wondering if, in your calculus here, if you might include the offset damage done to society if more bad actors are caught in initiatives like this. Food for thought.
Good news! We’ve found the missing $104,000! It only took us $150,000,000 to do so! The remaining -$149,869,000 is left for you and your future children to pay! Remember, vote Republican so we can continue to fleece you for all that you’re worth!
GOP backs the blue, they support NYPD and wholly endorse thier actions.
vote Republican so we can continue to fleece you for all that you’re worth
Oh buddy, I've got bad news for you, NYC is democrats all the way down.
Democrats run on being better than republicans, that doesn't mean they are good...
I doubt that the cops are generally democrats.
Democrats aren’t republicans.
I don’t like salad but I dislike turd salad even more.
(Don’t actually vote republican unless you enjoy paying more for big government). Democrats actually care about balancing the budget. Republicans are the party of fiscal irresponsibility.
The problem is, not many people grow out of their right-wing childhoods. As the saying goes, once you start earning a paycheck, you start voting democrat!
Some politician should be in prison for this
Despite the recent uptick in fascist sympathy wanting you to think otherwise, politicians making political decisions you disagree with is not actually a jailable offense.
Some politician should lose re-election for this.
Grossly mismanaging public funds should at least involve some kind of disciplinary action.
I think jail is a little extreme unless the funds went directly into the politician’s pocket. But some kind of heavy fine, or removal from office for egregious or repeat offenses seems entirely reasonable. Do we really want to encourage politicians to waste millions in tax payer money hunting down a fraction of that in fines.
They must have known who had outstanding fines and how much it would total to be. Did no one bother to open excel for this whole fiasco?
442 years of overtime. Very bigly. However, this story came from the New York post and I trust no part of it for that reason alone.
The New York Post being the first result when you search doesn’t mean it’s their story. Gothamist covered it first and is even directly cited by the NYP article.
Much of what the NYP covers is true-ish. You just gotta find the original source.
TIL that a yearly Ticket for NY costs over 1500$ whereas a yearly Ticket for the whole of Germany costs 588€... Seems legit...
I don't know about NYC or Germany, but a yearly ticket that covers the Helsinki metropolitan is 993.70€.
$1500 is about 1398.30 euros
I thought paying $900 a year for my transit pass was ludicrous, and mine at least comes out of my income pre-tax thanks to an agreement with the city. $1500 a year is almost silly, no wonder people are dodging fare.
The L.A. train system (at least when I lived there) had no turnstiles. It was mostly on the honor system. They did have transit cops that would randomly check to see if you had a ticket, but there weren't hundreds of them or anything. You'd see one on occasion.
Somehow the trains are still running.
That's how it works in Europe, at least in cities I've visited (mostly Germany).
If we'd see public transit as a public good, rather than something that's supposed to be a profit center, maybe we could be a little smarter about it...
Yes! In Luxembourg it's just free. All busses, trains, funicular, trams, in the whole country, for everyone. Great way to encourage less car use, more active lifestyles, and improve quality of life while also helping the economy.
But if this simply deters fare jumpers for the next fourteen hundred years, then it will have nearly paid for itself!
Nobody really considers the long game on these things.
babyslime reblogged snussyeating
What an exciting time to be alive 😄
Is that a sum of the salaries of police officers stationed in subways? I don't see how else they could spend that much
Edit: I now see that it says extra, so how?
I could easily see them spending 150 million to create a “task force”
just speculation
Consultants to make the plan, contractors to do the preliminary work. Throw in a reorg and/or change in scope and you’re there
It's probably the overtime they paid officers to stand there and play Candy Crush. They will literally stand near the door, without helping, while someone is struggling with a stroller or shopping bags.
You'd trust a pig to touch your stroller or shopping bags?
Huh, I was just watching a Cash Jordan YT Video last night about the NYC Subway system and in it he said that the MTA estimates its losing 690 Million dollars per year because of people dodging fares.
That's a staggeringly high number but based on volume of people fare dodging in the background of the video I can almost believe it.
The way the original post was written it could be they spent $150 million and the people they caught owed $100k. So they didn’t catch everyone and both statistics can be right.
The MTA lost $690 million due to ALL dodgers, including tolls and railroad fares.
$315 million lost in bus fares
$285 million lost in subway fares
$46 million lost in bridge and tunnel tolls
$44 million lost in railroad fares
So yeah, I'm guessing the 104k is the ones they caught, which makes the narrative that the police aren't unnecessary they are just bad at their jobs...
I saw that the NY transit system made 5.8 billion last year. The 150 million has nothing to do with fare jumpers and everything to do with forcing most people to pay. If it was well known that there is no punishment for not paying, why would anyone pay?
There's lots of little stuff I could "get away with" but font because I feel like it would harm others. I donate, I return carts, I try to clean up, I'm happy to pay taxes that help people who need it, and just hate how it gets misappropriated for war and the rich. I give tips, I try to be polite and helpful in games, with people online, with people in person, etc.
Not everyone wants to get away with something. Lots of us understand we're part of a community and if we all slack off completely it'll fail. So I do what I can, I purchase works I already read but enjoy and want author to make money off of, etc, as long as I can afford it.
Do I still pirate stuff? Of fucking course I do. However, if it's within my means and I enjoy the product, I feel like I should give back. He'll, it's hard for me to use restrooms in restaurants without at least buying something from the dollar menu or something.
Can someone please post the source of this statement?
They can't. The headline is misleading if not completely invented. The city lost $690 million to fair evasion in 2022 and likely a similiar number in 2023. Source https://www.transittalent.com/articles/index.cfm?story=New_York_MTA_Fare_Evasion_5-17-2023
The key word is caught.
They are comparing the ENTIRE COST of fare enforcement to the individuals actually caught and fined for fare evasion (and even then only for individual trips when they likely were evading fares for some time). It ignores the massive amount lost to fare evasion, and all the people that paid because they wished not to be caught.
WAIT, I MISREAD THAT. I INITIALLY READ IT AS THEY WASTED 50K PUNISHING 100K, NOT 149,900K
$150,000,000
RuLe oF LaW must be enforced, peasants be damned
And don't think you didn't contribute to that $150 mil just because you don't live in New York. NYPD received $500 mil from the federal ARP Act.
I want my two dollars!
The cruelty is the point.
Are people really so dumb they believe that's a decision directly form the police department? No wonder you suck at elections...
So we know someone's okay with laws being broken, but we're just not sure how much crime this person's cool with. If you want more crime than I do, and you're thus wanting reduced safety for everyone, are you then really different from 'muh raghts' anti-vax weenies who want to carry Whooping Mumps at will and kill my grandma?
and you're thus
Lol alright bud
deport who
The 95,000 poor people I presume
They could deport them to Rwanda. That might work.
I agree, do we begin with the cops or the people who would rather use their taxes to hurt people? I'm good either way.
