The bus driver's union doesn't want drivers engaging in fare enforcement -- they're hired to drive, not to get into physical altercations. This was especially after a bus driver was stabbed to death in 2008 in a fare dispute.
There are fare enforcement teams that partner up with cops to catch people evading the fare, that are trained for this kind of thing. But obviously the chances are miniscule you'd ever encounter them on any single bus trip, and all that's going to happen is you get a summons with a $50-100 fine. So it's quite rational not to pay.
And I mean, as a bus rider, the last thing I want is my bus being delayed by 15 minutes while the driver stops and waits for the cops to come to evict someone who didn't pay. I just want to get to where I'm going.
So how do they handle it in the cities you've lived in? How do they kick them off without putting the driver in danger and without massively delaying the bus for everyone else? (And to be clear, we're talking about buses, not trains where monitoring entry and exit turnstiles is vastly more realistic.)
In the subway in NYC I see some people go out the emergency exits (alarm sounds but who cares?) while other people are queued up waiting for somebody to come out the emergency exit so they can come in. It’s a kind of antisocial social behavior like torrenting pirate files.
No it's not, because the cops get there and the bus already left. Or the cops wait around but the bus is stuck in traffic and another call comes in so the cops give up and leave. Trying to pick some arbitrary bus stop somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes ahead based on how fast they think the bus is going and how long some cop (and which one?) will take to get from where they are to that bus stop depending on traffic is just a recipe for missing each other. And cops are a scarcer resource than buses.
Like, if there's a serious crime is being committed in a moving vehicle then sure they'll have someone constantly monitoring and redirecting in order to intercept. It's possible, with high enough priority. But someone not paying a fare does not have that priority.
And the point is the person refuses to get off the bus right away. They stay on it till they get to their destination and then get off.
The most visible enforcement I’ve seen was in Rome. They have people issuing tickets on the bus at random.
It was noticeable in that as a tourist, it seemed like a chill place, but there are lots of police of various stripes and they seemed very serious when enforcing things.
I live in Italy and this is common on the trains and busses. I ride the train a lot and have my ticket checked maybe 1:10 times. The tickets are cheap (~2 euro) and the fines are high (50-200 euro), so it makes sense to buy them. I have seen people get fined though.
The bus driver's union doesn't want drivers engaging in fare enforcement -- they're hired to drive, not to get into physical altercations. This was especially after a bus driver was stabbed to death in 2008 in a fare dispute.
There are fare enforcement teams that partner up with cops to catch people evading the fare, that are trained for this kind of thing. But obviously the chances are miniscule you'd ever encounter them on any single bus trip, and all that's going to happen is you get a summons with a $50-100 fine. So it's quite rational not to pay.
And I mean, as a bus rider, the last thing I want is my bus being delayed by 15 minutes while the driver stops and waits for the cops to come to evict someone who didn't pay. I just want to get to where I'm going.
So how do they handle it in the cities you've lived in? How do they kick them off without putting the driver in danger and without massively delaying the bus for everyone else? (And to be clear, we're talking about buses, not trains where monitoring entry and exit turnstiles is vastly more realistic.)