Proof-of-Payment (POP) vs. Traditional Ticket Collection

ElectricTraction wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2024 7:39 pm POP is widely accepted as the standard for transit fare payment/checking outside of the dinosaurs in the Northeast.

You keep making this statement in various ways, but I'd like to see some evidence that POP is a significantly common payment system anywhere in North America. Aside from MUNI, I can't think of a major system that uses it. What are some other examples of non-dinosaur agencies using proof of payment?

Houston's light rail used ground based POP, but they did appear to profile who they checked.

If you are well dressed and looked like you were going to an office, the inspection teams pretty much ignored you. Everyone in a hoodie or who looked like a student, they would ask to see a ticket....

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Off the top of my head - systems I know of that use POP with travelling inspectors:
Baltimore (MD MTA) light rail
Seattle light rail system
St. Louis light rail system
Portland MAX
Cleveland uses a mix (fare gates at major hubs only; POP everywhere else).

While none of them are the size of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Washington, I'd certainly call them significant systems.

NJT RiverLine is POP isn't it? Several/many NYC Bus routes, designated SBS routes are also POP. The bus system as a whole is an abomination of rampant fare evasion at the moment but the SBS busses were working great before Covid. They still work great but the passengers suck.

HenryAlan wrote: ↑Fri Oct 11, 2024 8:52 amYou keep making this statement in various ways, but I'd like to see some evidence that POP is a significantly common payment system anywhere in North America. Aside from MUNI, I can't think of a major system that uses it. What are some other examples of non-dinosaur agencies using proof of payment?

From Patrick O'Hara's incredible work on the subject:

Coaster, Metrolink, Caltrain, Sounder, West Coast Express, NM RailRunner, UTA Frontrunner, and SunRail. NJTransit’s Hudson-Bergen, RiverLine, and Newark light rail systems also use PoP, as well as the MTA’s Select Bus Service (SBS)

So light rail systems and a bunch of heavy rail systems that no one uses. Got it.

lensovet wrote: ↑Fri Oct 11, 2024 10:19 pmSo light rail systems and a bunch of heavy rail systems that no one uses. Got it.

So you're just trying to distract from the actual topic at hand, which is how much more efficient POP is. Just because the large Northeastern dinosaurs have been dragging their feet on modernization doesn't somehow justify not modernizing.

No, I'm making a point that you just choose to willfully ignore. Which is that POP leaves money on the table, which isn't an issue for a system that doesn't make any money in the first place.

Given the level of fare evasion that exists on the systems that don't use POP, it would seem that money's being left on the table there as well.

Perhaps the better question to ask is "how much is being spent on trying to capture that missing revenue vs the amount of revenue that's being missed?" I think the argument that's being made is that while the POP method does leave some money on the table, the costs of enforcement are significantly lower, and the overall ability of the system to cover its operating costs is better as a result. Maybe one could look at available data from someplace like APTA to get an idea of what percentage of operating costs are recovered at the farebox and compare that with the type of fare collection method that gets used to see if there's a difference that aligns with the stated hypothesis.

I'd also hardly call Caltrain a "heavy-rail system that nobody uses" - it may not be on a par with Metro-North in terms of ridership (7 million riders in 2022 vs 66 million), it's still a significant sized system.

lensovet wrote: ↑Fri Oct 11, 2024 11:06 pmNo, I'm making a point that you just choose to willfully ignore. Which is that POP leaves money on the table, which isn't an issue for a system that doesn't make any money in the first place.

None of these systems make any money. You're completely ignoring the reality of the situation. I'm using LIRR as an example, as Patrick O'Hara has published detailed analyses of their fare collection system. They spend $247M/year collecting tickets, and they don't even get all of them, so some end up getting "saved". Even if you assume that his numbers are overly optimistic, as you'll still need a conductor or two to operate larger/busier trains safely, plus the cost of fare enforcement, the numbers are still overwhelming.

Let's assume you only save 70% on conductors and fare enforcement instead of the 90% that Patrick O'Hara suggests. That's still $172.9M plus overhead. Let's be generous and assume that the current system only has a ticket re-use rate of 5% or $28.44M in addition to the $568.8M in farebox revenue. Adding the current $28.44M to the $172.9M that they could easily save on conductors is $201.34M, which is likely a very conservative number. Another very conservative estimate for LE and uncollectable fines would be to subtract $30M, leaving $171.34M in savings.

With POP, if the penalty is 10x the fare, you only have to catch 10% of the evaders to break even. Either you have a ton of evaders, catch them 10% of the time and you break even, or you set the penalty high enough and catch them frequently enough that fare evasion is very low. Either way, the railroad wins.

So the $171.34M in savings, which again is a very conservative number, and the real number is likely higher is only the direct savings assuming nothing else changes.

The bigger and more important change is that with OPTO it is much easier to add off-peak service that would have been excessively expensive before and build more of an off-peak ridership. This uses existing infrastructure that is underutilized about 18 hours of the day and all weekend so the marginal operating are relatively low. Depending on how the numbers shake out, you either add a whole bunch more service at relatively low cost/loss, which is a beneficial public service, helps economic growth of the area, etc, or they could actually be profitable on a marginal basis.

jamoldover wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2024 3:45 pmGiven the level of fare evasion that exists on the systems that don't use POP, it would seem that money's being left on the table there as well.

Exactly.

Perhaps the better question to ask is "how much is being spent on trying to capture that missing revenue vs the amount of revenue that's being missed?" I think the argument that's being made is that while the POP method does leave some money on the table, the costs of enforcement are significantly lower, and the overall ability of the system to cover its operating costs is better as a result. Maybe one could look at available data from someplace like APTA to get an idea of what percentage of operating costs are recovered at the farebox and compare that with the type of fare collection method that gets used to see if there's a difference that aligns with the stated hypothesis.

So the interesting thing with POP is that unlike tickets, where inevitably a few get missed, if you set the penalty high enough you could recover all of your fare evasion losses. There will still be some uncollectable fines and LE costs for repeat evaders. That's in addition to the massive savings in conductor costs.

With my very conservative number of $171.34M in savings, I think that would really be more like $300M+ when you account for all the overhead of the conductors and use less overly conservative numbers.

I'd also hardly call Caltrain a "heavy-rail system that nobody uses" - it may not be on a par with Metro-North in terms of ridership (7 million riders in 2022 vs 66 million), it's still a significant sized system.

Exactly. The NYC systems dwarf everything else, but it doesn't make those other systems actually small- just small on a relative basis.

Here's something to think of:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/10/12 ... nt=event12

It's not a stretch to conclude:

1) POP works in smaller markets with low ridership, where it's easier to execute.

2) It's really not suitable in a larger system with the financial justification to do 100% checks en route.

Before anyone makes the ridiculous argument Caltrain is significant, they're really not. 7M riders a year is under 20K per day (compared to 55-66K depending on day of week for Dallas's light rail).



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I think your numbers for Dallas are off - based on the same data I got the 7M riders a year on Caltrain commuter rail, Dallas light rail shows a ridership of 20M/year in 2022. They also show a significantly lower percentage of farebox recovery of costs (6.32% for Dallas LR vs 25.06% for Caltrain CR vs 34.76% for Metro-North CR). FWIW, LIRR has a similar fare recovery percentage to Caltrain (only 26.65%).

Assuming that "fare recovery percentage" and "farebox recovery ratio" are the same thing, the recovery percentage has little to do with the fare evasion percentage (a system may have a low fare evasion rate and a low fare box recovery ratio such that reducing that evasion rate won't make a significant difference to that recovery ratio).