A little schadenfreude via The Sun tonight:
TransLink is losing as much as $15 million a year to lost, stolen and resold U-Passes, prompting officials to threaten to cancel the student program if the problem persists. In a bid to eliminate the online resale of the transit passes, TransLink has asked Craigslist to help crack down on those posting U-Pass resale ads, but has yet to receive any cooperation from the classifieds website.
Is someone’s crazy uncle running your company, Translink? Your business is being thwarted by students on Craiglist and you want a San Francisco non-profit company that “offers online resources to help grassroots organizations get off the ground and contribute real value to the community” to play narc for you? Really? Why didn’t you just pay to have gated turnstyles installed at every SkyTrain station when they were being built? That would have surely weighted down the vaults enough to help absorb the fiscal shock of flogged U-Passes. The horror!
It’s too bad that the time for hitching free rides is running out (the turnstyles belatedly come online in 2013), but I love how still no one I know ever pays to use the Skytrain unless their journey includes a bus transfer (much harder to avoid a bus driver). Your threats of an almost $200 fine for fare-scoffing has done nothing to dissuade people from the prospect of saving a few dollars and spitting in your eye.
You’ve made it too easy to walk onto one of your trains for a few stops and smile at each of the 23 security cameras with a f@ck you wink. Vancouverites old and young are taking sweet advantage of you, and will continue to do so until they physically can’t anymore. You’ve made them want to and left the door wide open. And I don’t mind if I do.
That says a lot about you and your “honour system”, which only works between parties that are mutually honorable. Crying to the press with promises of punishing students for their circumstances is most definitely not honorable. Neither is giving guns to your guards nor censoring rider wardrobes like you’re civil society arbiters of acceptable behavior. You’ve made yourself into an irresistible mark. Few enjoy the idea of you, caring only for the very basic service that you provide. Why? Because you’re a moveable Rogers turned BC Ferries: a necessary evil that gouges, under-serves and can’t be trusted. So naturally, your troubles evoke little sympathy and surprise no one, except maybe the 23 year old intern at Craigslist who probably had the presence of mind to print your ALL-CAPS hotmail and circulate it among the staff with “Can You Believe This Turd?” in the subject line.
If you’re going to fix anything about Translink, start in the office and leave them kids alone.
UPDATE: Craigslist’s lawyers have given in. Sigh.
There are 10 comments
Popular
Where Does One of Victoria’s Cooler Restaurant Crews Eat When in Vancouver?
From Sketching and Stretching, to Boxed Wine and Old Signs with Spencer Pidgeon
¿CóMO? Taperia and Paella Guys Popular Paella Series Returns in May
Vancouver's Most Racist Restaurant, Remembered
The Curve on Amaro with Local Bartender, Andrew Kong
So you are one of the people who are going to force me, someone who actually pays for transit, to wait in lines in front of turnstiles and lose bragging rites around an honor based transit system to visitors. Without even mentioning that the money spent on that infrastructure could be used for more and better bus lines and sky trains. I hope you and ‘everyone you know’ take that attitude of ‘if it is not secured it is not stealing’ with you to the restaurants you frequent.
My son’s U pass has his picture on it, how can he find someone who looks just like him to sell his pass too? He has to show it when he gets on the bus.
I’ve seen this story covered on Global and City TV and here and nobody seems interested in answering that question.
well said, Scout, I still can’t believe that they built the Canada Line without turnstiles …
and David J. Cooper – I’m sure most of the time, no more than a casual glance is given to the holder of the pass … people wear different clothing, they get their haircut … think about it, how similar do you look to the photo on your driver’s license or passport?
“no one I know ever pays to use the Skytrain”
That’s ridiculous. Especially since we know a lot of the same people, so I’m confident in calling BS on that. As someone who has been a full-time Transit-taker for almost 20 years in this city, I don’t see many people at all ignoring machines on their way to the trains, and if they do – it’s most likely because they have a transfer already or monthly pass. I’ve also been on the SkyTrain during hundreds of fare checks in this time and maybe have seen a dozen people get busted.
I agree with your sentiment, but that nugget is laughable.
OK, you’re the only person I know who pays to use the Skytrain. Kudos for a lifetime of living on the level, but low-balled estimates of fare-scoffing losses per year are in the area of $10 million. That means plenty of the folks you ride with aren’t paying.
Oh, I’m not saying it ain’t problematic or it doesn’t happen, but 4/5/6% of riders not paying is a far cry from what “no one I know ever pays” et al infers.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/07/23/bc-translink-fare-evasion-dropping.html
You’re totally preaching to the choir, it’s criminal that turnstiles weren’t put in in the beginning, ESPECIALLY with the Canada Line, when they had the benefit of hindsight. My big thing is, when they want to bust fare evaders before getting on, say at Granville Station, why do they stand at the top of the escalators where you can see them? Wouldn’t a surprise at the bottom, when there’s no turning back, be much more effective at fillin’ their coffers with fines?
And where do you see me saying that I pay MY fare? ; )
Craigslist fail: http://bit.ly/lMI3YE
“That says a lot about you and your ‘honour system’, which only works between parties that are mutually honorable.” I take it you’re admitting that you’re not?
Of course Craiglist “gave in”. Selling U-Passes violates their terms of service. They’d be idiots if they didn’t shut it down.
The hate on the honor system in Vancouver always astonishes me. Having grown up in Germany the idea of turnstiles was completely alien to me, the entire system is honor.
Yes, that means in Germany you can just walk on the bus, the driver is not asking for proof or anything, all doors boarding too!
And yet here, here the idea is mocked, so instead of allowing faster boarding / unboarding and in general make the system more efficient you guys aren’t happy until they force you to pay.
I can already see the “fun” with the turnstiles on all the stations, there will be a huge backlog, especially during rushour. Even all the new Canada Line stations I have seen will proof to be a mess once they’ve installed them there.
So yes, Kudos. Translink sucks and your “protest” just made the experience even worse.
‘I am Entitled.’ Thats all I hear oozing out of this post. I appreciate the honours system we have, and support bringing in turnstyles if need be to bust those who habitually scoff at the idea that you have to *pay* for a transportation service. How dare they charge you for such a thing!?
How would fare-evaders’ sense of entitlement ever be justified in other circumstances where you receive services? Do you really need someone standing there to wag their no-no finger to know your behavior is out-of-line?
Its a bullshit attitude.