TransLink bus drivers pressed a special button in their coaches to record a “fare not paid” more than 2.76 million times in 2013, according to documents released today by the No TransLink Tax campaign. The information was obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) yesterday through a Freedom of Information request. […]
The 2,762,363 “fare not paid” button pushes do not include fare evasion on SkyTrain, West Coast Express, SeaBus, or the West Vancouver blue bus network. Further, many bus drivers have previously told media outlets they have stopped pressing the button as “there are so many freeloaders and TransLink doesn’t do anything about it.” The buttons were pushed 2.5 million times in 2011.
Mass transit is a vehicle for income redistribution from decent folk to deadbeats, crooks and crazies.
Does the Skytrain still not have turnstyles?
What do they expect in a Bittorrent society?
They will probably solve this monetary shortfall by raising the sales tax.
Of interest is the presence of cameras on those buses and trains. I’m confident that when the driver presses that “no fare” button the freeloader gets his picture taken. Although given the zero enforcement, keeping all those pictures might be embarrassing for someone at the transit commission.
If you build it, they will come.
I recently moved from Burnaby, about 8kms or so due E. on Hastings from the downtown eastside scum. Generally a nice mature and safe area, it is common knowledge that lowlifes regularly ride the bus free to do burglaries then get free cartage for themselves and their booty back downtown.
Translink is the poster-child of fucked up bureaucracies and is absolutely out-of-control.
In NYC, when they cracked down on turnstyle jumpers, a large proportion of them had EBT cards from multiple states. A freeloader is a freeloader. At least if they were collecting a check, they had to actually be someplace once a month.
Free healthcare, free transit, what a great country Canada is.
Free Healthcare … really? Maybe for some but about half my tax dollars go to pay for ‘free healthcare’. Then healthcare is only partially ‘free’. I still have to pay for eye exams and eye glasses, pay for dental examinations and dental work, pay for some of my prescriptions. So healthcare is only partially ‘free’. And then there is the dirty side of healthcare … paying for someone to have their unborn child executed without trial (aborted), with my tax dollars. What a sick country/world we live in.
If only we could write off our vehicle expenses as transit pass holders can apply transit costs against their income taxes.
I read that ataxi driver in Portland Maine is suing becuase the city prefers to give favors to certian forgeirn taxi drivers
In the “Old Days”, if you didn’t pay your fare, you didn’t ride the bus. This was a simple concept. But the overpaid, unionized baby-boomers that make up the majority of bus drivers in the Lower Mainland just don’t have the cajones any more.
I’ll bet that a least a few of those “certian forgeirn taxi drivers” know how to write better English than Spurwing Plover
I have riden the Vancouver transit on occasion. The times I have, more often than not someone along the route will board and either yell at the driver saying they weren’t going to pay and then walk on. Others would simply say they didn’t have money or a pass and while explaining this they held up the other paying riders behind them. The driver would just motion the non payer on, I guess so as not to slow down the riders, and keep the bus moving. There was no confrontation from the driver what so ever. I would also assume that the union would not want their drivers confronting anyone. I just shake my head in disbelief. I would guess that a lot of the paying customers would “sympathize” with the non paying customers.