When you talk to people about improving bus services most people, including those who rarely ride them, are supportive. They readily agree that buses should run 7 days or main highway buses should be better than every 2 hours on Saturday afternoons.
A few others aren't so sure. Some cite buses running empty. Or note that 'hardly anyone touches on'. They might add that if people don't touch on then it's hard to justify more services.
At the very least if few passengers pay the cost of adding trips is increased. This is because although well-targeted service upgrades build ridership the rise in fare revenue is less than it should be.
Low fare compliance may also raise the chance that chronic overcrowding, including on hourly weekend buses that leave intending passengers behind, gets ignored. This could be for reasons including (i) the resulting poor quality data, (ii) DTP's lack of efficient demand responsive funding and processes to address crowding and possibly (iii) only a limited personal bus using culture amongst top executives.
Attitudes to fare compliance
Some passengers go out of their way to always pay their fare. Others try but give up if paying is made too difficult. Another group is influenced by what they see, so if they see many others not touching on then they won't either. Fare evasion can even become legitimised in some subcultures, such as was the case in inner suburbs about 25 years ago with trams (even amongst people who could afford to pay). Such social acceptance turns a behaviour into a habit and makes campaigns to change it less credible and effective.
Are we now at the same stage with buses?
We could be but let's first go back a bit.
The seeds of the problem some have with myki on buses were sown more than a decade ago. An early (and I think wrong) decision under Labor was to specify disposable cardboard smartcards rather than simple paper tickets for short term travel. These had the benefit of being able to open myki barriers at stations without needing physical inspection by an attendant. But, having the antenna and chip of a full smartcard, short-term mykis were outrageously expensive to produce relative to a typical short distance 2 hour fare (in some cases then under $1 for concession holders).
Short-term mykis were used on Geelong buses during early public testing but were one of the features understandably scrapped when the Baillieu government descoped myki. Thus even a casual trip required pre-purchase of a relatively expensive plastic myki card. This discouraged ridership amongst the honest and fostered evasion amongst the dishonest. Many of myki's problems for tourists and some of the impetus for the counterproductive CBD Free Tram Zone stem from the non-availability of a good value convenient ticket option for spontaneous or casual users.
What about COVID-19?
Public transport usage (and thus fare revenue) on all modes took a big hit during the pandemic. Weekday peak train and tram patronage remains subdued but bus usage has recovered fastest, especially on weekends. However new factors risk undermining bus fare compliance in the last few years. These include:
* The falling number of passengers using periodical (myki pass) as opposed to spontaneous (myki money) payment options due to less 5 day commuting. Unlike myki money users, those using an activated myki pass would not be evading a fare if they sometimes did not touch on.
* The pandemic era (and now permanent) removal of cash myki top-ups on buses has removed a widely accessible payment option, especially in suburbs with few myki outlets or train stations.
* Bus drivers now being physically screened from passengers and unlikely to ask people to touch on, with the Labor government influenced by TWU advocacy over safety concerns. Unlike station PSOs, who typically work in pairs, bus drivers are on their own, are not particularly highly paid and commonly take a 'play it safe' attitude for their own safety.
* The continued low chance of encountering Authorised Officers on buses, thus encouraging the calculating type of serial fare evader who remains ahead even after several fines per year.
* The politically-driven $10 statewide fare cap, that by flattening the fare scales, make $5 short trips look punitively expensive, especially if a myki card also needs to be purchased ($11 total per adult). I've added this point because perceived fairness aids legitimacy and compliance. Flat fares are simple to understand but are widely viewed as less fair, especially for shorter trips (which are made by more people more often than longer trips).
* Wider economic conditions including inflation, housing costs and falling real incomes especially for those under 40. These may make fare evasion tempting if it is easy and there is a low chance of getting caught.
It's true that the government promotes some other payment options, including online and mobile phone myki top-up. However the latter requires an NFC chip that not all phones have. Fare payment will get easier once credit/debit card tapping on/off becomes possible. But for now the above points may weaken compliance from those who find payment inconvenient, not what their friends do or easy to avoid.
What DTP reports
The above is the pessimistic view. What do the numbers say? DTP's 2022-23 annual report says that bus fare compliance was 96%, or 24 out of 25 passengers. That looks pretty high and would seem to validate current policies and administration. That high proportion is also likely near the point where throwing more resources into fare enforcement is unlikely to return its cost in added fare revenue.
Want to delve into those numbers more? You can do so via the revenue protection and fare compliance part of the PTV website. There you can find fare compliance survey numbers and the Network Revenue Protection Plan for 2023. Of note is a big uptick for buses, with the reported 96% in October 2022 the highest in the data series. Having said that there's much more data volatility than for Metro train and trams, so I'd want to see more data points before concluding there's a real trend.
What were they saying last year when the compliance numbers for buses was pretty dire? DTP appears to have removed the 2022 Network Revenue Protection plan from their website. But fortunately you can find it in this archived Wayback Machine version (direct pdf link here). The 2022 plan is worth reading as it had a bit to say about accommodating bus passengers who could previously top up with cash.
It's important to get one thing straight first up. Fare compliance and touching on are different measures. Those who don't touch on are not necessarily evading a fare if they are travelling on some sort of periodical pass or, with myki money, have done prior travel and are still within their first two hours or have reached their daily cap. Thus the system could still achieve the claimed 96% fare compliance even if the touch on rate is lower.
How much lower can the touch on rate be to support a 96% fare compliance? It depends on factors like the use of periodical type options (eg an activated myki pass as opposed to myki money) and people doing a lot of changing. If both these are low (likely for a lot of local off-peak bus trips) then the touch on rate will need to be much nearer to 96% than otherwise.
What's bus fare evasion really like?
You've just seen two very different impressions of the extent of fare evasion on Mebourne's buses. What might be dismissed as hearsay says it's very high. Whereas the 'official line' from DTP, complete with graphs and reports, says it is very low at 4%.
My hypothesis is that the truth will be somewhere in between. That is more passengers than 'hardly anyone' will touch on. But also that significantly more than DTP's claimed 4% will not be fare compliant.
The simple way to do a survey is to ride some buses and count the number of people boarding who touch on versus those who don't touch on. That gives the touch on rate. The more complex (and better) method is to check each passenger's ticket for compliance. DTP has that power. I do not.
Hence I went for the easier non-intrusive method of just counting touch ons. That won't give a statistic that can be directly compared to DTP's compliance figure. But it could put to bed some of the wilder claims. And if a low touch-on rate was observed then it could make a high claimed compliance rate like 96% seem unlikely.
My testing involved taking trips, mostly in the south-east suburbs, to observe the proportion of boarding passengers who touched on. Here is what I saw:
* Test 1: 14/11/2023 5:30 am approx Route 902 from Chelsea to Mulgrave
Validated / Total boardings 14/26 = 54%
* Test 2: 22/11/2023 1:45 pm Route 902 from Chelsea to Mulgrave
Validated / Total boardings 21/53 = 40%
Validated / Total boardings 3/50 = 6%
Validated / Total boardings 3/9 = 33%
* Test 5: 22/11/2023 4:31 pm approx Route 902 from Springvale to Chelsea
Validated / Total boardings 7/15 = 47%
Validated / Total boardings 5/7 = 71%
* Test 7: 26/11/2023 9:20am approx Route 408 from St Albans to Highpoint
Validated / Total boardings 22/53 = 42%
Touch on rates from this selection of trips were typically about 30 to 70 %. Touching on was highest during the early commuter peak. It was lowest during school peaks with touching on rare amongst school students.
Authorised officers are rarely seen on buses. And even where a report of non-compliance is issued it can be challenged and fines sometimes waived, as recently reported here.
With such a low touch on rate to start with, it appears unlikely that adding previous discussed factors would get the compliance rate up to anything near the reported 96%. Instead one might be more inclined to the view that DTP has basically lost control of fare compliance on buses. Once people have got used to not paying it's going to be doubly hard to convince them to pay, especially given the non-availability of top-ups on buses, unfairness introduced by the statewide flat fare, the perceived low chance of getting caught and demonstrable cost of living increases.
Conclusion
As inadequate as they are, my little surveys have led me to the view that the touch on rate for buses is often low. While fare compliance will be higher than that, 96%, as reported seems improbable.
Improved means of data collection, such as automatic passenger counters on buses, could be helpful for several purposes including identifying overcrowding, prioritising service adjustments and enabling more efficient fare compliance and enforcement activity.
The DTP annual report is an official government document reporting on its activities and performance. The public and stakeholders (including Parliament) have a right for published information to be correct. And the department has an obligation to make it so. It should not be possible for a few casual observations to raise significant questions on an important metric. After all we are told that lack of resourcing (ie funding) is a reason for such limited service levels on many key bus routes.
On the matter of bus fare compliance at least, department secretary Paul Younis has some explaining to do given the large gap between rosy reporting and on-the-ground reality. Like I suggested for the auditor-general's a little while back, going on a few bus rides would have helped greatly. Maybe even the Sunday 6:11pm Route 408 trip from Highpoint for starters!
9 comments:
Fare compliance on buses has been a problem for a long time.
On a well patronised Melbourne route I regularly travelled (no names) circa 2006 it was the practice for drivers to 'sell' short distance tickets. This involved paying about half the zone 1 two hour Metcard fare to the driver which was placed in the coin tray. No ticket was issued. It wasn't clear who pocketed the excess money - the company or the drivers (or both).
This stopped abruptly when one of my colleagues, who also caught the route, complained to the department.
(For the avoidance of doubt, I purchased a proper ticket for my journeys :-)
My observations match yours, generally with no more than 50% of passengers touching on, with quite a few who pretend to touch on. When I used to use buses a couple of times a week when the buses from Brighton went to the city and beyond, compliance was much higher.
I was told or read that Sydney bus drivers, who also no longer challenge a passenger for not touching on, have within their driving area an electronic button to press to register each person who hasn't touched on. If all drivers consistently do this, it would be quite an accurate record of fare evasion.
So the DTP touch on bus figures are as rubbery as Yarra Trams on time performance figures.
LAst week Police and Transit officers were checking the myki's of everyone getting off the ALtona to Mordialloc smart bus at Chadstone shopping centre. From my observations the majority of passengers had not tapped on and were being issued fines (or paperwork of some kind)
To address the "fairness" issue there should be a half fare for trips under 5 km. There would be little revenue loss from the main CBD-bound market as most of these trips are more than 5 km. Short trips tend to be within suburbs, and $10 for a day's travel to the local shops seems outrageous, especially for those who have a car available. Infrastructure Victoria proposed a reduced fare for buses because most of their users were of lower income, whereas the CBD-bound train and tram commuters were of higher income. However their analysis was flawed because it didn't consider trip length or destination.
My son drives buses he takes me out on the weekends we reckon lway ess than 30% touch on
My anecdotal experience would be similar - rates of touch-on would be much lower than the DTP data would indicate.
But they've checked over 12,000 tickets to get that result so at least that part of the methodology should be sound. Although they are less than transparent about the detail, pointing to more detailed documents that are presumably only available internally within DTP unless someone FOI'd them.
The detailed tables in the back give some sense of variability by geography - areas like Epping and Sunshine had almost twice the rate of non-compliance, and possibly into double figures.
It would be interesting to see if compliance differed by Zone - is it more or less in the cheaper outer suburbs in Zone 2 for a local trip?
I imagine the extent of Zone 1 hasn't been reviewed since the neighbourhood system came in over 30 years ago - but with all the other changes to multi-zone fares over that time is Zone 1, the most expensive Zone, now too big? Should local trips around, for example, Footscray be more expensive than local trips around Werribee purely because of distance from the CBD?
@Anonymous: National Bus Company used to issue low-cost short trip tickets (possibly even one-way e.g. valid only on that bus) around twenty years ago (I used to buy them in 2003 when I caught the minibuses on the 270/271, the former now being the 370 at the Ringwood end), the tickets were printed on thermal paper normally used for EFTPOS receipts when buying a Metcard and were about 2/3 the price, at least for the five-minute trip I used to take up the hill from Ringwood station to Loughnan Rd or 7-Eleven. If the tickets weren't being printed someone was indeed pocketing the change! I think the tickets were discontinued when Ventura took over.
I fare evade every time
Great analysis, the biggest issue is cost and lack of enforcement. The rhetoric that some in the social welfare sector tout that it is only disadvantaged who don't pay is just plain wrong in my experience. I would say the real rate of compliance is somewhere around 45%. This ALP VIC government are quite clueless. Just putting up fines isn't going to cut it.
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