Five ways to improve the Skytrain
The Skytrain made $2.72 million dollars last year [vp]. Yet it’s far from perfect, even if you ignore the Canada Line construction leaving Cambie Street as barren as the surface of Mars. So like anyone who has just arrived back in town after some time spent in Europe I’ve got a few ideas on how we could make things better.
i) install turnstiles: Let’s face it quite a few people ride the Skytrain for free. I’ve done the math and if you’re lucky you can actually save money just paying the Skytrain fines the odd time tickets are actually checked. Turnstiles, like the London Underground, won’t stop the free rides completely, but it’ll cut it down on the problem quite a lot.
ii) shit can the cops: With less people sneaking on, and less homeless and/or dangerously intoxicated people riding the Skytrain for a way to pass time and keep warm at night, we don’t need the well armed cops who are basically just mall security with guns. The Vancouver Police Department and the RCMP in the non-Vancouver areas should be able to handle the line just fine. Maybe give them a bit of that 2.72 million in profits that the train is earning to help cover their costs.
iii) have staff at each station during business hours: With the money saved from not employing the cast of Police Academy pay to have one or two staff members at the busiest stations both for ticket sales, to monitor sneak-ins and for general tourist relations. Now unless you’ve got the Skytrain figured out already it’s a confounding experience to actually try riding it.
iv) sell tickets: If you have staff at stations you can actually sell tickets. Isn’t it odd that we have to buy our ticket packs and monthly passes at drug stores, supermarkets and 7-11s? Most of the time the staff selling them don’t know anything about zones, dates or fares.
v) change the name to Crazy Train: With the success of The Simpsons‘ Kwik-E-Mart promotion, why not tie in our Skytrain with Ozzy Osborne’s popularity. Okay maybe we’re missing the boat by nearly a decade, but come to think of it that’s the last time everyone agreed that The Simpsons was funny. Paint the trains black and pump the tunes and it’s marketing gold.
Just a couple of notes:
- Currently, with barrier-free access, the handicapped and parents with strollers, etc. can access the system easily. One you install fare barriers, not only are there initial capital (construction) costs, but ongoing operational costs, as entrances would need to be staffed at all times during operating hours to allow those with special needs access past the barriers.
- wrt ticket fine, a change in provincial legislation is required, as currently, all fines from tickets are paid to the Province into general revenue - NOT to Translink. Translink does not get any of the money from the ticket fines - so why would it expend money to collect the fines?
- wrt policing, the biggest problem is that Skytrain crosses different municoipal police jurisdictions. An offender on Skytrain may commit the offence (assault, etc.) with the City of Vnacouver (Vancouver Police jurisdiction), cross Boundary Rd. into Burnaby RCMP jurisdiction, then into New Westminster Police jurisdiction, then over the Skybridge into Surrey RCMP juridiction. Police from one jurisdiction can assist police in another juridisction, but have no power outside of their own jurisdiction. GVTA Police Service is a real police service that crosses city boundaries.
In response:
- clearly the capital costs and staffing costs would be covered by the fact that people would actually be required to pay to ride the Skytrain. If the economics of this were wonky then most of Europe would not be using turnstiles.
- Even as it is now the only way fines are collected is through Translink expending money. To expect them to collect fines and sell tickets in a more efficent and rational way seems to make sense since we expect them to collect fines and sell tickets now in a haphazard way.
- you have this issue anytime you have local police forces in cities close to each other. Someone could just as easily rob a 7-11 in Burnaby, drive for three minutes and arrive in Vancouver. An argument could be made for having a regional police force replacing all the local city services, but I don’t think just one more juristiction (Skytrain) and one more force to the mix makes things easier. Most of the time they just are expensive and well armed security guards writing tickets and hassling skateboarders.
In regards to turnstiles, the capital investment required to retrofit the entire system would negate any increased revenue collected from them — possibly forever. The stations were never designed for them, as opposed to the NYC Subway stations or the Tube.
I’m not arguing against turnstiles (on the contrary, I wish they’d put them in originally), I’m saying to try to “fix” it now would be cost-prohibitive and unlikely to ever be seriously considered by the powers that be.
5 ways to improve the skytrain, and not one of them is about making it run past 1am? While we spend millions on drunk driving counterattack, our main transportation system shuts down an hour before bars close!
Also, if they’re making 2.7 million, then clearly fare evasion isn’t as horrible a problem as you make it out to be. Most people pay. And those who don’t are those who can’t afford it in the first place. So, in lieu of a govt. sponsored fare subsidy program, why not let them ride for free?
How about having the train run as late as, or preferably about 30 minutes later than, the bars downtown? I think that’d be a big improvement, and I bet everyone who comes downtown from just about anywhere would agree.
Translink only gets around 30% of their revenue from fares. On top of that, they pay approximately 10% of their revenue to collect those fares. According to one study, adding turnstiles could cost 10x as much as the revenue it would generate. The thing is, people should really be riding for free. That is, that last 20% should be funded from the same tens of billions that build roads, rather than through fares. The Tyee has a great 5-part series on this that ran last week: http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/07/12/NoFares4/
WRT barrier-free access - Most light rail systems use a proof of payment system (i.e. you don’t line up at the front door to show your fare to the driver) - primarily because it would be next to impossible to enforce barriers on a street level platform.
Skytrain is a mini-metro and there are proof of payment mini-metros elsewhere - i.e. Docklands Light Railway in London and the VAL systems in France such as this one in Lille:
http://urbanrail.fotopic.net/p35335076.html
The lower ridership (and hence lower revenues) of mini-metros and light rail systems versus heavy rail subways would probably factor into the cost analysis.
The cost of collecting ticket fines is a significant problem - even for the bar fighting tickets that Vancouver Police hand out on Granville Street.
A regional police forec would probably work well. But try getting the municipalities to agree! I’m not even sure if Surrey has signed on to E-COMM yet - they may still be using a different radio system (or that could be Surrey fire department).
Running the late night trains seems like a good idea. A low frequency would be able to get around maintenance work zones. My guess is that the software flexible enough to shunt the trains around active maintenance work zones on an ongoing basis is prohibitively expensive. Alternatively, Skytrain can be manually driven (but that’s not likely a starter if your passengers are drunk and rowdy and the driver is unprotected).
Stephen Rees ran a good article on Fare Evasion on the SkyTrain last month on his blog.
The arguments pro and con fare barriers miss how relatively low evasion rates are, and how Skytrain revenue roughly pays for its operating costs (how you say? “world class”).
The police on the system are, besides the jurisdictional issues, all about making Skytrain feel like a safe place to be. It seems like every woman I know (and virtually none of the men) feel that Skytrain is not a safe place to be in the evening hours. I’m not saying this feeling is justified, but if a few uniforms make the system get perceived as a safe place to be, then the social benefit is worth the cost.
Also, note that the Millennium Line was planned as a fully fare-barriered line. Somewhere in the implementation phase, they figured out it wasn’t worth the trouble.
It’s silly to just look at the Skytrain and say “it pays for itself.” What about all those people taking “money losing” buses to and from the station as part of their commute? The way you divide how much money each of the 2+ components of such a ride “earns” is tricky. How did they get this figure? How did they pay for the system in the first place? And anyway, Toronto is up around 80% fare recovery system-wide, 25% higher than Vancouver. so if anyone actually cares about making money above anything else, then there’s room for improvement (or decreases in service, depending on how you look at it.)
I doubt the software for late night operation would be particularly expensive, especially considered over its useful life. Vancouver is already lucky that it can shunt trains around problems at all. Toronto currently lacks that: whenever there’s a problem, trains turn back at the neareast switches, and terribly-crowded buses bridge the usually 3+ station gap. More expensive would be the cost of operating the trains & maintaining overnight staff, especially given the low ridership.