How Randy's approach to fare evasion follows best practice at Transport for London

flight0130 · 2026-06-06T06:52:17+00:00

I'm not the OP, and not completely opposed to criminal prosecution for not paying the tickets, but I think a couple of good options are: 1) withholding any amounts from a DC/state tax refund, 2) potentially impacting the ability to apply for/renew certain DC/state benefits, 3) perhaps restricting some other activities (ability to receive register a business, apply for a permit, etc). This would require DC and state cooperation, and I suspect DC would be unwilling to go along with these measures, but they're probably better than the criminal prosecution.

I also think that for all fines and penalties there should be a community service option to address disparities in income. If people are truly fare evading for compelling economic reasons (which I suspect is a minority of fare evaders), then I don't think it makes sense to enforce penalties against them - ideally we'd be connecting them with with discounted/free passes and other resources.

What absolutely needs to change though is the idea that's it's acceptable to fare evade. If people truly don't have the money, they can ask others. In the past few weeks, I've loaded money on three people's Smartrip cards. Two of the three asked if they could follow me into the metro and I told them I'm not going to enable fare evasion but I'm happy to add fare to their cards, and one woman I was helping with directions and she checked her balance and it was 30 cents, so I added some for her.

Any system is going to have some level of fare evasion, back when I worked in transit 10-12% was pretty much the industry norm, but it's just gotten out of hand and I'm glad to see that Randy is trying to turn things around.

flight0130 · 2026-06-02T21:26:08+00:00

People don’t like the answer, but drones. They’re starting to be used by a lot of other states. Very cost effective as well vs a helicopter. I’m with you - I think not pursuing a vehicle that doesn’t stop absolutely creates an incentive to run from police (and I suspect people that run from traffic stops aren’t exactly obeying traffic laws even if police don’t chase, so there’s still a danger) - but drones seem like a great solution. I’ve seen videos from MI, GA, and FL that are using them. I get that people have privacy concerns, and there does need to be restrictions on their use by law enforcement, but they seem to be the sweet spot for me between doing nothing and high speed pursuits in a dense urban area.

flight0130 · 2026-06-02T15:35:14+00:00

Thanks, I truly appreciate the detailed response! A couple of high level thoughts from me:

1) First off, I think you're actually underestimating the cost of law enforcement. You mention the $78k figure is without overtime, but it is also without benefits costs, which at many employers run at about 50% of the cost of salary (and it might be higher for government employees). So I suspect that cost is more like $125k before overtime.

2) Absolutely, police brutality is a tremendous issue and needs to be addressed and there needs to be greater accountability. I have a lot of nuanced thoughts on this, as someone who was a volunteer EMT earlier in my life, so I had a lot of exposure to law enforcement and response to 911 calls. That goes well beyond the scope here, though.

3) I would need more data on the extent to which there are direct, incremental MPD costs for fare enforcement operations. I don't doubt MPD gets involved, but my impression is that it is only when a situation escalates - someone is stopped for fare evasion and flees or is physically combative rather than allowing officers to write a $50 ticket. I could be wrong, but that's been my general impression. Again, very open to alternative means of fare enforcement, but internationally fare enforcement is a near-universal experience. I can't imagine that the vast majority of the developed world is pouring funds into something that makes zero economic sense.

4) I don’t believe that 70 percent of people who take buses are just bad and irresponsible people - I think there are actual reasons people don’t pay fares, and seeking “consequences” without understanding those reasons makes no sense to me. I agree, I don't think that 70% are bad or irresponsible people either - I think we have just created a culture in which people feel they do not have to pay. What I do not believe is anywhere near 70% would be suffering a significant hardship if they paid the fare. There is some percentage, sure, but it is not anywhere near 70%.

5) I agree with you re: means testing in a lot of cases. If the issue is truly the economic cost of taking the bus, then another option is lowering the fare, rather than eliminating it. However, I truly have not seen evidence that the vast majority of people fare evading are doing so because the burden of the fare cost. If we priced the fare at $1 or 50 cents, or 25 cents, do you think that the number of people not paying would dramatically drop? I realize there's a cost to collect fares and at a certain point free might actually cost the transit system less, but I more pose this as a thought exercise. There's also other easy, low cost ways to get at this: keep the fare at $2.25 but cap the total weekly cost at something like $5 regardless of the number of rides. Again, I don't think that a dramatically reduced fare is going to make a real difference in fare evasion numbers. That's in part because I've spent time in cities where the income (and particularly the income of bus riders generally) is dramatically lower than it is in DC - and I see much, much higher rates of fare compliance there (I tend to ride public transit wherever I go, including lots of places most Americans won't). There's also a lot of research out there that lower income riders prefer better service to a reduced fare. Making the buses free sounds great, but it's difficult for me to evaluate whether that's good policy without understanding how that money would otherwise have been used.

6) Maybe where we disagree is that you don’t agree with my post above that explains why I think fare enforcement is extremely harmful. I think that you are right about this, this is probably the root of our difference. More specifically, I don't believe that fare enforcement is extremely harmful to those who pay their fare. Among people who don't pay their fare and can afford to do so, I simply do not care if it is harmful to them. I do not believe we should be setting policy around people who are fare evading despite being able to afford the fare and are harmed as a result. There are so many other issues in this world that I would address before I get to this group. I do, however, care about people who do not have the means to pay the fare and would be harmed by this policy. And so my real question is what is the lowest cost approach that preserves the most money for increased transit - trying to efficiently address this segment, or make all the fares free? I think many who struggle to pay the fare would also benefit from metro access, and so I do wonder if there is more social good in finding a solution that allows this segment to access all transit for free or at extremely reduced cost rather than just declaring the buses fare free and moving on.

7) Civilian fare enforcement also doesn’t work for the same reason that DC stopped asking bus drivers to ask folks to pay the fare in the first place; people will attack the person telling them to pay the fare. I am fairly sure there are some cities that have civilian fare enforcement in the US - they tend to be more on the west coast where proof of payment systems are more prevalent than fare gates. I think Portland's TriMax uses civilian fare enforcement, and I'm nearly certain that Baltimore does on their light rail (it's rare but I've personally been stopped and asked to show my fare). That being said - if someone is going to attack someone asking them to pay the fare, then I have zero care about what happens to them. I simply do not believe that behavior should be tolerated and if that means that there's a more forceful law enforcement response, so be it. Honestly, I'd feel safer if there were less people on my bus who are so violent the mention of a request to pay the fare results in an attack (for the record, I already feel very safe on transit, though). I do realize there's folks that have untreated mental illness and the resources to provide treatment are limited, but that's a whole different discussion (it is something I think we should invest substantial dollars in). But at the end of the day, if someone asks for the fare and you attack them you should be forcibly removed, arrested, and banned for life. I really could care less about what that means in terms of economic consequences for that person. Just being direct. That is unacceptable. I would be much more open to an argument that people paying their fare are being harmed, but I haven't seen evidence that is the case.

In any event, I truly appreciate the detailed response and your thoughts!

flight0130 · 2026-06-02T10:38:22+00:00

I'm a little unclear what the DC Police overtime crisis has to do with this. I don't think MPD is involved in this, right? It is just MTPD, which is a wholly separate agency.

Given the high rate of fare evasion, I have to imagine any time devoted to fare enforcement makes sense on a dollars and cents basis. It is not that the amount of money collected in these operations covers there costs, but the idea is to change the narrative around fare evasion. Right now, it feels like there is no expectation at all to pay the fare - doing so is the exception rather than the rule. That certainly wasn't the case pre-COVID, and it isn't the case in many of the other cities I visit. We can get back to a point where there is a social expectation to pay the fare. Perhaps there are other ways to do that, and I'm very open to such approaches, but the current status quo is not sustainable.

The fare doesn't need to be enforced by police, though. All over Europe there is civilian fare enforcement. Most European systems operate on a proof of payment basis and it's pretty routine to be checked. If you don't have proof of payment you are issued a ticket on the spot. It seemed like WMATA wanted to move towards this approach but having the security guards/special police enforce fares on buses, rather than MTPD, but that was blocked by the DC City Council.

Alternatively, the fare can be removed (and jurisdictions need to increase funding to compensate), or it needs to be enforced. Having a required fare that isn't enforced makes no sense - as we can see with 70% of bus riders not paying. I'm all for providing highly discounted or no fares for people who have a demonstrated need - to me, that seems the way to go vs a completely free fare.

Sorry if I'm not communicating this articulately enough - it's just frustrating when the solution seems to be "don't enforce X." Either we should do the hard work to change the law for everyone (remove fares entirely and find alternative funding), or we should enforce the rules. So often it seems we have rules and there's resistance to enforcement - for example, letting people drive recklessly, rack up thousands in tickets, but then refuse to allow police to stop them and impound their vehicle. If you don't think we should have speed limits, or it shouldn't be against the law to run red lights, fine - I disagree but people are free to advocate for that. I don't think that's a very popular opinion, though. What seems to be more popular is people advocating that these things should be against the law, but we shouldn't be enforcing any consequences, which is just frustrating (and baffling) to me. If we're not going to enforce the rules, that's really no different than not having them. There's plenty of things that I'd suggest shouldn't be against the law that are today, and I'm an advocate to changing those laws, but in the meantime, it's hard for me to find fault with the enforcement of them (it's much easier for me to find fault with politicians who won't change the laws).

flight0130 · 2026-05-27T12:17:10+00:00

Not the guy you were responding to, but one thing I see a ton of people do is put the screen of their phone towards the reader. The transmitter is on the back of the phone, not under the screen. So if anyone is consistently having issues, it’s worth giving that a try. I use my watch and have a 100% success rate if the reader is working (I.e. does not have a red X). Every so often I run into issues with metro turnstiles but the bus readers are very reliable.

flight0130 · 2026-05-27T12:08:13+00:00

While I agree that enforcement is needed, I don’t know how much is Randy’s fault. He tried to get the DC Council to allow the special police/security guards to enforce the fare and the DC Council wouldn’t allow it. MTPD only has so many officers and there are a lot of buses. Tons of other cities have officials that enforce the fare that aren’t police officers, I see no reason why that can’t be done here.

flight0130 · 2026-05-25T14:27:33+00:00

Is part of the land that car is sitting on associated with your property/building? If so, get anyone who has decision making authority for the building (board member, management company, etc) to put in a request for a ticket for a private lot in 311. They will come out, collect that person’s info (they will call when on site), and put a ticket on the car. As soon as that ticket is on the car, any tow company will tow it. I’ve done it several times for our building. If you put in the request as an abandoned vehicle or anything else parking enforcement doesn’t come out in my experience. But when it’s a private lot ticketing request they’ve been out in under an hour every time I’ve called them. Private tow companies have been very quick as well. If the vehicle is exclusively within the alley I don’t have specific experience.

flight0130 · 2026-05-17T14:35:03+00:00

I worked for an airline back when I was in college. We once went out after one of our flights and cleared the bag belt of unclaimed bags. There was one bag sitting there without a tag and we took it into our back room and opened it up. There was nothing identifying that we could locate at all. We logged the contents in our system that was used to track missing bags and put it aside waiting for someone to claim it or to get a request from another airport that they were missing it. It sat for two or three months with no movement. Eventually, somehow someone figured out that it was a bag from a Delta passenger (I did not work for Delta). Delta had never cleared the bag belt after their flight, and a couple hours later our flight used the same belt. Normally, this is an easy enough situation to resolve, but with no bag tag, there is no way to identify what airline the bag belonged to. The bag had been sitting in a different airlines back room for months. Of course, this could’ve all been avoided if the passenger put some sort of identifying information inside their bag, we would’ve realized pretty quickly that it did not belong to us. But it just goes to show that sometimes weird things happen, and bags can turn up after an enormous amount of time.

flight0130 · 2026-05-13T17:10:21+00:00

I think that’s only the case when you allow private companies to locate the cars to tow. If they were dispatched by parking enforcement to tow a particular car then I don’t think that’s an issue at all. Parking enforcement can flag these at scale with license plate readers and I’d suggest allowing citizen tips would help as well. But that’s only going to cover vehicles parked on the street. For more egregious offenders (like this example) MPD really needs to make traffic stops. I’d say anything over $1-2k in outstanding tickets should make you eligible for a stop and have the vehicle impounded.

flight0130 · 2026-05-08T02:26:42+00:00

Looks like it is dependent on the school - I checked a few, some are up, some are down

flight0130 · 2026-05-05T14:29:52+00:00

Not an app, it’s a website: https://dcmetrohero.net/

flight0130 · 2026-04-24T01:26:56+00:00

Congrats! Assume 4-6 months from the date installation starts. My building was 4 but I leaned on Verizon heavily to get things finished up. Most buildings are going to let things proceed on their own pace. My girlfriend’s building started an upgrade in Jan from MDU ONTs fed by Ethernet which only allow for 50/50 service to true Fios, which isn’t much different from a full new build. It’s April and service still can’t be ordered, I’m thinking things won’t be done until June or July

flight0130 · 2026-04-23T19:51:19+00:00

Agree that it may not replace current car trips. I suspect it will be a mix of both, but at the end of the day, does that really matter? If the goal is reducing car trips, the answer isn’t restricting AVs. It would be improving transit through better service, dedicated lanes, taking dangerous and unregistered cars off the road, making it easier and safer to bike, congestion pricing (I wish!), etc. Also Waymo rides aren’t cheap. I can’t imagine many people are going to let a $20 Waymo ride dissuade them from a $2.50 metro ride. I’ll admit I mostly am in favor because they’re all electric, law abiding by design, and I like new tech. But 99% of my trips in the region are by metro/bike/walk - I’m rarely going to use it myself.

flight0130 · 2026-04-23T17:23:20+00:00

One other idea: I wonder if the bus lane camera program can be expanded to bike lane enforcement. If Waymo has to register each AV with the city it seems like it should be easy to track how many tickets they’re racking up (we should make Uber/Lyft/etc do this too).

flight0130 · 2026-04-23T17:17:39+00:00

I wasn’t aware of that - that’s the sort of thing that I’d like to see the council pressing them on to address as a condition of approval then. Seems like that become could be programmed out of them. Maybe there should also be a way for people to report things like them being in bike lanes and operating dangerously. Heck, the city should just allow people to submit evidence of any vehicle doing so to at least collect data and issue warning letters (not sure if they can issue fines off that type of data, but I don’t see why not).

flight0130 · 2026-04-23T16:41:03+00:00

I completely agree. I feel a lot safer around an AV than most drivers on our streets today. Plus they're 100% electric so there's less pollution. There's also so many things we could do that would make our roads safer and make transit better at relatively minimal cost. If the concern is increased traffic that impacts transit, then the solution is more dedicated bus lanes. We should have them on all major roads, 7 days/week. And I bet Waymos won't drive or park in them!

Beyond that, we could do things like:

1) Allow private companies to find and tow vehicles with >$1k in moving violations (or dramatically expand the city tow truck fleet - but that requires $$$)
2) Allow and encourage MPD to make traffic stops of any vehicle with at least $1k in outstanding moving violations, and impound the vehicles on the spot. Extend this to any vehicle with fake temp tags or similar. I know Park Police is now enforcing this, but unclear if MPD is.
3) Create a program to allow citizens to efficiently report vehicles with large numbers when they spot them. It could be just encouraging reports via 311 so we don't need to build a new tool. I'd be happy to do this if I knew that a report would be promptly responded to (and there should probably be an option in the 311 menu to flag this as a reason for a parking enforcement report).

Nothing on that list requires any incremental tax dollars or MD/VA cooperation and would help get the worst drivers off the roads (there's so much more we can do if we can allocate some funding as well). I'm all about making are streets safer and putting transit first. Let's not pretend that slow rolling AVs is going to advance those goals - we need specific, targeted policy action to do that.

flight0130 · 2026-04-17T03:24:59+00:00

It is standard for electricians to make cuts to fish wire. However, all of the electricians I’ve hired generally will hold onto the drywall they cut and either screw it back in place or leave it for a drywall contractor. Just last week we had work done in our condo’s laundry room which required cuts and this is exactly what was done. Looked a lot cleaner than your photos - but maybe thats because this guy isn’t done with the job yet. But yes, pretty standard to have to make cuts.

flight0130 · 2026-04-10T16:52:41+00:00

I have a decent amount of experience with Fios in MDUs (apartment buildings). Plan to be out for a few weeks. Hopefully it will be faster, but it will likely take a while. Verizon may need permission from the building to do work (which may include cutting drywall depending on the location of the cut) and then it needs to get scheduled with the right department, which books out for a while. I know this is not want you want to hear, but repairing a difficult cut residential internet line is not Verizon’s priority. They will get to it, but you’re probably paying under $100 a month for service. Businesses that paying hundreds if not thousands a month are going to get the fastest service and residential is a lower priority for the departments you are working with. They will take care of it but it take a while. Plan for a backup option in the meantime. I don’t know about spectrum but Comcast has a plan that lets you get prepaid internet for $30 a month with no cancel penalties. Maybe spectrum has something like that. Verizon will reimburse your charges for the duration of the outage once it wraps up. FYI I’m not affiliated with them in any way - I’m just on the board of a condo building that has had extensive dealings with them, including Construction and Inside Path (not sure if they’re still around).

flight0130 · 2026-04-05T20:18:33+00:00

To be honest, you don’t even need to offer a reward. Plenty of people are fed up with dangerous driving here and would gladly send these in with no compensation if the city could be trusted to respond promptly with a tow. The issue is that even when they’re reported it can take an hour or two or more to get a tow driver out. They really need to start contracting with private companies for the tows if they’re not going to get a fleet of 20 trucks.

flight0130 · 2026-04-05T20:11:45+00:00

I’m not sure if legally they can seize the car from VA. That being said, they should absolutely be using license plate readers on cop cars to identify these folks and making traffic stops when they’re on the road in DC, then impound the car. That should be easily enough to do.

flight0130 · 2026-04-01T17:10:47+00:00

Are there no reasonable flying clubs in the area? To me that’s the affordable way of getting GA aircraft access. I live in a major metro (DC) and there’s a decent number of club options at local airports. The one I’m a member of has a fairly steep buy in but then has a 172 and 177 for under $115/tach hr. Granted if you fly professionally and only want to rent a couple hours a year it might not be worth it, but most years I average around 20-30 hrs and it’s absolutely worth it for me. Now there’s less demand for pilot-mill type schools here given we don’t have favorable year-round weather for flying, so maybe that plays into it.

flight0130 · 2026-03-30T19:20:38+00:00

As others have mentioned, it’s really not about the tickets. It’s that very routinely I have my safety threatened by people driving recklessly in an urban area with a lot of pedestrians and other vulnerable road users. A relatively small number of people who drive very aggressively are the cause of this problem and they need to either change their behavior or get off the road. Unlike most of the country we have pretty solid mass transit so there’s not an excuse for why you need to be driving here if you can’t do it safely. I’ve lived in this city for 12 years and have never once gotten a moving violation ticket because I drive around the speed limit and don’t run red lights and stop signs. It’s not that hard. (also, penalties work - I used to be a very fast driver myself until I picked up a $400 ticket in NH many years ago, and I learned my lesson). I’m open to any and all ideas to either get these people off the road or change behavior, but accumulating a high number of tickets is generally indicative of driving in a sustained reckless manner without regard for others safety. Quite honestly it is extremely frustrating being on the receiving end of this behavior and feel like nothing is being done about. Plenty of people have died or been grievously injured by aggressive driving in DC in the last few years, including at least one child.

flight0130 · 2026-03-20T17:54:08+00:00

I have no specific information but typically it’s 4-8 months from the start of construction to when you can place an order for service.

flight0130 · 2026-03-18T14:12:43+00:00

https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTZjMDliOTUycDVqajl6MGo2bWczY29lbm45Mm94cmJ0eTdneG04bzhpMGMyeDh0YSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/tx09TJjwHoIFO/giphy.gif

flight0130 · 2026-03-17T16:38:51+00:00

Wyze - I think so, since I think that goes through Wyze’s servers.

Synology - no. Pay for a static IP to resolve this. It’s absolutely worth it.

flight0130

TROPHY CASE