Article: Rich commuters give tickets the flick

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From the Melbourne Age click here!

Rich commuters give tickets the flick

Rich commuters give tickets the flick
Reid Sexton
June 7, 2009

RESIDENTS in some of Melbourne's most affluent suburbs are more likely to travel without a ticket on public transport than people in poorer areas.

Transport Department figures show that of the top 20 suburbs that were home to fare evaders, more than half had median individual incomes higher than the Melbourne average.

The Sunday Age obtained the department documents under freedom of information.

The latest figures, for 2008, show that people with access to the most frequent and varied public transport options in Melbourne were among those most likely to flout the law.

City residents received more fines for fare evasion (3813) than any other suburb, followed by St Kilda, with 3096.

Richmond, Fitzroy and Carlton were also near the top of the list while Hawthorn, Kew and South Yarra were all in the top 20.

This compares with large outer suburbs such as Cranbourne, Eltham and Deer Park, which are relatively well-serviced by public transport. They came in at 46 (724 offences), 91 (422) and 124 (301) respectively.

Transport experts say the level of ticket dodging in affluent areas is probably linked to a proximity to tram services, which do not have conductors to check tickets and only have coin-operated ticket machines.

RMIT public transport advocate Paul Mees said commuters' tendency to use trams for short trips, combined with the lack of staff and poorly designed machines, meant many simply did not buy tickets.

"The tram system is the one in which it's the easiest to evade but also the one where it is most inconvenient to buy a ticket because people can't buy a ticket with a $10 note for example," he said.

Although some of Melbourne's most exclusive suburbs dominated fare evasion, other offences were spread more evenly across town.

Reservoir residents were most likely to fail to produce evidence of concession eligibility, followed by commuters from St Albans and Glen Waverley.

For Melbourne's third most prolific public transport offence ? putting feet on seats ? the spread across the city had a pattern.

Of the top 20, most were at or towards the end of a train line.

Transport expert Graham Currie, of Monash University, said this proved that the longer Melburnians were expected to be seated, the more likely they were to put their feet up.

"It sounds like after people have been on the train for a long time ? they will start getting comfortable," he said.

But getting that comfortable on public transport could result in some serious hip-pocket pain. A spokesman for the Department of Transport said it collected more than $12.8 million in fines in the two years to July 2008, including about $5.7 million from tram passengers.

"An offender is an offender regardless of their address and transport operators are fully justified in ensuring that offenders are held to account," he said.

Professor Currie said all public transport passengers ? regardless of where they live ? had a moral obligation to observe travel rules and to buy a ticket.

"It's reasonable to ask people to pay for what they get," he said.

"It costs between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion to run Melbourne's public transport system (each year) and we need all the money we can get.

"It's unfortunate the machines are inconvenient but it's a compromise between the cost of conductors versus the cost of technology."

The transport documents do not break down the number of fines received by mode of transport, but Dr Mees said ticket dodging had become entrenched in the tram network when conductors were progressively removed from the system in the 1990s.

Their return, he said, rather than the introduction of the delayed $1.3 billion myki smartcard project next year, would help solve the problem.

Metlink said almost one in 10 people travel on trams without tickets, down from one in four in 2000.