I received an anonymous tip recently from someone in the know claiming that TriMet fare inspectors will “cease to exist on October 6th, 2008.” This individual’s story starts:
“I was riding the MAX home the other day when I struck up a conversation with a Fare Inspector who was working, but also on his way home. In a nutshell, TriMet feels that the Bus Supervisors don’t have enough to do and that they spend most of their time riding around in their vehicles, so, on October 6th, a transition will take place.”
Interesting… but could this happen? The individual provides more details about this ‘transition’:
“On or around October 6th, 4 or 5 Fare Inspectors will be allowed to stay on as Fare Inspectors because they are retiring within the next few years, and when they do, the positions will not be refilled. 3 or 4 Inspectors who are Rail Certified will become Rail Supervisors, or the equivalent of Bus Supervisors on the Rail side. The remaining Fare Inspectors (I think there are a total of 15-18 in the department, so that leaves 9) become Bus Supervisors. The kicker: All of these “new transferees” go to the bottom of their respective division’s seniority lists, so even if, say you had 10 years as a Fare Inspector, the Bus Supervisor that was hired 2 months ago has seniority over you.”
Quite a detailed account of things that might happen. The individual goes on:
“And what about Fare Inspecting? After this is all done, TriMet is supposed to hire 10-15 MORE Supervisors (NOT FARE INSPECTORS), to which up to 2/3 may go to Rail as Rail Supervisors. Bus & Rail Supervisors are to have collateral duties as Fare Inspectors when they are not doing Bus & Rail duties. Supposedly, with the additional “help”, they will have even more people available to “combat” this problem.”
Yikes. If this is the case, can we believe that we might have even less individuals checking fare and being able to ticket those on a free ride on MAX? The individual then tells me about an unannounced audit that the Federal Government did to check TriMet’s security system:
“This same person indicated that the Federal Government came through about six months ago unannounced to do a security check on their system. Then they told TriMet about the results. TriMet was basically told that they are one of the top 10 busiest transit systems in the nation, and as such, they should have a Transit Police system of at LEAST 175-200+, not the 20 or so Transit Cops and the roughly 35 Wackenhut workers they have now.”
If that number is correct (about needing 175 - 200+ transit police officers), then I could believe the stories I’ve heard of people not getting their fare checked for years. As far as my personal experience, my fare has been checked twice in the last three years riding the MAX on an almost daily basis.
If this were all true, can we believe that TriMet might be axing fare inspectors in October? I’m still firmly in the camp that if TriMet figured out a plan to enforce fare on the MAX (specifically on the MAX - I know the bus has its fair share of problems, but this problem is huge on the MAX system), be it by hiring more fare inspectors or even figuring out a way to have a ticket machine at one door of a MAX train and an official “exit door” as the other, they would be bringing in all of that fare money from individuals who don’t pay on a daily basis.
Quite an interesting story. Thanks, anonymous, for sharing - I guess we’ll just have to see around October 6th if this is really the case…
8 comments ↓
Another alternative is to bump up the penalty of fare evasion, advertise this fact, and have a much more systematic method of fare inspection.
Right now you have these guys wearing bright neon colors, so it’s easy to see them getting on or off a train, you can stay on your train and walk back to evade fare inspectors. Why not dress them in plainsclothes and do completely random checks?
Good idea, indy. Like undercover cops…
All supervisors are being pressed into fare inspection duty. So fare inspection isn’t going away; just changing classification.
Well, I am in 100% agreement, especially if the jobs stay unionized, that they ought to actually provide something extra to the transportation entity (TriMet) for all the trouble of the union overhead (It does add about 10-30% extra cost to the entity onto the shoulders of the taxpayers).
Being a fare inspector, supervisor, and on the ground command for re-routing buses or trains in the case of an emergency doesn’t seem like a stretch, it sounds like something any good employee would, could, and should do when needed for a transit company.
I would say though, I wouldn’t hold too much truth to the heresy heard on the bus, MAX, or even around the system until it comes from the mouths of the upper echolon of command - i.e. the “executive” class of TriMet. Remember, they aren’t an internet or even publicly traded company, they don’t make a turn without complete top down command authority from either the execs or the Governer.
Sometimes there are some small changes here and there, but overall I’d check the source of such information.
Fare evasion would go down quite a lot if Tri Met would invest in ticket kiosks that weren’t steaming piles of crap.
Because of travel this month it made more sense for me to use single tickets than buy my usual monthly pass.
I needed to purchase some more the other day while downtown. All four of the machines at the Mall stop were out of service. Two had the purple “out of service” screen, one wouldn’t respond to any button pressed, and the fourth would not accept cards, bills or coins.
I had to get off at another stop and add an extra 20 minutes to my trip.
The very next day at Willow Creek, a station with only two machines, one had the purple “out of service” screen and the other was being worked on by a tri met employee.
Stop making it so difficult to give you money, Tri Met!
100%TriMetUser, you are right on. I ride Max four or five times a month — usually to the airport — so I do the single-ticket purchase thing. Or try to. In the past month, most of the time BOTH ticket machines at the 60th Avenue Station have been out of order. The money that was ready to go into Trimet’s coffers instead went back into my pocket.
Last I heard “supervisors” were not permitted to write tickets for fare evasion or for smoking. Tri-Met said the only people who could write tickets for such things were local police and the fare inspectors. Supposedly Tri-Met was going to let Wackenhut officers write tickets for fare evasion but that never seemed to happen.
Supervisors will be fare inspectors as well as regular supervisors - and Wackenhut security will NOT be allowed to be fare inspectors since they are not part of our union. Yes, apparently there was talk about it, but it could not be done because of the agreement TriMet has with the union about who does what work. All the changes being made this fall, have been agreed to by the union, as far as I know.
I think we could actually see an increase in fare inspections, which will be good. There is already an increased presence of police officers on Max to replace many Wackenhut officers who could not really do much, other than inform Control of what was going on. TriMet is trying to beef up security and fare inspections - and improve the Ticket Vending Machines, from what I have found out.
I believe that TriMet, with the co-operation of the union, is trying to make our system safer; part of that means better fare collections, more police presence, more fare inspections, and more reliable ticket vending machines.
It will be interesting to see how it all works out.
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