With Metra riders facing a 68 percent fare increase over the next 10 years, some of them are raising a common complaint — too many passengers are getting a free ride, because conductors either don’t or can’t check everyone’s tickets.
That’s often the case during events like Taste of Chicago, the Fourth of July and weekends when trains are so jammed that conductors can’t wade through aisles to check tickets. It was especially common during last winter’s polar vortex-induced deep freeze, with standing room only on many trains.
Rider Barbara Padiak, who takes Metra’s Union Pacific North Line from Glencoe, believes “the system is flawed” and that the nation’s second-largest commuter rail system should find a better way of collecting fares.
“It’s just physically impossible for the conductors to collect all the fares on a busy train,” she said. “If this system had less loopholes, I can’t imagine Metra wouldn’t be getting 10 percent more revenue.”
Metra Executive Director Don Orseno said the agency periodically dispatches managers to ride the trains and check for lax conductors and free riders.
“Is there a possibility of someone missing somebody once in a while? We make a concerted effort so that doesn’t happen,” Orseno said. “And if it does, we take care of it.”
The same checks are done on the Union Pacific and BNSF lines, which are run by those railroads with their employees, not Metra’s, Metra spokesman Michael Gillis said. Under its contracts with those railroads, Metra can assess a fine for failure to collect fares, but that happens infrequently, Gillis said.
Metra said it has not calculated the amount of revenue it has missed, but based on its observations and the number of complaints, it believes the amount is low.
When Metra proposed its last major fare hike three years ago, it also unveiled the campaign “Be Fair, Pay the Fare.” Riders were urged to report conductors who didn’t do their jobs and fellow passengers who got free rides.
That campaign stirred the anger of the conductors union, whose leader said he took “extreme exception” to comments by a Metra consultant who they felt accused them of being disinterested in collecting fares.
Kevin King, chairman of United Transportation Union Local 653, declined to comment this week.
Metra has a link on its website to a “revenue collection report” where customers can provide details on where and when the incidents took place.
Customers file “a handful of complaints each month,” Gillis said.
Under Metra’s plan for annual fare hikes over the next 10 years, a portion of the additional revenue will be used to pay for a $2.4 billion modernization program that Metra says is critical for maintaining safe and reliable service. The goal of the program is to rebuild and replace the fleet of locomotives and passenger cars.
The rest of the initial fare increase will be used primarily to cover a $27.3 million deficit in Metra’s 2015 budget, officials said.
If approved by Metra’s board Nov. 14, the first fare boost of nearly 11 percent would go into effect Feb. 1.
The majority of Metra commuters, who buy monthly passes, would pay an additional 10.9 percent to 18.6 percent, or about $15 to $30 more per month in 2015.
Metra plans to restore the popular discount on 10-ride tickets that it eliminated last year. That means a 10-ride ticket would again be priced at the cost of nine one-way fares. Some 10-ride tickets will cost up to 6.4 percent more, but some may be 0.3 percent cheaper, depending on the zone.
The price of full-fare, one-way tickets would increase 10.8 to 18.2 percent, depending on the zone.
Metra also plans to bring back the first-day-of-the-month grace period on monthly passes and extend the life of one-way tickets.
Chairman Martin Oberman said a “top-to-bottom review” of Metra’s fare system will be done. The last time a detailed analysis of passenger counts occurred was 2006, he said.
“We should look at it from scratch and make sure it makes sense,” Oberman said.
Metra’s fare structure rests on two foundations. It uses an open-platform system where customers board trains freely, as opposed to the CTA, which requires riders to pass through turnstiles. And Metra’s fares are distance-based, meaning the farther the ride, the more expensive the ticket.
“Some people wonder, ‘Why do you have a zone fare at all? Why not have a flat fare for everybody on the system?'” Oberman said. “Once that train leaves the station and goes out to Woodstock, it doesn’t change the cost whether there are 10 people on it or 200 people on it.”
Metra might also look at charging “premium” fares during peak hours, instead of the same fares all day long, officials said.
The fare collection process could be revamped under the paperless mobile-ticketing system using smartphones that transit officials announced Wednesday, Oberman said.
Such a pilot program will start in February, Orseno said Wednesday. Metra has been predicting such a test since 2012.
Major commuter rail systems in other cities, including New York, Boston, Dallas and Portland, Ore., already have introduced mobile ticketing programs.
The South Shore Line, which carries commuters downtown from northwest Indiana and Chicago’s Southeast Side, launched mobile ticketing in June.
Metra is working with the CTA and Pace to develop a smartphone-based application that takes its lead from the Ventra card system developed by Cubic Transportation Systems.
The app would allow Metra customers to download tickets onto their phones, which would then be checked by conductors. Customers could also pay for their tickets via their phones.
Orseno said Metra was being cautious in developing mobile ticketing to avoid the kinds of technical glitches that accompanied the rollout of the CTA’s fare card.
“We don’t want to be in the same situation (as the CTA) with the Ventra card when it came out,” Orseno said. “It’s a fine system now, but there were growing pains.”
Twitter @richwronski
