Good morning. Today I got a very interesting response to a freedom of information request from Transport for Wales.
They pay almost £800,000 per year to an external contractor for "revenue protection" (which means enforcing ticket fines).
They earn ~£80,000 per year from ticket fines and penalty fares.
Which means they're paying ten times what they're making back from this process.
Edit: petition in thread
I made the FOI request because I had encountered teams of "revenue protection inspectors" several times over the summer. Each time, a group of three or more staff members boarded the train. And then either did literally nothing (stood around in the vestibule), or walked along asking for people's tickets (sometimes minutes after the conductor had done just the same), and then got off after a few stops.
It seemed like a ridiculous waste of staff and money, so I thought I would check. And it is!
Transport for Wales is (at least partly?) funded by the Welsh government. So this isn't just a nonsensical failure of capitalism, it's also a waste of actual taxpayer money.
The only reason I can think of for execs to approve of this is because it makes rich non-train-users feel better about being TOTALLY SURE that poor people aren't getting any free train rides.
Anyway I started a petition suggesting they put the money to better use elsewhere: https://petitions.senedd.wales/petitions/246387
Transport for Wales pays Transport Investigations Limited (an external contractor) £793,000 a year to provide "revenue protection inspectors" to make sure passengers have valid train tickets. TfW earns around £80,000 per year from penalty fares and ticket fines. This means that TfW is spending about 10x as much as they are earning back on this process. It is a waste of hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayer money on employees who simply babysit conductors and intimidate passengers.
@Averixus I don't think those numbers prove that there's anything wrong here.
If there were no "revenue protection" at all, some people who now pay wouldn't pay. To discover whether "revenue protection" is paying its way, you need to compare the cost of "revenue protection" with _what people are paying that they otherwise wouldn't_ as well as the fines and penalty fares.
Imagine a world where everyone cheats if there's no "revenue protection" but some measure that only costs £50k/year makes everyone comply. (Of course this isn't the real world.) In that case, _obviously_ you want to pay the £50k/year, but an FOI request like yours would say: "They pay £50k/year. They earn _zero_ from ticket fines and penalty fares."
So in this imaginary world, "revenue protection" is tremendous value but looks awful by the "fines versus cost" metric.
Back in the real world, I don't know how much cheating they prevent with their "revenue protection", but I bet it isn't zero. Maybe it's more than £800k/year, maybe not. But that's the figure that matters, not what they're getting back in fines.
Back when I used to work rackets we would call that 'getting our oats'. Usually it's not so blatant.
@magnetic_tape @Averixus In theory, yes... but it is unfortunately not quite so simple. :(
Subsidized passes for those most in need, however, is a great start.
@magnetic_tape @Averixus Depends on where you are.
https://www.tmb.cat/en/barcelona-fares-metro-bus/discounted-t-usual
@Averixus Transport Investigations? They've been in the news lately because they keep hitting people with ridiculous fines and threats of imprisonment for small violations, like inadvertently using a ticket outside of the allowed hours or taking the wrong route to work around a cancelled service.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvglzndx81ko.amp
Sources elsewhere identify TIL as one of the parties increasingly used for enforcement in cases like this.
@Averixus I think your math is too simplified:
The threat to be found out (and maybe fined) is what makes most people buy tickets in the first place.
Without enforcement, (nearly) nobody would buy tickets.
Therefore, if you really want to make that calculation, you have to compare the cost of enforcement to the fraction of tickets not bought without enforcement, i.e. all of them.
Obviously, it would still be cheaper (and socially and environmentally beneficial) to fully subsidize public transport from taxes (ideally taxing the rich) and ditch the whole enforcement altogether.
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