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Measuring Fare Payment Compliance on MBTA Buses
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2024-10-01
[PDF-9.07 MB]
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Edition:Final Report - October 2024 (May 2023-October 2024)
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Abstract:This study presents a method to estimate fare payment compliance within the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bus system using only automatically collected data from the Automated Fare Collection and Automated Passenger Counting systems. Data from over 787,000 passenger boardings were used to identify patterns of fare system on-interaction based on the difference between observed boardings and observed fare transactions. An estimated 22% of bus passengers do not interact with the fare system, but these non-interactions do not all result in lost fare. Some passengers are eligible for discounts and others who hold valid passes or are exempt from fares do not owe any payment at the farebox. Using average fare payments per observed transaction as an estimate of the lost revenue per non-interaction, revenue loss in the bus system is estimated to be between $6.0 million and $7.4 million for 2019. The number of non-interactions scales with ridership so the busiest parts of the system and times of day (midday and PMpeak) also have the highest number of non-interactions and estimated lost revenues. There is no spatial pattern in the non-interaction rate. The proposed method allows fare evasion and lost revenues to be systematically tracked.
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