Fare enforcement doesn’t equal safety

Enforcement is a hammer, and poverty is the nail.

Enforcement once again is a hammer that the City of Winnipeg is swinging wildly in the hopes it can improve transit revenue and safety.

In September, the city said it would crack down on fare evasion in order to increase safety on buses and recoup lost revenue.

This November, the city released data on its campaign, celebrating its successes on both fronts (Thousands of fare evaders denied bus rides since crackdown began in September, Nov. 13).

Yet the city’s own data seems to tell a very different story.

To be clear: insecurity and violence on transit are important issues, as is the lack of funding for our transit system. But these are issues that fare enforcement cannot meaningfully solve. Instead, it simply punishes those most reliant on public transit.

First, let’s look at the claim that expanded enforcement will help recoup what the city estimates is $7 million to $10 million in missed fare revenue.

The core issue here is people don’t pay fares for many reasons, the majority of which have nothing to do with enforcement. Issues loading or paying with a Peggo card, a lack of physical coins, misplaced bus tickets, or, most critically, simply being unable to afford transit.

In many of these cases enforcement will not and cannot lead to payment, it will just mean less people riding the bus. The city’s own data demonstrate this.

During the two-month enforcement campaign, 7,614 people were denied access to transit or walked away, 931 received a warning, and 359 riders paid after being asked. In other words, this enforcement campaign had a four per cent success rate and recouped a total revenue of … $1,202.65 (if everyone paid full price).

That’s right, in two months of transit inspectors, police, and community safety officers cracking down on enforcement, the city managed to recoup enough money to pay the wage of a single Winnipeg Police Service officer for a single week. (Maybe a little more if they were also handing out fines to the people who couldn’t afford the bus in the first place.)

The second claim was that people who evade fares are dangerous and so excluding them from the system will improve safety for drivers and riders.

Again, the city’s very own data fail to support this.

The Winnipeg Police Service reported that during 2024 there were 325 incidents in and around transit, or roughly 54 incidents in any two-month period. Let us assume that fare evasion occurred at a similar rate and so there were at least 8,904 instances last year during the same period.

That would mean at most 0.6 per cent of evasions ever escalate. The point being that, based on city and WPS data, the vast majority of people who evade fares are just riding the bus like anyone else. Falsely suggesting that every person who does not pay their fare (by choice or circumstance) is dangerous and must be excluded from a public service fails to get us closer to improving safety.

So, what then is the point of this campaign?

If the issue is, from a moral standpoint, the city and certain segments of society want to see fares enforced, then say that. But if it is to solve budget deficits and create safety, the numbers fail to add up.

At bare minimum, the city needs to do far more to prove that fare evasion is truly the problem they say it is.

Moreover, what about those 8,545 lost riders? Did they get home safe? Were they able to get to meetings, jobs, appointments, families, friends, or support? Did they just wait another 10 minutes and get on the following bus because it is an essential service that many rely on?

We are not going to get a better or safer public transportation system by actively working to exclude the very public which relies on it in the first place.

If the issue is revenue, installing fare boxes that can accept various payment forms should help — which the city is working on.

But so would making reduced fares more accessible. How many of those 8,545 people could have paid if the ticket was a little cheaper or easier to buy? Maybe we should also focus on asking the province and feds to pull their weight in funding critical infrastructure like public transportation.

If the concern is safety, then more riders and less escalation at the fare box could go a long way. But if the concern is an expensive photo op that makes it look like the city moved the needle … well then I guess maybe this campaign was pretty successful after all.

Dagen Perrott is currently a graduate student at Concordia University whose research and work focuses on safety, security, and public transportation.