How to Reduce Fare Evasion
The case for a lottery for those who tap in
Epistemic status: Speculative
Transport for London loses around £190m a year to fare evasion - up from £130m just two years ago. Robert Jenrick’s viral video of him confronting fare-dodgers - seen by 15 million people - shows how the issue increasingly strikes a chord with Londoners, in addition to the impact on the public purse.
A few days ago, I saw a novel idea on Twitter to curb fare-dodging:1
Intriguing, yes? Let’s put a bit of flesh on those bones.
First, instead of an annual draw, let’s have twelve monthly draws - like Premium Bonds - to have a continual drum-beat of winners. And instead of a single massive price, each month let’s have 1x £50,000 winner, 10x £5,000 winnersand a further 25x £1,000 winners.2
That’s 432 winners a year, for a total of £1.5 million - which is still well under 1% of TfL’s losses due to fare evasion. Over a five year period, and using Dunbar’s number3 as a proxy, roughly 1 in 30 Londoners will personally be acquainted with someone who’s won.
It would be open to all UK residents who had registered their Oyster card / other payment device. You’d get one ‘ticket’ per tap-in, so frequent travellers would be more likely to win. And, given that it has to be registered, it would be simple to have an ‘opt-out’ for those who wished not to take part - due to a disapproval of gambling or other reasons.
OK, but would it work?
Not by itself, no. But combined with a big push on compliance and enforcement,4 it could be part of the solution.
One of the challenges in Britain today is the growing feeling that playing by the rules is a mug’s game. The police solve only 1 in 170 ‘thefts against the person’ - often mobile phone snatches - despite phones broadcasting their location. Hyper-prolific offenders - those with 46 or more prior convictions are sent to prison less than half the time, upon committing a further offence. People increasingly play music on public transport without their headphones. Water company bosses rake in millions in bonuses for5 dumping sewage in our waterways. Asylum seekers get free dentistry and taxi service to schools while British citizens can’t find an NHS dentist.
Depending on your politics, some of these may resonate with you more than others. But the feeling is growing across the left and right - hence the surging support for Reform, and increasing interest in the Greens and in The Party That Is Definitely Not Called ‘Your Party’6 if it ever properly launches.
Better enforcement is part of that. But a sense that the state is on the side of decent, law-abiding citizens can also help. Government campaigns can, over time, make certain behaviours more or less socially acceptable.7 And the tap-in lottery would be part of showing that paying your fare was the socially responsible thing to do - and valued.
A public information campaign would clearly need to be part of this. Using some of the posters that TfL currently uses for various things to prominently display some of each month’s big winners (those who were happy to and had opted in to having their photo used) - and, if I had my way, mugshots of the fare-evaders who had been caught, with the amount of the fine plastered over it. Change the underlying assumptions, change the attitudes, change the behaviour.
But would fare dodgers actually change their behaviour? Well, some wouldn’t. Maybe most wouldn’t. But this is where theory of mind can betray you. For one thing, dear reader, you are8 not a fare dodger, and so may not be perfectly modelling them. For another, you could be right that most fare dodgers wouldn’t change their behaviour; you might even be right that 90% wouldn’t. But here’s the thing: for this to break even, we just need fewer than 1% to change their ways. Are you that confident that fewer than 1 in 100 other people - with their rich, complex, diverse, inner states wouldn’t change their mind? People do respond, on the margins, to incentives and to cultural pressure.
Am I totally confident that this plan would work? No, I’m not.
But if I were Mayor of London, I’d give it a try.
I have no idea who ‘Franklin’ is, so if he turns out to be an axe-murdering cannibal then I disavow all endorsement of his views, beyond this idea here.
£50k is a lot of money: more than one and a half times the post-tax median full-time salary, and a life-changing amount for many people. £5k is the sort of money that lets you get a new (second hand) car, take a nice family holiday abroad, cheaply redo a kitchen - or perhaps pay off your credit card debts, if that’s what you need to do. £1,000 probably isn’t going to change lives, but it’s still very nice to receive and you can do a bunch with it - certainly I still remember the time I won £1,000 on Premium Bonds, despite it being over a decade ago.
150
Which TfL claims to be already doing - at a cost of over £20m a year and has set a target to reduce fare evasion to 1.5%.
Sorry, ‘while’.
Aka the Fruit and Nut party.
Think recycling, or drunk-driving.
I hope!
Good idea. It's clever and financially efficient.
I'm slightly concerned it falls into the category of "paying people to do the right thing", which e.g. the Freakonomics daycare study shows us can backfire and reduce intrinsic motivation/conscience. OTOH maybe the random lottery nature of it would guard against that (unpredictable rewards, Skinner, etc).
There's also a danger that fare dodging would return to higher levels than before, if the scheme ended (and it probably would end, as people would forget that it saved more than it cost, and they'd just see it as frivolous spending that "ought" not to be needed)
The National Lottery etc. haven't gone for a model with a £50k maximum prize, although it would boost the chance of winning life-changing money multiple times. I'm wondering if lack of rationality means you get more benefit from a big headline number.