Friend Using Child Tickets on Bus

Caught

Hi guys,

My friend is 21 and I noticed she is using a childrens five day rambler bus passes (they cost €8.20) when getting to work. She is often buying new clothes, going out at the weekend and can afford a lot of money for luxuries in general. She still lives with her parents and doesn't pay much rent.

She has two jobs (both part time [about 30 hours and 8-12 hours] and loves them both).

Is it wrong that I'm annoyed over this? With the ticket prices having gone up again this year I can't help but feel that people like her who are doing this are the reason for it. I can't find a job for the life of me and gets no grant, so I get €120 pocket money to pay for lunch and bus passes (they're €80 a month alone). I feel I'm being cheated or something.

She can afford it, but just she chooses not to pay for an adult bus pass. When I pulled her up she said "It's because going to work I only go a few stops, and I'm not paying over €20 a week for that." The thing is when I noticed, we were going into town which takes about 40 minutes.

I feel like this is taking money from both my and all other commuters pockets because if people don't pay the correct fare, Dublin Bus will have to keep raising the prices to keep going. Is it my place to say anything to her again about it? In a twisted way, I kind of hope she's caught by an inspector which makes her cop on or else somebody else says something about it, but she's always been the one who paid child fare when the rest didn't and she's at least a year older than the rest of us.

Thanks,
Caught

Tarabuses

It's the same as shoplifting.

foggy_lad

OP You could always report her anonymously to Dublin Bus and give them details(start and finish stops) of a journey she regularly takes and the inspectors can be waiting for her!

gbob

Shame I don't work that route, I love catching piss-takers.

JayRoc

foggy_lad wrote: »

OP You could always report her anonymously to Dublin Bus and give them details(start and finish stops) of a journey she regularly takes and the inspectors can be waiting for her!

Someone hasn't the stones to air a minor grievance to a friend's face...so instead they should inform on them to the "authorities"?
Well done. You have sucessfully illustrated what this country is becoming, in one easy sentence

foggy_lad

JayRoc wrote: »

Someone hasn't the stones to air a minor grievance to a friend's face...so instead they should inform on them to the "authorities"?
Well done. You have sucessfully illustrated what this country is becoming, in one easy sentence

Wouldn't anyone report this illegal behaviour especially when such thievery results in higher fares and taxes for everyone?

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

Caught wrote: »

Hi guys,

My friend is 21 and I noticed she is using a childrens five day rambler bus passes (they cost €8.20) when getting to work. She is often buying new clothes, going out at the weekend and can afford a lot of money for luxuries in general. She still lives with her parents and doesn't pay much rent.

She has two jobs (both part time [about 30 hours and 8-12 hours] and loves them both).

Is it wrong that I'm annoyed over this? With the ticket prices having gone up again this year I can't help but feel that people like her who are doing this are the reason for it. I can't find a job for the life of me and gets no grant, so I get €120 pocket money to pay for lunch and bus passes (they're €80 a month alone). I feel I'm being cheated or something.

She can afford it, but just she chooses not to pay for an adult bus pass. When I pulled her up she said "It's because going to work I only go a few stops, and I'm not paying over €20 a week for that." The thing is when I noticed, we were going into town which takes about 40 minutes.

I feel like this is taking money from both my and all other commuters pockets because if people don't pay the correct fare, Dublin Bus will have to keep raising the prices to keep going. Is it my place to say anything to her again about it? In a twisted way, I kind of hope she's caught by an inspector which makes her cop on or else somebody else says something about it, but she's always been the one who paid child fare when the rest didn't and she's at least a year older than the rest of us.

Thanks,
Caught

They keep raising fares because;

1) Irelands bus drivers are amongst the best paid bus drivers in the world.
2) There are literally hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens paying absolutely nothing to use public transport and it's the people who do actually pay who end up subsidising their travel.
3) More and more people are driving because everyone lives in a two storey house far from where they work, so we can blame incompetent planning by local government on that one.
4) The bus service can be unreliable and people choose alternative ways to go about their business.

Bus Eireann/Dublin Bus are probably the first company in world to actually raise prices because they have less customers. Fecking gob****es.

Your friend is hardly flush with too much cash if she's working two jobs and has no car. Lucky her she can pay a few euro less than you for her transportation every week, lucky you that you get €120 allowance every week, unlucky you didn't get a grant, you're annoyed she gets more money than you, just be happy for her and don't let it bother you.

monument

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

2) There are literally hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens paying absolutely nothing to use public transport and it's the people who do actually pay who end up subsidising their travel.

Actually free pass holders are mostly subsidised via the department of social welfare by the tax payer (most of whom don't use public transport regularly).

As Dublin Bus still does not cover it's costs (plus the cost of NTA-funded buses etc), via the department of transport the tax payer also subsidises Dublin Bus generally and, in turn, most bus users are subsidised.

Even if there has been a move to get uses to pay their way more in recent years, it's still a government policy call to partly fund public transport by subsidising it. It's seen as a good thing.

In the same way it's a government call to give out free travel passes to old people, people with disabilities and some of those with little means. It's also a government call not to pay the transport companies enough per free pass holder so the tax payer again picks that up via the department of transport. And maybe uses will be expect to pay too for this.

Children are also subsidised a little more than adults, and that's a policy call.

There's no policy call to allow adults to use child tickets, so that's just theft. Theft the tax payer mainly pays for.

If it's only a few stops than they could easily walk or cycle -- nobody is forcing them to break the law.

Caught

Thanks everybody! I don't feel as silly for feeling a bit annoyed over this!

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

Your friend is hardly flush with too much cash if she's working two jobs and has no car. Lucky her she can pay a few euro less than you for her transportation every week, lucky you that you get €120 allowance every week, unlucky you didn't get a grant, you're annoyed she gets more money than you, just be happy for her and don't let it bother you.

She works both jobs part time and loves them both. Why would she give up either one if she enjoys them and is getting paid for doing it at the same time? She'd be stupid to.

And I get €120 a month, not a week. I only get so much because I spend €80 a month on bus passes, and even then I need to eat while I'm in college so the rest goes on that. And I don't get a grant because my Mam started working an extra few hours a week a few years back which put us just above the limit where you qualify for a grant.

I'm allowed to be annoyed that my friend is paying childrens bus fare when she can afford not to. As others have said, it's effectively theft. Of course I'd be annoyed.

TheBandicoot

monument wrote: »

As Dublin Bus still does not cover it's costs

It shouldn't be expected to.

XPS_Zero

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

They keep raising fares because;

1) Irelands bus drivers are amongst the best paid bus drivers in the world.
2) There are literally hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens paying absolutely nothing to use public transport and it's the people who do actually pay who end up subsidising their travel.
3) More and more people are driving because everyone lives in a two storey house far from where they work, so we can blame incompetent planning by local government on that one.
4) The bus service can be unreliable and people choose alternative ways to go about their business.

Bus Eireann/Dublin Bus are probably the first company in world to actually raise prices because they have less customers. Fecking gob****es.

Your friend is hardly flush with too much cash if she's working two jobs and has no car. Lucky her she can pay a few euro less than you for her transportation every week, lucky you that you get €120 allowance every week, unlucky you didn't get a grant, you're annoyed she gets more money than you, just be happy for her and don't let it bother you.

For those of you who want to know the actual reason, not regurgitated reactionary propaganda, from someone who has been working with the people who make these decisions for years, those are not really the reasons.

• The bus and rail drivers do get paid more but not much more that it would mean a massive fare difference.
• The free pass scheme does not actually cost nearly as much as people imagine, this, like the Welfare budget in general is one of those perception v reality gaps the size of the grand canyon.
• No3 is kinda right but actually recent studies have shown a direct link between the fares going up and dropping passenger numbers so it's kinda like a dog chasing his tail. It's certainly true that our political leaders have no foresight or sense of long term planning but I blame the public for that, they are too much about NIMBYism and only lookin after their own back yard, not caring about the national interest as a whole.

The actual reasons why we have such high fares are:

• We have continued to cut the subsidies to public transport every year for nearly the last 20 years (this is the main reason).
• A combination of factors have meant passenger numbers, thus revenue, have dropped on many routes, these factors are, ironically, fare hikes, the recession meaning less people are at work and a dozen other smaller factors that add up to a big change in numbers.
• CIE is painfully inefficient and full of archaic work practices and poor management, and the govt lacks the political courage to tackle this because, for reasons that escape me, they are terrified of unions (which are totally powerless in Ireland so I don't know where the fear is coming from)

I used to keep a child ticket handy when I was in college. In our glorious country you are barred from all help from the DSP if you are trying to better yourself through education, and I had no parental money and had no job at the time, I often could not afford to eat, never mind pay 3euro each way on the bus every day. I kept it for really tough scenarios when I was badly stuck for money but HAD to go somewhere (like a hospital appointment) that I could not get out of. I can count the number of times I used it on one hand cos I felt really bad about it. Nowadays there's things like LEAP capping which mean someone has less and less need to do stuff like that.

I'd encourage you to not report your friend. Too many Irish people don't have the balls to say to peoples faces what they will say behind their backs, it's, alongside our begrudgery, something I really can't stand. I would not want to be friends with someone who could not say things to my face but was bitching behind my back.
Say to her that you notice her doing it, why is she doing it, ask her to stop, suggest to her other ways she could be saving on the right fare (for example all services cap on LEAP is 40euro a week now no matter how many journeys you take, if you've two jobs that should be manageable)

I'd also say to those of you out there thinking of using this, the drivers are fairly wise to this kind of thing. If it's busy they may be paying less attention but they are not blind, Nor are IE staff blind to it, when you use a child leap card the light bleeps yellow so they know what kind of card you are using. The more you do something like this the more likely you are to be caught.

Jesus Wept

Your reaction is bizarre.

jane82

I dont think this person is your friend. If she was you would be happy for her not totting up what she has compared to you.

XPS_Zero

TheBandicoot wrote: »

It shouldn't be expected to.

Indeed, if you were to privatize Dublin Bus and DART outright it would be a disaster.

The things people are calling privatization, the plans for the busses, are not really that at all. Having a similar model to the LUAS is what they're talking about, state owned infrastructure, day to day operations being out for competitive tender. The companies that come in to do this work do not always do a great job, UCD is a shining example of that where a manager in res hired his relatives company to go billed for work that was already done free by existing voluntary staff, but LUAS is proof the opposite can be true as well if the rules and set up is done right.

Some Public Transport routes are inherently unprofitable, so to make them so we would be faced with two choices:

1. Cut out all the unprofitable routes which would leave vast sections of the country with no public transport at all.
2. More than double the fares, even if you managed to make CIE run like the RPA does (which they should have done in the first place instead of creating two separate companies to do the same job, like I said they lack balls) you'd still have to have ticket prices be way higher.

Like the constant debate over the passes and welfare in Ireland people always go on like our systems overly generious, but if you bother to actually look at other similar countries in the EU, and I mean the EU15, comparing like with like, not us with Latvia, you'll see that their public services like their welfare state is way better. Students in the UK don't buy a middle man card and get nearly nothing back for it like we do here, they get a massive discount, and having a pass for pensioners in some form is the done thing all over the developed world.

maguic24

OP, you should see the amount of money, people who are working pay in taxes. It's absolutely ridiculous and we get nothing for it, we have to pay through the nose for everything.

I can understand why you are annoyed but at the same time, I can kind of see why your friend does what she does. Like other posters have already said, you could either say it to her or report her.

ssshhh123

So what if your friend is taking a chance and paying less than what is required. How is that going to make things better for you. Just get over it or get a bike then you will have more money.

monument

Everybody please stay on topic.

Non-transport posts or posts which are mainly focused on welfare points will be deleted.

- moderator

hfallada

OP I can understand where your friend is coming from. A students has to pay 25% more for their monthly travel pass on Dublin bus than a PAYE worker, who has a job. How is that fair? It isnt and neither is giving a travel pass to every OAP regardless of whether or not they can afford to pay for their own travel.

If your friend gets caught she will end up with a €100 fine. But even if she gets caught once or twice a year, she is still considerable better off than you paying full fare. You can call it theft. But nearly every other country in Europe gives students half price travel but students only get 25% off. Although most Irish students cant find jobs in with the Economic situation.

Although your friend is committing theft(and there are thousands like her). With the ridiculous prices that young people have to pay for transport I cant fault them

Caught

hfallada wrote: »

OP I can understand where your friend is coming from. A students has to pay 25% more for their monthly travel pass on Dublin bus than a PAYE worker, who has a job.

If your friend gets caught she will end up with a €100 fine. But even if she gets caught once or twice a year, she is still considerable better off than you paying full fare. You can call it theft. But nearly every other country in Europe gives students half price travel but students only get 25% off. Although most Irish students cant find jobs in with the Economic situation.

Although your friend is committing theft(and there are thousands like her). With the ridiculous prices that young people have to pay for transport I cant fault them

I don't really get what you're at here, but I'm guessing you think she's a student. She's not. She messed up in school, did a PLC and decided to not go on to college after it. Now she's a working woman!

Mrs OBumble

JayRoc wrote: »

Someone hasn't the stones to air a minor grievance to a friend's face...so instead they should inform on them to the "authorities"?
Well done. You have sucessfully illustrated what this country is becoming, in one easy sentence

The OP has clearly told us that s/he brought it up with the friend, who said she felt justified in it 'cos she doesn't go far. (To which my response would be - well you should walk then.)

OP - you're right to be annoyed. Your call whether to report it or not.

But choose better friends in future, this one has questionable morals. Today she's stealing small amounts from DB, who knows what her next trick will be.

jane82

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

The OP has clearly told us that s/he brought it up with the friend, who said she felt justified in it 'cos she doesn't go far. (To which my response would be - well you should walk then.)

OP - you're right to be annoyed. Your call whether to report it or not.

But choose better friends in future, this one has questionable morals. Today she's stealing small amounts from DB, who knows what her next trick will be.

Ah come on. One day its paying a few pence less on the bus next its bank jobs and heroin?

Whippersnapper

If that person wants to do that, that's their business. It's not right but it's nothing to do with you.

n97 mini

If the person beside you wants to shop lift, that's their business. It's not right but it's nothing to do with you.

Where does it stop?

Whippersnapper

If I saw someone shoplifting I wouldn't get involved. Unless somebody was in danger of getting hurt then I would stay out of it.

sawdoubters

get her to buy a printer and print out a new ticket just change the dates so she does not have to keep on buyinging tickets

gbob

Whippersnapper wrote: »

If that person wants to do that, that's their business. It's not right but it's nothing to do with you.

n97 mini wrote: »

If the person beside you wants to shop lift, that's their business. It's not right but it's nothing to do with you.

Where does it stop?

Whippersnapper wrote: »

If I saw someone shoplifting I wouldn't get involved. Unless somebody was in danger of getting hurt then I would stay out of it.

Who do you think pays for shoplifting and other petty theft? We do, everybody that pays their way has to pay extra for the gob****es that think their too cute to pay their fair share.

punisher5112

Loads of adults and students from college using child and scholar tickets but this soon will be a thing of the past.

Now someone will always find a way but it is simple they are commiting fraud by not paying the correct fare.

When people go to these extremes why do they use the service if they hate DB, their drivers and so on.

If you use the bus or train you do so accepting the bye-laws.

corktina

Whippersnapper wrote: »

If that person wants to do that, that's their business. It's not right but it's nothing to do with you.

pish, this person may as well be putting their hands in other peoples pockets and taking stuff. CIE gets ripped off wholesale everyday, that's why they need Revenue Protection. Every fraud carried out means more cost for the bona fide fare-payers.

AlekSmart

jane82 wrote: »

Ah come on. One day its paying a few pence less on the bus next its bank jobs and heroin?

Yup,a quick trawl through the rap sheets of most of our major "Gangland" figures will tend to show a depressingly similar pattern...start of low and slow and once you get your mojo,then the sky's the limit...:(

AlekSmart

hfallada wrote: »

OP I can understand where your friend is coming from. A students has to pay 25% more for their monthly travel pass on Dublin bus than a PAYE worker, who has a job. How is that fair? It isnt and neither is giving a travel pass to every OAP regardless of whether or not they can afford to pay for their own travel.

If your friend gets caught she will end up with a €100 fine. But even if she gets caught once or twice a year, she is still considerable better off than you paying full fare. You can call it theft. But nearly every other country in Europe gives students half price travel but students only get 25% off. Although most Irish students cant find jobs in with the Economic situation.

Although your friend is committing theft(and there are thousands like her). With the ridiculous prices that young people have to pay for transport I cant fault them

I'm struggling to accept this impassioned plea....

http://www.dublinbus.ie/en/Fares--Tickets/Tickets/Student-Tickets/

A 30 Day Non-consecutive Student Rambler for €100.....

http://www.dublinbus.ie/en/Fares--Tickets/Tickets/2-Journey-Daily-Weekly/

A 30 Day Non-Consecutive Adult Rambler for €137.50

A One Day Student Leapcard Cap of €5.00./€20.00 Weekly
A One Day Adult Leapcard Cap of €6.90./€27.50 Weekly

If,as I suspect,you're using the Taxsaver figures to bolster your arguement,then I'm afraid I'll also call foul on it as the FULL price is paid to the Operator with the "saving" being obtained through the Individuals Taxation allowances.

You would certainly be well advised to check the ACTUAL levels of Student Discounts pertaining elsewhere in Europe,but when doing so make sure to take specific T's & C's into account,along with Zonal restrictions where applicable.

The current mainstream Irish Transport Student Rates are far from "ridiculous" and more than hold their own in the company of bigger and wealthier States.

To use this flawed reasoning as justification for bare faced theft is stretching my boundaries a bit....:eek: