Official DB policy for turning off engines because of fare dodgers

ongarboy · 15-04-2015 10:48AM #1

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/circuit-court/woman-humiliated-by-bus-driver-awarded-10-500-1.2175394

Interesting case in attached link where passenger was compensated after humiliating ordeal caused by bus driver who didn't believe she had paid the correct fare. I fully agree that the passenger was very badly treated in this case.

However, what are people's opinions on bus drivers who turn off the engine when they feel there are unruly or evading passengers on board? It has happened to me a few times where we have stopped for minutes when someone was smoking upstairs or someone dodged their fare. While I don't condone such behaviour by such passengers, is it fair on the rest of the passengers to endure delays? Is that official DB policy that drivers should not proceed until the fare dodger has paid?

15-04-2015 10:53AM

It's infuriating, but in the current politically correct climate and the soft attitudes taken by the justice system, I don't see that they have any other options.

punisher5112 · 15-04-2015 12:05PM

New ticket/pass checking unit been rolled out to catch these.

It was a bad way the driver handled it.

If some scumbag is on the bus and smoking been abusive and so on would you tolerate that in your job I am sure you would not so fair play to the drivers for standing up to them and hopefully making your journey as a passenger a little bit more tolerable.

Too many getting away with rubbish going ons for years.

cdebru · 15-04-2015 12:24PM

punisher5112 wrote: »

New ticket/pass checking unit been rolled out to catch these.

It was a bad way the driver handled it.

If some scumbag is on the bus and smoking been abusive and so on would you tolerate that in your job I am sure you would not so fair play to the drivers for standing up to them and hopefully making your journey as a passenger a little bit more tolerable.

Too many getting away with rubbish going ons for years.

Without knowing all the details I would have to disagree, the passenger said that the same driver had previously told her she was underpaying her fare, on that occasion he presumably didn't do anything other than inform her, he witnesses her do it again and he this time asks her to leave the bus, ignoring the fact of whether she was or wasn't paying the correct fare for a minute and just going on the basis that he at least believed she was underpaying then a word followed by asking her to leave the next time is reasonable.

Dravokivich · 15-04-2015 01:18PM

I think the incident in this case is an exceptional one, more so than the norm.

If there is something disruptive occurring on the bus and the driver requires Garda assistance, they should stop and turn off the engine.

I have only been using DB sporadically over the last 2 years, but I've rarely ever seen this needed to be done for the many years I've used the service overall.

bricks · 15-04-2015 02:14PM

The card reader charges here 2.50 Euro, looking on the db website its gone up to 2.60 Euro now but I can't see any option for 3.05 Euro on a leap card.

How could the bus driver not know the basics?
Or was there a higher fare for leap cards back when this case was raised?

Also why would the driver bother getting involved if she used the reader on the left anyway. Is the bus driver still working from DB?

This story is like something out of 'Lost' it leaves so many unanswered questions

punisher5112 · 15-04-2015 04:32PM

cdebru wrote: »

Without knowing all the details I would have to disagree, the passenger said that the same driver had previously told her she was underpaying her fare, on that occasion he presumably didn't do anything other than inform her, he witnesses her do it again and he this time asks her to leave the bus, ignoring the fact of whether she was or wasn't paying the correct fare for a minute and just going on the basis that he at least believed she was underpaying then a word followed by asking her to leave the next time is reasonable.

Have no idea what you are disagreeing with as I said it was badly handled by driver and was giving an answer for how the poster said about the bus been held up.

Re read above post op said they were held up themselves....

cdebru · 15-04-2015 05:45PM

punisher5112 wrote: »

Have no idea what you are disagreeing with as I said it was badly handled by driver and was giving an answer for how the poster said about the bus been held up.

Re read above post op said they were held up themselves....

How was it badly handled ? He asked someone who he believed had over ridden her fare to leave the bus having previously informed her that she was over riding her fare on a different occasion, she refused he knocked off the engine she left.
Other than for whatever reason whether he made a mistake or someone else made a mistake he shouldn't have asked her to leave. but it is a pretty standard way of getting a fare evader off the bus. I don't see how you can say he handled it badly, ignoring the fact she was defamed which may or may not be his fault.

punisher5112 · 15-04-2015 05:50PM

cdebru wrote: »

How was it badly handled ? He asked someone who he believed had over ridden her fare to leave the bus having previously informed her that she was over riding her fare on a different occasion, she refused he knocked off the engine she left.
Other than for whatever reason whether he made a mistake or someone else made a mistake he shouldn't have asked her to leave. but it is a pretty standard way of getting a fare evader off the bus. I don't see how you can say he handled it badly, ignoring the fact she was defamed which may or may not be his fault.

I will say it again I was commenting on op.

Not the €10500 case.

Look at post.

I agree it was wrong I never disputed that.

cdebru · 15-04-2015 05:51PM

bricks wrote: »

The card reader charges here 2.50 Euro, looking on the db website its gone up to 2.60 Euro now but I can't see any option for 3.05 Euro on a leap card.

How could the bus driver not know the basics?
Or was there a higher fare for leap cards back when this case was raised?

Also why would the driver bother getting involved if she used the reader on the left anyway. Is the bus driver still working from DB?

This story is like something out of 'Lost' it leaves so many unanswered questions

Outer suburban fares were in operation on the 33 at the time if you just used the reader on the right it would charge you the normal €2.50, but the fare for the 33 was up to €4 on the leap card depending on how far you travelled.
But you are right lots of unanswered questions

cdebru · 15-04-2015 05:55PM

punisher5112 wrote: »

I will say it again I was commenting on op.

Not the €10500 case.

Look at post.

I agree it was wrong I never disputed that.

But the OP is about the 10.5k case and you say the driver handled it badly if you weren't talking about the 10.5k case what driver handled what badly, ??

punisher5112 · 15-04-2015 06:33PM

cdebru wrote: »

But the OP is about the 10.5k case and you say the driver handled it badly if you weren't talking about the 10.5k case what driver handled what badly, ??

Read second part of their post.

I said driver handled the news case wrong by the looks of it but there is little information in the article.

Boulevardier · 15-04-2015 06:38PM

I got a bit of the same treatment from a driver whom I accused of dawdling. He was driving along at a glacial pace in light traffic. When I told him (politely) that I thought he was going slower than necessary, he accused me of harassment, stopped the bus and announced to the passengers that he was calling the guards.

Being the wimp that I am, I caved. Hopefully if it happens again, I won't.

frankoreagan · 15-04-2015 06:40PM

Have never been on a bus that's been stopped by the driver for unruly behavior. Gangs of youths smoking hash and listening to a boombox, drunk lads roaring at the top of their voice all the way into town, even a fight where an off duty garda eventually had to intervene and tell the driver to stop. Funny that the driver in this case was brave enough to stand up to a woman on her way to work though!

foggy_lad · 15-04-2015 06:49PM

cdebru wrote: »

Without knowing all the details I would have to disagree, the passenger said that the same driver had previously told her she was underpaying her fare, on that occasion he presumably didn't do anything other than inform her, he witnesses her do it again and he this time asks her to leave the bus, ignoring the fact of whether she was or wasn't paying the correct fare for a minute and just going on the basis that he at least believed she was underpaying then a word followed by asking her to leave the next time is reasonable.

Reasonable yes but only if she had been paying the wrong fare, even at that the driver saw her and knew where she was going so why not tell her that her leap fare was not enough and that she must use the drivers machine in future and pay an extra euro per journey. Either way the driver is at fault for humiliating the woman and either making a mistake with the fare or the terrible way he handled the situation or maybe he was just being a dick?

cdebru · 15-04-2015 08:21PM

foggy_lad wrote: »

Reasonable yes but only if she had been paying the wrong fare, even at that the driver saw her and knew where she was going so why not tell her that her leap fare was not enough and that she must use the drivers machine in future and pay an extra euro per journey. Either way the driver is at fault for humiliating the woman and either making a mistake with the fare or the terrible way he handled the situation or maybe he was just being a dick?

Eh were you not the one criticizing driver for no chasing up fare evaders only a few days ago, that they were too lazy to do their job, but now this guy is a dick, is there a way to ask someone to leave a bus for not paying the correct fare without humiliating them ?
When she is boarding she could accuse him if harassing her that she only intended to go to x y or z and she was the only one picked out etc etc.

I dont see what the terrible way he handled it is, in his eyes she was evading her fare after previously being told and he asked her to leave the bus, she refused and he knocked off the engine pretty standard procedure, the only problem is for whatever reason she shouldn't have been asked to leave the bus, that's the only **** up the rest is pretty standard.

cdebru · 15-04-2015 08:33PM

frankoreagan wrote: »

Have never been on a bus that's been stopped by the driver for unruly behavior. Gangs of youths smoking hash and listening to a boombox, drunk lads roaring at the top of their voice all the way into town, even a fight where an off duty garda eventually had to intervene and tell the driver to stop. Funny that the driver in this case was brave enough to stand up to a woman on her way to work though!

Yawn I guess he was lucky she wasn't black and a lesbian or you would have added racist and homophobe.

howiya · 15-04-2015 09:22PM

cdebru wrote: »

Outer suburban fares were in operation on the 33 at the time if you just used the reader on the right it would charge you the normal €2.50, but the fare for the 33 was up to €4 on the leap card depending on how far you travelled.
But you are right lots of unanswered questions

I wonder is this what happened. If the reader only deducts €2.50 then she cannot have underpaid.

The reader should either be smart enough to deduct the correct fare from the point at which she boarded the bus or be turned off on routes that operated outer suburban fares at the time.

LXFlyer · 16-04-2015 08:58AM

howiya wrote: »

I wonder is this what happened. If the reader only deducts €2.50 then she cannot have underpaid.

The reader should either be smart enough to deduct the correct fare from the point at which she boarded the bus or be turned off on routes that operated outer suburban fares at the time.

Sorry but that is nonsense.

The website and all of the literature available was quite clear from the outset that the righthand reader only deducts €2.50.

The onus was (and still is) on the customer to go to the driver for a different fare, just like on every other DB route.

The onus is on the customer to pay the correct fare. Anyone living in North County Dublin on the 33/33a routes would know that special fares applied - they always have done.

The fare chart that I linked to above was linked to from the 33 timetable.

L1011 · 16-04-2015 09:47AM

I disagree - if they think a dumb reader charging the maximum by default is OK it should have always done so - not with exceptions.

howiya · 16-04-2015 11:40AM

lxflyer wrote: »

Sorry but that is nonsense.

The website and all of the literature available was quite clear from the outset that the righthand reader only deducts €2.50.

The onus was (and still is) on the customer to go to the driver for a different fare, just like on every other DB route.

The onus is on the customer to pay the correct fare. Anyone living in North County Dublin on the 33/33a routes would know that special fares applied - they always have done.

The fare chart that I linked to above was linked to from the 33 timetable.

The reader deducts the maximum fare for all other routes. It is nonsense to suggest that a company should employ technology not capable of the same on a minority of its routes.

Dravokivich · 16-04-2015 11:48AM

howiya wrote: »

The reader deducts the maximum fare for all other routes. It is nonsense to suggest that a company should employ technology not capable of the same on a minority of its routes.

It's done by service type, not route. All the standard service types the right hand validator is set to the maximum applicable fare for most of them, which is 2.50. For Nitelink it's 5.00 and so on. It has nothing to do with the specific route.

It's not for a lack of wanting to either as there are 2 things happening with Dublin Bus at the moment.

- The current Ticketing machines have very low memory, if there are adjustments per route, it needs to be loaded onto all of them. This impacts on their performance as well.

- NTA are revising Dublin Buses fare structures each year. Instead of having upto 5 stage ranges, I think we've only got 3 now? It seems there's going to be more work into reducing it again. So there's no point in going ahead and wasting time with doing the maximum fare charged on a per route basis.

howiya · 16-04-2015 11:52AM

Dravokivich wrote: »

It's done by service type, not route. All the standard service types the right hand validator is set to the maximum applicable fare for most of them, which is 2.50. For Nitelink it's 5.00 and so on. It has nothing to do with the specific route.

It's not for a lack of wanting to either as there are 2 things happening with Dublin Bus at the moment.

- The current Ticketing machines have very low memory, if there are adjustments per route, it needs to be loaded onto all of them. This impacts on their performance as well.

- NTA are revising Dublin Buses fare structures each year. Instead of having upto 5 stage ranges, I think we've only got 3 now? It seems there's going to be more work into reducing it again. So there's no point in going ahead and wasting time with doing the maximum fare charged on a per route basis.

None of which is a passengers fault. If the machine isn't capable of taking the correct fare then it should be turned off to ensure all passengers have the correct fare deducted by the driver.

LXFlyer · 16-04-2015 12:02PM

howiya wrote: »

None of which is a passengers fault. If the machine isn't capable of taking the correct fare then it should be turned off to ensure all passengers have the correct fare deducted by the driver.

The point I was making is that is that it does not mean that the person has not underpaid as you suggested.

Dravokivich · 16-04-2015 12:15PM

howiya wrote: »

None of which is a passengers fault. If the machine isn't capable of taking the correct fare then it should be turned off to ensure all passengers have the correct fare deducted by the driver.

Huh? It's no secret how and why that validator operates as it does. It's expected the majority of users will be paying that fare. It has no means of knowing where you are going to get off. So what's the point in it adjusting for the route? It doesn't even know where it is.

howiya · 16-04-2015 12:19PM

lxflyer wrote: »

The point I was making is that is that it does not mean that the person has not underpaid as you suggested.

I'm not suggesting that she did not under pay. A court has already ruled that she did not under pay and did nothing wrong.

If she used the right hand side reader, she paid the maximum that Dublin Bus' technology would allow her to. This would tally with the ruling in the court that she did nothing wrong.

If she asked to have the €2.50 deducted at the driver's terminal and the driver recognised her as reported, he could have asked her to state her destination and he could have corrected her rather than waiting to pounce at the end of the stage.

howiya · 16-04-2015 12:37PM

Dravokivich wrote: »

Huh? It's no secret how and why that validator operates as it does. It's expected the majority of users will be paying that fare. It has no means of knowing where you are going to get off. So what's the point in it adjusting for the route? It doesn't even know where it is.

If you are travelling a journey that is worth less than the maximum fare you engage with the driver.

If your fare is the maximum fare you use the reader on the right hand side. If Dublin Bus wanted to charge a higher fare on a particular route then the technology should be able to cope. We're not in the 90s anymore.

Perhaps this is the reason they did away with the outer suburban fare.

Dravokivich · 16-04-2015 01:08PM

Even if there is technology out there that may be capable of doing it. There's no point in implementing it with the changes coming into Dublin Bus and its Fare Structures only for those changes to be redundant shortly after.

As it is now, with the one fare set on that validator depending on service type, means everyone using it should know what to expect across the network. Instead of trying to figure out what's different on separate routes.

LXFlyer · 16-04-2015 01:11PM

howiya wrote: »

I'm not suggesting that she did not under pay. A court has already ruled that she did not under pay and did nothing wrong.

If she used the right hand side reader, she paid the maximum that Dublin Bus' technology would allow her to. This would tally with the ruling in the court that she did nothing wrong.

If she asked to have the €2.50 deducted at the driver's terminal and the driver recognised her as reported, he could have asked her to state her destination and he could have corrected her rather than waiting to pounce at the end of the stage.

I'm not commenting on the specific case but at that time if someone's fare was an outer suburban one they had to go to the driver and get it there and not use the righthand validator.

If they used the righthand validator and therefore paid a lower fare than the appropriate one, then they would be guilty of paying the wrong fare.

Simple as that.

Trying to suggest otherwise is disingenuous.

It was a set of circumstances that applied to those routes with outer suburban fares and you can try and paint it whatever way you like, but you are wrong in your assertion.

howiya · 16-04-2015 01:29PM

lxflyer wrote: »

I'm not commenting on the specific case but at that time if someone's fare was an outer suburban one they had to go to the driver and get it there and not use the righthand validator.

If they used the righthand validator and therefore paid a lower fare than the appropriate one, then they would be guilty of paying the wrong fare.

Simple as that.

Trying to suggest otherwise is disingenuous.

It was a set of circumstances that applied to those routes with outer suburban fares and you can try and paint it whatever way you like, but you are wrong in your assertion.

I am commenting on the specific case. I have suggested a set of circumstances which may have happened. She was not guilty of paying the wrong fare. Feel free to paint it whatever way you like.

foggy_lad · 16-04-2015 01:50PM

lxflyer wrote: »

I'm not commenting on the specific case but at that time if someone's fare was an outer suburban one they had to go to the driver and get it there and not use the righthand validator.

Where on each outer suburban bus were these very specific instructions placed? was there a large notice at the entrance or on the validator?

If they used the righthand validator and therefore paid a lower fare than the appropriate one, then they would be guilty of paying the wrong fare.

Simple as that.

Trying to suggest otherwise is disingenuous.

It was a set of circumstances that applied to those routes with outer suburban fares and you can try and paint it whatever way you like, but you are wrong in your assertion.

The whole message being sent out by Leap and the NTA at the time was one of ease of use and simply validate when entering the bus without having to approach the driver. There were no notices on board buses telling people that they must see the driver on some routes if they were paying the maximum fare!

Official DB policy for turning off engines because of fare dodgers

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