ASK!: Fare checks fair, RTD says

By Mike Rudeen, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 1, 2008 at 6 p.m.

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Teri wanted to know why RTD doesn't use a mechanism or ticket scanner to make sure riders have paid to be on light rail. She said she's seen ticket checkers miss a lot of people who leave the trains before they're caught.

The current system of "roving fare inspectors" is similar to that of passenger rail systems around the world, said RTD spokesman Scott Reed. If passengers don't show a valid fare, they are subjected to fines and possible criminal citations.

The fare evasion rate is just under 2 percent, Reed said, and the cost of setting up turnstiles or fare barriers or dramatically increasing the number of inspectors would be higher than the revenue lost to evasion. The evasion rate is extrapolated from periodic "full fare sweeps," when all passengers at a station or on a train are checked for valid fares.

Reed also noted that 80 percent of light-rail passengers use pre-paid passes.

For your next challenge, two related polling questions:

How do pollsters come up with the margin of error in their findings? - Jim

If Obama and McCain are 50-50 in a poll with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent, might either one of them actually be ahead by as much as 54-46? - Dan

Know the answers to this political twofer? Post them on the Ask! blog, blogs.RockyMountainNews.com/denver/ask, or e-mail rudeenm@RockyMountainNews.com. While you're on the blog, check out the other questions on the Ask! home page, or post one of your own by clicking on the link to the right on the page.

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