Riding the subte without paying

[jantango]

I have witnessed people jumping the turnstiles and walking through the door for the handicapped. One guy said, it costs too much. This means lost revenue for service and price increases. My mouth dropped when I saw the fare increase to 650 pesos.

I found this video about the same situation in NYC where they ride free on buses and the subways.

 

[ArgentinaVet]

My mouth dropped when I saw the fare increase to 650 pesos.

I found this video about the same situation in NYC where they ride free on buses and the subways.

How cheap do you (or others) think the subway should be ? $0.50 USD is not cheap enough?

In NYC a single ride cost $2.90 USD

In Rio de Janeiro a single ride costs about $1.30 USD (R$7.50)- folks making less than $575 USD per month (R$3205) pay about $0.90 USD (R$5) per ride.

In Santiago de Chile the single ride cost is $0.72 USD off peak and $0.79 USD peak time; students and seniors pay $0.26 USD

 

[elhombresinnombre]

You have two irresistible forces bearing down on each other: the need to make public transport affordable to the users and the need to make it affordable to the state. All public transport that I know of in metro areas is subsidised because the economic and social benefits make it worth while. The question is how much subsidy is too much? Where I think Buenos Aires differs from metropolitan areas like Paris, Madrid, New York, London and so on is that so many people that the city depends on live so precariously that stuff like a minimum wage is meaningless to them and those people can't afford the new fares and couldn't even afford the old ones. The answer (IMO obviously) is not to keep transport fares so low that even the destitute can afford them but to take positive steps to lift those people out of destitution. That's not going to happen overnight.

 

[JoeBoston]

I’ve seen this in cities all over the past few years - in NYC, Boston, Paris, and Buenos Aires.

It seems to be more of a cultural change than economic one.

 

[Silvie]

I've seen people jumping over the subway turnstiles in NY since 1980 - throughout the years - and at the same time, I also saw undercover police just waiting for them to do that and arresting them on site, on many ocasions too.

 

[steveinbsas]

I have witnessed people jumping the turnstiles and walking through the door for the handicapped.

My personal "all time favorite" thread in this forum was about a member who acknowledged, if not bragged about jumping turnstiles.

Although the thread in which that boast was posted no longer exists, it is mentioned in my favorito:

Reporting contact with an international fugitive in BA?

Does anyone know how to contact the appropriate Argentine authorities that they may have had contact with or might know the whereabouts of an indicted international fugitive in Buenos Aires?

baexpats.org

 

[Redpossum]

I have seen people jumping over the barricade at the train stop near my home. They do this to exit directly from the destination platform, rather than going back inside and swiping their Sube card the second time, as one is supposed to do.

This is somewhat different, I suppose, but the intention is the same - to avoid payment.

Nota Bene - I am talking about the train, not the subte.

 

[Quilombo]

Turnstile jumping doesn't bug me, I want more people to take public transit, and it needs more funding which this takes away from, yes, but of all the different kinds of theft in society, it's near the bottom in terms of my concern.

This is especially true when you consider places like New York which have unsolved violent and sexual crimes yet they pay cops nearly a 100K a year to go undercover on subway platforms and arrest the poorest members of society. Imagine if the cops focused on rapes and murders instead, maybe they could have even caught the people that killed Epstein, guess we'll never know since New York's finest is too busy stopping and frisking black teens

Anyways, 50¢ a ride seems cheap when you're a dollars earning expat or retiree until you remember that the minimum wage here is less than a dollar an hour. Imagine if the subway in NYC was $7.50/ride? I totally agree that the 11¢/ride the subte was previously was unsustainable, but incomes haven't gone up almost 500% yet the subte has.

Just some food for thought...

 

[Stephano]

Turnstile jumping doesn't bug me, I want more people to take public transit, and it needs more funding which this takes away from, yes, but of all the different kinds of theft in society, it's near the bottom in terms of my concern.

This is especially true when you consider places like New York which have unsolved violent and sexual crimes yet they pay cops nearly a 100K a year to go undercover on subway platforms and arrest the poorest members of society. Imagine if the cops focused on rapes and murders instead, maybe they could have even caught the people that killed Epstein, guess we'll never know since New York's finest is too busy stopping and frisking black teens

Anyways, 50¢ a ride seems cheap when you're a dollars earning expat or retiree until you remember that the minimum wage here is less than a dollar an hour. Imagine if the subway in NYC was $7.50/ride? I totally agree that the 11¢/ride the subte was previously was unsustainable, but incomes haven't gone up almost 500% yet the subte has.

Just some food for thought...

Thank you Quilombo for pointing this out: it is not the absolute costs we need to compare, but the real costs in relation with the cost of living and wages. I too think that 50 cents is still cheap, but that does not matter, what matters is how expensive it is now for the average Argentinian family.