I’ve declared war on fare dodgers. It’s one of my six signs of ageing

The first sign of ageing is when people stand up to offer you their bus seat. Or it used to be. Nobody offers their seat any more. They’re too sight-impaired by their device and too hearing-impaired by their earbuds to notice an older person unless that person is, say, dead.

The second sign of ageing is when you stand up to offer an elderly person your seat and they say no, thanks, because you are actually older than them.

Illustration: Dionne Gain Credit:

The third sign of ageing is when you sit near the tap-on, tap-off reader and monitor how many people treat payment as optional. However much you think fare evasion happens on public buses, double it. And double it again, because as an older person, you might have forgotten the first time.

This week the Herald’s Matt O’Sullivan reported that the Opal card system is, like us, “reaching end of life”. A $568 million upgrade, called Opal Next Gen, is running a year late, and the delays are costing NSW about $80 million a year. A breakdown in the Opal card reader system could cost the state upwards of $1.8 billion. A reader failure at one end of your trip will charge the honest commuter the maximum daily distance if they tap on but are not recorded tapping off. The ageing of the Opal system also opens user data to cyberattacks among other dire consequences.

Even this bleak assessment overlooks what we effectively have, which is an honesty-box system on buses. According to Transport for NSW’s last survey of fare compliance, 87 to 91 per cent of Sydney Metro bus commuters paid their full fare between 2021 and 2023, the shortfall costing $55 million across those three years.

That figure is wildly optimistic. My own ageing yet fiercely hawklike eyes observe that more like 30 to 40 per cent of bus travellers cheat, by not bothering to tap on or off, or by waving their card at a reader, getting the red cross to say their card hasn’t been recognised, and then continuing on their merry way. Once I saw a man board a bus, present the reader with his middle finger, and go to his seat. He deserves credit for acknowledging that the reader was even there.

Don’t trust me. Tom, a bus driver I met last year, guessed that about a third of bus commuters are fare cheats. I asked him if he called them out. Tom said there are too many, but sometimes he’s had a gutful and won’t leave the stop until the person has come back and paid. On occasion, he gets out of his seat and demands the commuter pay for their trip. I’ve seen other drivers do this. As usual, it’s the driver who then becomes the bad guy: the general public are more interested in getting to their destination than in their driver holding cheats to account.

Transport for NSW is really only guessing at fare non-compliance. According to its survey, there’s only a couple of percentage points’ difference between the amount of fare evasion on buses and on trains and ferries. This is patent nonsense. Trains and ferries have electronic turnstiles that stop all but the most athletic fare cheats. On a train or ferry, you need strength, speed, determination and supple hamstrings to clear the turnstile. On a bus, you just need to give a royal wave in the general direction of the reader.

The Herald’s story adds another reason for inaccuracy in the official surveys, which measure “Non-compliant customers include[ing] those not carrying an Opal card, not tapping on and those travelling on discounted Opal products (e.g. Concession, Child/Youth, Senior) without valid entitlement”. But if the Opal card system is in such disrepair that its replacement is years overdue and its readers are no longer reading, how would you know how many customers are non-compliant?

The fourth sign of ageing is when you wonder what can be done about it. Train or ferry-type turnstiles, while bringing joy to Bus Driver Tom, would be an investment with a doubtful cost-benefit. Tom thinks turnstiles would pay off over time. They might also deter his other regular fare cheats: commuters addled by drink, busy with their phones, or too occupied with their half-eaten burgers or their own importance to negotiate a turnstile.

Another solution would be a return of the old ticket inspector. A fifth sign of ageing is being able to remember these Stasi-like operatives who terrorised the transport system in pairs, one to catch you and the other to enjoy the spectacle. But a beefed-up inspector force is deemed more expensive than defunct card readers. The state currently employs a mere 600 ticket inspectors across the network, empowered to issue fines of up to $200. I’ve seen them on trains but never on buses.

A likely futuristic solution is the geo-tracking of individuals through artificial intelligence and facial recognition. Fantasising about, and voting for, authoritarian, proto-fascist technological responses to unlawful activity is a sixth sign of ageing.

Among Transport for NSW’s many problems, it’s surprising how little attention is paid to the simple matter of ensuring the payment of fares. Complaints about unreliable and cancelled services have doubled this year. The Auditor-General has found that bus operators met their target of on-time services at a rate of only 15 per cent between January 2023 and May 2024. Maybe fare evasion is a protest against poor service?

Transport strikes undermine confidence in the system and no doubt justify, in some commuters’ minds, the idea that if you don’t fulfil your side of the bargain, I won’t fulfil mine. Fare evasion can be seen as a tax revolt like any other, a statement of dissatisfaction with the service (not) provided.

If you ask bus driver Tom, and I did, a thought-through revolt against a breach of the social contract might be true for some fare dodgers, but the majority are just trying to get something for nothing. And when the cash-strapped system can’t pay its employees adequately and an industrial dispute is the result, who’s going to be the first to complain about the delays? Those who were in too much of a hurry to pay their fare?

But maybe getting too worked up about fairness and the social contract is the definitive sign that you really are ageing.

Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.