Fare evasion in public transport systems: a review of the literature

Abstract

Fare evasion has become an important issue for public transport companies, especially for those that have adopted proof-of-payment ticketing systems. Recent years have seen strong growth in the publication of studies on fare evasion. This paper reviews 113 studies to identify the characteristics of the research on fare evasion. An overview and classification in five main areas, i.e., fare evader-oriented, criminological, economic, technological, and operational is provided. Next, the status quo of these studies is assessed to support possible unifying research development.

Cascading Failure Analysis on Shanghai Metro Networks: An Improved Coupled Map Lattices Model Based on Graph Attention Networks

“…As shown in Table 1 , the Shanghai AFC dataset includes the station ID, date, time, node, vehicle, cost and discount. While the AFC data can underestimate passenger demand owing to fare evasion [ 40 ], this study mainly considers the passenger flow coupling strength which was obtained by training the one-month continuous dataset through GAT. The fare evasion will have a slight effect on the training process.…”

Extracting the Relationship and Evolutionary Rule Connecting Residents’ Travel Demand and Traffic Supply Using Multisource Data

“…However, the percentage of passengers using smart cards is different in different lines and different stations, according to the data analysis results, which shows that the average percentage of passengers using smart cards was almost 70%, which means that the AFC data can reflect the general passenger flow of Beijing URT. Meanwhile, adopting AFC data may underestimate passenger demand due to fare evasion in some cities [ 33 ], however, there are security and gate systems for each station in Beijing URT systems, and it is well-staffed, so the number of fare evaders is low and cannot make a big difference to the research results.…”

Fare inspection patrols scheduling in transit systems using a Stackelberg game approach

“…A comprehensive review of fare evasion in public transport systems can be found in Barabino et al (2020), which classify the literature on fare evasion into five areas of interest: fare evader-oriented studies, criminology, economics, technological innovations, and operational research. For them, the fare inspection patrol scheduling problem is a sub-area of operations research that also includes security crew scheduling, resource allocation, allocation of inspectors on a transit network, and fare inspection strategies.…”

“…The three main ticketing systems in public transportation systems are: proof-of-payment (POP) where passengers must purchase a ticket before boarding the transport vehicle; pay-on-entry (POE) which requires that the fare payment be made via driver or showing the proof-of-payment each time passengers get into the vehicle; and conductor (C) where the fare is paid via conductors on board. This classification is introduced by Barabino et al (2020) and is based on when and to whom the fare is paid. A POP system implies that passengers purchase tickets (or passes) in advance and are required to validate them before using the service, regardless of verification of payment of the fare.…”

“…A POP system implies that passengers purchase tickets (or passes) in advance and are required to validate them before using the service, regardless of verification of payment of the fare. As defined by Barabino et al (2020), POP systems can be applied with barriers (POP B ) and without barriers (POP S ). In systems with barriers the transit operator installs entrance gates or turnstiles and establishes a clearly defined payment zone assuming that these physical barriers inhibit fare evasion.…”