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Moving Towards a More Accurate Level of Inspection Against Fare Evasion in Proof-of-Payment Transit Systems

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Abstract

This paper proposes an accurate economic framework to determine the optimum inspection level—the number of ticket inspectors—in a long time window, in order to maximize the system-wide profit when fare evasion occurs. This is the first framework that introduces: i) a refined characterization of the passenger demand, ii) a profit function with new constraints, iii) an alternative estimation of the percentage of passengers who choose to evade, and iv) a new formulation accounting for inspectors who cannot fine every passenger caught evading. The implementation of this framework is illustrated by using six years of data gathered from an Italian public transport company. Based on 57,256 stop-level inspections and 21,827 on-board personal interviews, the optimum inspection rate maximizing the profit is in the range of 3.4%-4.0%. This outcome provides more accurate results, which are discussed and compared to previous research. Finally, the framework is flexible, and it may be applied to any urban context in which proof-of-payment systems are adopted.

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Notes

  1. Function ξ(X) can be modelled by plotting on a diagram, along the x-axis, the value of the level of inspection and, on they-axis, the ratio of non-fined passengers to fined passengers.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been partially supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR), within the Smart City framework (project: PON04a2_00381 “CAGLIARI2020”). The authors are very grateful to the CTM senior management for its support of this work and the opportunity to illustrate the results and to two reviewers for their very helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Environment, University of Cagliari, via Marengo, 09123, Cagliari, Italy

    Benedetto Barabino

  2. Department of Studies and Researches, CTM SpA, viale Trieste 159/3, 09123, Cagliari, Italy

    Benedetto Barabino & Sara Salis

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  1. Benedetto Barabino
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  2. Sara Salis
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Correspondence to Sara Salis.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 7 Notational glossary for the passenger demand
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Appendix 2

Table 8 Notational glossary for the mathematical formulation of the model
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Barabino, B., Salis, S. Moving Towards a More Accurate Level of Inspection Against Fare Evasion in Proof-of-Payment Transit Systems. Netw Spat Econ 19, 1319–1346 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11067-019-09468-3

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