Riders duck tolls with much ease

• Source: Global Times
• [09:31 June 25 2010]
• Comments

Mao Xiaojing, an official in charge of the crackdown, added that there is a further growing problem of younger riders wrongfully using senior citizen cards, which allow free entry, and this is also difficult for subway authorities to detect. And when passengers who are caught and refuse to pay up, rarely do subway staff resort to calling police, she said.

Thursday afternoon at People's Square station, over the course of 10 minutes this Global Times reporter spotted a handful of riders ducking through the tolls without paying.

According to a report by Xinmin Evening News Thursday, hundreds of the city's 5,500,000 daily passengers sneak onto trains every day without shelling out any cash.

The problem has become more apparent since 2007, when the city began adopting automated ticketing machines at subway stations, reducing the number of employees inside subways.

As a result, the majority of subway stations around the city today have only one service counter, normally staffed with no more than a couple of people.

Shanghai implemented a penalty system a few years ago that forced those caught to pay five times the original fare, but it was never properly enforced, according to Feng Hao, a press officer for the Shanghai Shentong Subway Company, which oversees the all of the subways in the city.

Though many subway regulations affecting riders have been made over the years, including a ban this year that prohibits passengers from bringing bicycles onto trains, there are no rules on what subway authorities can do about riders who sneak onto trains without paying fares.