Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Is It Illegal to Ask Bus Riders to Show Their Tickets?" video.

The date of 2046 has to do with the expansion plans on the service. I think that's when the last bits of the train system is scheduled to be completed. I wouldn't expect that to be obvious to anybody from outside the area. Also, these searches aren't random on the individual level. They generally have to do the entire train or bus, rather than on an individual basis unless they've seen somebody skip payment.
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I saw a similar system to the one we use for Sound Transit when I visited Italy in the late '90s. You'd have to buy a ticket before boarding the bus, and there'd be a machine to stamp it with the time. If the police caught you without a ticket with an appropriate stamp on it, they'd write a ticket. Which is basically how this works, but in a country with a different legal tradition. The reason they did it that way, is that it greatly speeds up the process of getting people on and off the bus as they don't have to deal with collecting payment while stopped.
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If you do that, then they wouldn't have statutory authority to issue citations for non-compliance. Even the tickets issued through speed cameras have to have a commissioned police officer do the actual writing and issuing of the citation. I for one, wouldn't be super comfortable with somebody that's not law enforcement being allowed to write tickets. Parking lot operators are bad enough, with the questionable contracts involved allowing them to do it.
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That's the thing, these aren't "random" checks in the sense that you're thinking, they will check everybody on a given train or bus for compliance, but the buses and trains that they check are random. From what I recall of my, 2 rides, on BART, this system isn't that much different, there's no method of preventing people without tickets from leaving at the end of their trip. But, apart from that, the system is very similar in terms of how payment is handled. You either have a pass or have to buy a ticket at a kiosk for the appropriate number of stops and once you've got that, you can board the relevant trains and get to where you're going.
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We've had a string of assaults against drivers to the point where there's a notice on all transit vehicles making it clear that any assault on a transit employee is a felony. We've also got a lack of police available for responding to such crimes, as well as an uptick in general criminal activity. As a result, drivers don't ask if people don't pay. They may just skip right to calling transit police, but beyond that not so much.
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There's a number of issues there. First of all, it's not discretionary, they check everybody on the particular bus or train. They are specifically labeled as fare enforcement, and they wear clothing that is extremely high vis. There is absolutely no question about who they are or what they're there for. Yes, they'll do other things in terms of enforcing other crimes, they are police, but everybody with any knowledge of the system at all knows what they're there for.
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This is similar. The fare enforcment officers are clearly identiable to anybody in the area and you're not going to miss them. If you get off the vehicle in response to them getting on, they're likely to then have probable cause for more of a thorough search. This is a simlar system to what is in use in many other places in the world, the main difference, is that it's in the US where the expectations and law are somewhat different.
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This is more or less the same basic reasoning that allows for drunk driving checkpoints or security checks at the airport or courthouse. People using the service know that they may be required to show proof of payment. The main difference is that in this case, the only enforcement mechanism is being asked to show proof of payment. BART and many other systems have turnstiles that force you to either show the payment or pay the fine for riding the entire system. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of these situations where you're presumed to have agreed to it by virtue of being present when there may not be a viable alternative, but this is hardly unprecedented.
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It's a similar legal basis. You are present in this place where you know there may be a check, so you've consented. I don't personally like it, but it also happens with carding at bars or preventing unauthorized people from going into K-12 schools. I'll be interested at how the court addresses it as it's not just up or down on the issue of fare enforcement, they may find something in the middle where you're allowed to ask and check, but can't take other enforcement actions. The big issue though is that the guy had arrest warrants and this isn't much different from traffic stops where most felony arrest warrants are served.
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Something that got lost in the video because Steve isn't here is that the bus in question is a rapid transit bus, in that it's meant to load as many people on as quickly as possible, so there's no way of checking the tickets. Our regular buses do have a driver that you'd have to show payment to on the way through either in the form of a transfer, a card swipe or actually paying. It's not enforced much due to a string of felony assaults on drivres, but there would be the ability go generate probable cause there. The rapid transit buses have people entering the bus from any of the doors and the driver has no way of knowing who has and hasn't paid. So, buses are periodicall boarded at random for fare enforcement officers to verify that people have paid and fine those that lack evidence of payment. It's not any less constitutional than the requirement that people at bars have proof of age to be in there. My personal concern is that if this does get overturned that it may lead to other issues cropping up like the ability of bartenders to keep people out that are under the age or adults out of K-12 schools and the like as the authority to enforce that depends on the right to verify who are there on the basis of their presence in those locations. I do agree with the defense attorney that allowing the charge in this case doesn't set a good precedent either, I just don't think this is as open and shut as some folks here make it sound.
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@no_peace Honestly, I think the system here is probably not that different from other systems. You can pay for a ticket with cash, credit or money loaded onto a transit card. Or, you can use the transit card's RFID chip to pay for it directly. Somewhere around here, I've got an Oyster card from Hong Kong that functions similarly. Since we don't have physical barriers to prevent people from entering areas of the system without paying, so we get these random checks of everybody on the bus or train. I think the main difference is that this is being litigated in WA, USA, so the legal result may not quite match with other nations or states.
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They verify it by you either showing them the printed ticket from one of the kiosks or you present your physical card and they have little machines that verify that they've been scanned within the allowed time frame. The only way in which you could pay for a ride and not have a physical proof of purchase would be if you either lost the ticket, or there was a malfunction at the kiosk that prevented one from being printed. In other words, it's highly unlikely that you'd pay and not have the ticket, unless you lose it. And even if you do lose it, if you paid via credit, debit or one of the ORCA cards, you'd likely have the ability to legitimately get the fine overturned without much effort.
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