Over the past week we have witnessed a media exchange of views between public transport experts, both private and public, regarding the financial crisis facing Santiago’s transport system, mainly caused by the high levels of evasion imposed by a growing need for subsidies.
The debate is interesting, because it highlights the discrepancy that exists around the metropolitan bus transport system.
However, as a user who is one, the discussion is not so learned, but rather earthly, given that the inconvenience and discomfort are experienced daily, however the new buses enjoy spacious seats and air conditioning, the cleanliness in some of them is remarkable and, in the most, the noble treatment as deferential of the driver.
But returning to evasion, one confronts it in two dimensions. On the one hand, it annoys and irritates that 40% of passengers do not pay for their ticket. Many, mostly young, jump the turnstile and others enter through the back doors as they open to let passengers down. “You forgot to pay” or “the rise is ahead”, I usually say to those who “invade” evading. Faced with their eyes, often of indifference, other times threatening, we must reproach their actions despite the bad time that derives from it, insults in between. If I pay, it is undemocratic for others not to do so.
And here is the first question, what have we observed to prevent evasion. As an example, in the last 12 years I have been subject to only one inspection, which was carried out at the height of the Omniun Shopping Center, Las Condes commune, being surprised a woman as an evader, who was ordered to go down. But the above is sinuous with reality, because the bus came from East to West in a sector where evasion is relatively minor. How can we not design an intelligent whistleblowing system? There are applications to monitor transport times such as Moovit that could well be replicated to denounce and prosecute buses that transport unpaid passengers. But there is a lack of political audacity for this.
On the other hand, as a user, one observes a second dimension in evasion, which is also contractual with the State as the user, and that is the one executed by transport companies when they do not meet certain quality of service indicators. The above says relationship with frequency as regularity.
If we consider the “Ranking of Quality of Services of the Operating Companies of the Public Transport System”, which accounts for the standards, one looks with concern at certain rates of non-compliance. Regarding the behavior of the full-day frequency indicator, the companies Subus (89.84%) and STP (89.47%) do not meet the minimum required, while in peak tomorrow only STP (88.52%) does not reach the minimum required. The late tip reports the same two companies without complying in full day: Subus (85.59%) and STP (82.36%).
To make matters worse, in sectors not covered by the metro network, the monopoly of bus operators should be inspected more quickly and firmly. The foregoing cannot be ignored by the ministry of the branch through the Metropolitan Public Transport Directorate.
By way of conclusion, far away and with nostalgia one longs for those years in which one passed, from hand to hand, the value of the ticket to the driver and he returned the return from passenger to passenger. Unfortunately, that past is gone, and we are struck by a shameful present.
Therefore, given the level of indolence on the part of passengers, today, it is not trivial to decree a system of urban bus transport that works having as north the dignity of the user in what frequency as regularity says relationship, as well as sanctioning, once and for all, that 40% of evaders who ignore, Without disgust, the fulfillment of a duty as a civic obligation. The authority has an obligation to act in this regard. Otherwise, he is one more accomplice in all this.
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The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
