Teams of fare inspectors in plain clothes began patrolling the transit system and issuing tickets on Wednesday as part of the TTC’s efforts to reduce the estimated $140 million lost to fare evasion each year.
All plain clothes inspectors are carrying ID and are equipped with body-worn cameras to record customer interactions, the transit commission said in a release.
It added that inspectors will use discretion, whether in uniform or plain clothes, to ensure tickets are predominantly issued in cases of "willful evasion".
Tickets for not paying for a bus, streetcar or subway ride range from $235 to $425 depending on the nature of the offence. That money goes to the courts, not directly to the transit service.
The transit service said the approach was previously tested in 2018 and re-introduced three weeks ago with plain-clothes inspectors "educating" those found to be riding illegally.
The move to now begin writing tickets is part of a pilot project that will be reevaluated in January, according to TTC media relations.
I'd like to know more about how they estimate financial losses due to fare evasion
In Prague CZ (supposedly the 2nd best public transport system in the world) the "PID" has been employing "pain clothes inspectors" aka "revizori" for I suspect most of it's 100+ year history. There are currently 140 of them employed full time, they don't have body cameras and they come in pairs. Some of them are women. Comparing the sizes - 1.4 billion trips /year for PID and 600 million trips for TTC - it wouldn't be unreasonable to have few "inspectors" employed full time. Of course I don't know how significant fare evasion is in Toronto. Also - Public Transport should be free anyway.