A report on reducing fare evasion in NSW transport

with biometrics

Prepared by:
Ammar Khan (12130302)

Presented to
Mr. Tom Frengos

Technology Research Preparation 32144

Masters of Information Technology, Spring 2015

Table of Contents
1.

Executive Summary............................................................................................................1

2.

Introduction.........................................................................................................................2

3.

Research Aims and Objectives...........................................................................................3

4.

Background.........................................................................................................................4

5.

Research Significance and Innovation................................................................................7

6.

Research Methods...............................................................................................................8

7.

Conclusion and Results.......................................................................................................9

References................................................................................................................................10
APPENDIX..............................................................................................................................12

1. Executive Summary
The transport department of a government body is one the most important departments of
civil service. It literally drives the economic growth of an area. New South Wales hosts
Sydney, which happens to be the economic, financial and banking capital of Australia; as well
as being a very prominent tourist city. Thus NSW dept. of transport is responsible for moving
many foreign and local passengers in and out of the state. But in doing so, the transport
system often becomes burdened with people trying to evade fare. Our hypothesis is that this
fare evasion problem can be reduced with the introduction of biometric recognition system.
To prove our hypothesis, we are proposing a research approach to test the viability of this
project by conducting interviews with appropriate transport department representative and do
a qualitative and comparative study of a case study to investigate a number of issues
including:
- Ways and methods an offender manages to evade fare.
- Feasibility of such a system in reducing fare evasion.
- Biometrics and its compatibility with the current infrastructure at transport services.
The next part of our research would be based on qualitative interview and comparative case
studies to identify solutions to the above mentioned questions.
This research essentially aims to add to the current gap in knowledge regarding implementing
biometric systems in transport to reduce fare evasion. It also aims to address the gap in
knowledge regarding how a person will go about trying to evade fare and game the system.
From this research we may be able to highlight if there is a gap in the information available
online on biometrics systems as a whole.
In the long-term, this system will help save millions of taxpayer money annually and will
contribute towards building of a better and more secure transport system.

2. Introduction
In recent years the trend of population growth has exceeded exponentially in New South
Wales. Most of the population is concentrated in and around Sydney, which will grow by
100,500 people annually (Department of Planning and Environment 2015). As with such
population growth, expenditures in public transport have been rising. Due to this rise in
population the government needs to undertake more development projects and thats where
reducing cost via fare evasion comes in. The NSW Bureau of Transport Statistics estimates
that it loses AUD 61.2 million annually (Bureau of Transport Statistics, 2014) due to this
fraudulent activity. Although previously Opal cards (Department of Transport, 2015) have
been introduced into the system, this report will look at how the problem of fare evasion still
exists. This report found out that Opal cards have issues with smart-card (Attoh-Okine and
Shen, 1995) and that Opal card themselves dont contribute towards reducing fare evasion.
Research into this particular area of applying biometrics for fare compliance is not current but
interview with relevant department representative informed us that this sort of solution is
required and will really benefit the transport system.
That is why this report aims to assess the viability of using biometrics to reduce fare evasion.
Since there is a lack of comparative case study we will try to draw a parallel with the use of
biometric recognition in other areas of security (Ko, 2008). We hypnotize that biometrics
having played a big part in security applications (Gafurov, 2007) will again be beneficial in
reducing fare evasion. If the suggested approach in this report is implemented the department
of transport will be able to reduce the direct loss in taxpayer money. Also another advantage
will be the indirect cost saving that will incur if less time and manpower is needed to enforce
fare compliance that includes police officers reports and fare compliance officers. As part of
this research, interview with the relevant authority also allowed us to update and maintain a
list of all forms of fare evasion found in the NSW transport so that this information can be
updated for future reference of the department.
This report confirmed our hypothesis and found that implementing such a system would
require the least amount of hardware and infrastructure cost to the transport system, as most
of the required hardware is already in place. Also the ethical implications of this approach
will not hinder the implementation as the appropriate laws are already in place. However a
research gap was identified that stated that biometric and more specifically gesture
recognition are both very uncertain fields of study and thus implementing a system of such
calibre would require human control as well.
The project proposal will try to discuss the projects aims and objectives in the next sections.
Later this report will look a background/ literature review of the relevant research that has
already been done in this or similar area. This report will then list down the significance and
suggested innovation. We also outline research methods and results in the last section.

3. Research Aims and Objectives

Our research aims to investigate a number of issues and challenges which are being faced by
the NSW transport. These are the main aims of our research:
-

How is big of a problem fraud evasion really is and how do the NSW transport
department prioritize it?
What actually defines fare evasion for NSW transport and what are the way by which
offenders evade fare?
What is NSW transport department doing to reduce fare evasion and where it still
feels more needs to be done?
How effective will implementing a biometric system be in the context of fare evasion?
What are the challenges of implementing a biometric system to detect fare evasion?
What are the ethical issues of implementing a biometric system to detect fare evasion?

These are issues which we have to analyse by studying similar cases in multiple papers and
annual reports published by NSW transport department and interview to authorized
department representatives. We will take a qualitative approach to understanding this problem
and judge the feasibility of applying such a biometric system to reduce
Our main objective of research is, how biometric system can improve NSW transport
capabilities and performance by employing a smart solution to reduce fare evasion.

4. Background
Transport authority of NSW (New South Wales) are rendering services to public to facilitate
them with day to day travelling needs. Rails, light rails, buses, ferries has equal contribution
towards succession of developed network. Our area of interest is to deal with implemented
smart card like Opal technology to carry out fare transactions. As mentioned in fare
compliance report, released by transport department every year based on analytical data
collection, this report is for generating a research proposal with object to lessen fare
mitigation by the customers. Trains covers a vast regional zone and several cities
transportation of about 34.7 million trips annually (Department of transport, 2014b), 32.9
million train journeys fall under Sydney train department (Department of transport,
2014c).Considering the monetary investment a total amount of AUD 10.38 billion including
AUD 6.9 billion to support management. Projection says Sydney is expecting increment in
their migrants or residents by a million over a decade. An approach is essential to save cost
and deplete expenditure.
As the report deals with NSW transportation facilities available for general public and more
concisely with one of the largest finance capital of Australia which is Sydney. The city has 43
councils in total. Furthermore these panels are containing over 650 suburbs, Suburbs are
connected via road and rail tracks. This city conveyance is governed by NSW transport
authority with the help of Sydney metro trains, trams (light rail), ferries and buses. Taxis,
charter buses is also involved in this converged network for travelling across the places but
still services provided by transport administration body of New South Wales holds a strong
firm hand on complex network. To reduce this complexion an effort had been made by
legislation, Initiation of smart card ticketing process rather than magnetic stripes based paper
tickets. An opal card came into existence in late 2012.

Image 1: Opal Card (www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au, 2015)

Undoubtedly it was a great approach to monitor and control the ticketing system. Ample of
transactions relating to travellers could be reasonably maintained for gathering fare, estimated
earning and evasion as well. Apparently opal is not a perfect form in some cases as it needs
scrutiny, at the time of exponential passengers growth and for fare evasion.
4

Image 2: Lost revenue by mode (November 2014 Fare Compliance Survey Result, 2015)

This proposal could subject as a saviour by reducing damage occurrence from tariff
avoidance. Several activities had been recorded in context to evasion techniques (November
2014 Fare Compliance Survey Result, 2015) for example, usage of a child opal card by an
adult person while wandering across the train stations. Customers transition from one place to
another with a discounted ticket but without an evidence that why they are the special
discount holder. Even sometimes ticket holder doesnt care about whether the pass is bona
fide or void. The problem still persist in an irrational way by having no ticket at all, travelling
along with the bunch of people where chance of getting caught is low likewise in buses and
ferries as blink of an eye could lead to an elusion. Simply interrupt their journey in the middle
just to dodge ticket and opal card checking threat. Pensioner opal card benefits to a nonpensioner person to ignore peak time rates. Various surveys had been conducted and Sydney
statistics related to fare compliance was 93.8 percent, 97.1 percent, 84.7 percent and 93.5
respectively in terms of rail, ferries, road transport service (buses), and light rail (Bureau of
Transport Statistics, 2014).Yet after this, an analysis portrays unfavourable figure, as
department of transport has a costing of AUD 61.2 million in a year which is an accumulated
value by fare evasion only. However, considering current scenario the next further years
could surpass that amount because increase in population will not bring only users but also a
stretch in fraudulent practices which is hard to monitor by smart card operations.

Image 3: Estimated Revenue Loss (November 2014 Fare Compliance Survey Result, 2015)

Opal, since its establishment displays a good positive result in regards to revenue losses
occurred from rail and ferries cost (November 2014 Fare Compliance Survey Result, 2015).
This survey regardless to any information for buses is still a matter of concern which could
give birth to more unconventional outcome possibly.
To elevate fare management procedure and to decrease evasion chances to its minimum. Our
recommendation is to suggest transport authority a concept of biometric technology build
ticket mechanism keeping in mind the facts and methodology and by going through analysis
presented on this report.

5. Research Significance and Innovation

There seems to be limited data on using biometric systems to detect fare evasion in a
transport system. Although it should be mentioned that work has been done to detect security
threats and authentication by detecting gait (Gafurov, 2007), the way a person walks, which
will help draw a parallel between the approach suggested by this proposal. We would
therefore like to determine this parallel through our research.
Our background research shows that in fact NSW transport is lacking in proper reduction of
fare evasion and relies too heavily on human error and random checks. To remove this
dependency and to reduce losses in the system, it would make sense to employ a digitised,
easily deployable, easily understood solution to reduce fare evasion. Thats why we assess
that our biometric system would do more good than cost.
The best part of our approach is that it utilises the current infrastructure already in place to
implement the system. Biometric systems require camera and backend servers to work which
dont need to be implemented specially for our system so this will help our approach being
implemented as well. Another advantage is that our approach will work with the OPAL cards
already implemented. So our approach is innovative in that we dont wish to re-invent the
wheel and ask the government and department to make huge investment, we would rather
enforce the system that is already in place and close its loopholes.
Another way our system is innovative because we not only propose a way to reduce fare
evasion but this also works towards mitigating the problem, that is stopping the offenders
before they commit the crime. We suggest implementing a fine system like the one already in
place
A preliminary search of security applications with biometric technologies shows that there are
still issues with this technology (Ko, 2008). We aim for our research to shed further light on
this matter. If our research does indicate there is little discussion on reliability then we can
safely suggest that this is not the way to go. But we hypnotise that this will not happen as
biometric systems are increasingly getting implemented in the world (University of
Maryland, 2015). Another major importance of this system is the huge implication of security
it has on the safeguarding of the transport system against terrorist threats.

6. Research Methods
To conduct this research and judge the feasibility of this research, we have conducted
research with two methods. The first method will be us looking at the similar case studies like
the one implemented in in London (Clarke 1993), we learned that implementing of a digital
solution like ticketing and better turnstiles always decrease the number of cases of fare
evasion. This yields us qualitative results as there is no single case of implementing a
biometric system, more specifically gait and gesture recognition (Gafurov, 2007), in the
context of fare evasion. But we learn some ways of detecting fare evasion as learned by the
Victorian transport department (Public Transport Victoria, 2014).
The second will involve interviewing the relevant authority on fare compliance in various
departments at transport NSW. We will aim to interview at least 5 fare compliance officers
from different stations and modes of transport. We will have someone form the headquarters
as well, since they will have the birds-eye view of the whole system.
The interview conducted was qualitative and mostly deals with learning about NSW transport
system, fare evasion as a problem, and the feasibility of biometrics in a system. This is how it
was broken down:
- Questions 1 to 2 deal with fare evasion and its burden on the transport system.
- Questions 3 to 7 deal with ways and methods people apply to perform fare evasion
and some time slots and suburbs more evasion is experienced.
- Questions 8 to 10 deal with the solutions and practises that NSW transport already has
in place to reduce fare evasion.
- Question 11 to 14 deal with the best practises in implementing the biometric approach
we have suggested.
- Question 15 deals with the benefit this system has on the transport system as a whole.
As a preliminary research we sat down with the customer relations manager, Mr Cory
Roeton, and asked him the questions (included in the appendix) to get a clear view and the
scope of our work. This also allow us to enrich the findings from research papers, get updated
facts and better update our research.
Our project will be successful if we can garner enough support and interest from the NSW
transport department and complete a proper fact-finding way of interviewing to learn about
ways to detect fare evasion and implement a system based on that. As well as do a qualitative
analysis of the false positives generated by our implemented biometric system. The research
is exploratory, descriptive and flexible in nature to do that.

7. Conclusion and Results

Fundamentally, main purpose of research is, measurements taken by NSW transport
department to reduce fare evasion and where it still feels more needs to be done and why they
must need to do this. It also aims to focus on the feasibility of biometrics to reduce the fare
evasion in transport.
According to the annual report November 2014 Fare Compliance Survey Result, 2015, we
have concluded that there are around four common ways to do fare evasion by the offenders.
These ways and steps are: not having a ticket, concession misuse, overriding and run away.
Through this survey the most important and vibrant way which hits the transport economy is
Not having the ticket. The previous research papers also indicate ways biometric
technology is beneficial in security applications.
Through interview conducted with Customer Relations Manager and Station Master of
Central, Mr. Cory Roeton, our findings are:

According to the NSW transport, fare evasion issue is not high priority for them but
they are actively looking for a solution to this problem.
They are using face recognition technology in transport already and thus are interested
in the application of our biometric technology in parallel to their system.
Main areas of the fare evasion are the NSW regional stations and stations that do not
have proper gate system.
The NSW fare compliance dept. relies heavily on manpower but also recognizes that
this causes human error and thus a better system is needed.

Through this research we have drawn and highlighted the hypothesis that biometrics will help
to transport to overcome the expenditures and fare evasion to get rid of annual lose. With our
proposed research method, transport system can easily implement biometrics technology to
current working OPAL system without any new invention and technology. So overall this is
the best approach to reduce the fare evasion and this approach also stop the offenders to do
the crime as well.

References
Attoh-Okine, N. O. & Shen, L. D. Security issues of emerging smart cards fare collection
application in mass transit. Vehicle Navigation and Information Systems Conference,
1995. Proceedings. In conjunction with the Pacific Rim TransTech Conference. 6th
International VNIS. 'A Ride into the Future', 30 Jul-2Aug 1995 1995. 523-526.

Bureau of Transport Statistics, 2014, Fare Compliance Survey Results November

2014, viewed 6 September 2015, <
http://www.bts.nsw.gov.au/ArticleDocuments/80/trans2015-06fare_compliance_survey_2014.pdf.aspx>.

Clarke, R. V. 1993. Fare evasion and automatic ticket collection on the London underground.
Crime Prevention Studies, 1, 135-146.

Department of Transport, 2015, Opal Card, viewed 6 September 2015, <

http://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/content/opal-card>

Department of Transport, 2014a, Transport for NSW Annual Report, viewed 6 September
2015,
<http://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/b2b/publications/annual_reports/t
fnsw-annual-report-2013-2014.pdf>

Department of Transport, 2014b, Sydney Trains Annual Report, viewed 6 September 2015,
<http://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/b2b/publications/annual_reports/s
ydney-trains-annual-report-2013-14.pdf>

Department of Transport, 2014c, NSW Trains Annual Report, viewed 6 September 2015,
<http://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/b2b/publications/annual_reports/n
sw-trains-annual-report-2013-14.pdf>

10

Department of Planning and Environment, 2015, Population Projections, viewed 6

September 2015, <http://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/en-AU/Research-andDemography/Demography/Population-Projections>

Gafurov, D. A survey of biometric gait recognition: Approaches, security and challenges.

Annual Norwegian Computer Science Conference, 2007. Citeseer, 19-21.

Ko, T. A survey on behavior analysis in video surveillance for homeland security

applications. Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop, 2008. AIPR'08. 37th
IEEE, 2008. IEEE, 1-8.
Public Transport Victoria, 2014, Victorian Official Fare Compliance Series, viewed 6
September 2015, < http://ptv.vic.gov.au/assets/PTV/PTV%20docs/FareEvasion/MACA-Report-Victorian-Official-Fare-Evasion-Series-May-2014.PDF>

Transport for London 2015, Annual Report and Statement of Accounts, viewed 6 September
2015, <https://tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/annual-report-2014-15.pdf>

University of Maryland 2015, Computer Vision: Visual-Event Recognition for Security and
Science, viewed 6 September
2015,<http://www.research.umd.edu/sites/default/files/documents/brochures/computer
-vision.pdf>

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APPENDIX
The following are the interview questions we used to question transport department
representative:

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TRANSPORT DEPT.

1. How is big of a problem fraud evasion really is and how do the NSW transport
department prioritize it?
2. How much of an impact does fare evasion have on the annual performance of NSW
transport?
3. What actually defines fare evasion for NSW transport i.e. what are the major and
common ways of fair evasion in NSW trains?
4. What are the common timings in which people do fair evasion?
5. Do you think that people dont use Opal/ Ticket or are more prone to evade fare in
peak hours due to higher fare?
6. Which suburbs or lines report the most fare evasion?
7. Do you think the situations worsens when we take regional lines in to question?
8. Usually in a day, how many times does staff conducts rounds to check passengers
tickets/ Opal for a single line?
9. What is the department doing to reduce fare evasion? And what is it doing to mitigate
it?
10. How would you assess the fine for fare evasion? Has the fine been successful in
persuading repeat offenders?
11. How effective will implementing a biometric system be in the context of fare evasion
be? (after explanation of our system)
12. What are the ethical concerns (if any) of the Dept. to this?
13. What are some direct benefits of a reduction in fare evasion?
14. Will the customer see a reduction in fair price?
15. How interested would the Sydney Trains be in a system like this?
12

INTERVIEW PICTURES:

13