Swedish Fare Dodgers Organize Against Transportation Authorities 389
An anonymous reader writes "Every transit network has its fare beaters, the riders who view payment as either optional or prohibitively expensive. Many cities, most notably New York, view turnstile-jumpers as a top policing priority, reasoning that scofflaws might graduate to more serious crimes if left alone. But in Stockholm, the offenders seem to have defeated the system. From the article: 'For over a decade, Mr. Tengblad has belonged to a group known as Planka.nu (rough translation: “free-ride.now”), an organization with only two prerequisites for admission: Members must pay a monthly fee of about $15 and, as part of a continuous demonstration against the fare, promise to evade payment every time they ride. If travelers keep their side of the agreement, the group will cover any of the roughly $180 fines that might result. (An unlimited ride pass for 30 days costs about $120.)'"
Re:Public transit (Score:5, Informative)
The fine you get when you're caught dodging the fare is legally not a fine but a punitive ticket price(straffavgift). If you're caught by the police dodging the fare (Sometimes they stand around trying to catch criminals or illegal immigrants) then you get an actual fine (ordningsbot) which is actually not covered by planka.nu and can show up on your permanent record.
Essentially it's important to understand that Sweden makes an extremely clear distinction between those that have the authority to handle criminal matters and those who do not, the metro does not.
Re:Insurance (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In the US the people running the organization (Score:4, Informative)
When RICO was used against political protesters, it was not used by prosecutors or police. It was used by their political opponents in a civil suit, and the penalties were not accessed against the protesters (who broke the law), but against the organizations the protestors were assumed to be representing, many of which did not condone the law breaking. This was not at all an attempt to punish lawbreaking, but was a clear attempt to silence dissent. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously [nytimes.com] against this particular abuse of racketeering laws.
Re: Public transit (Score:4, Informative)
So people who drive cars, and therefore use public transportation less or not at all, should pay more so that people who do use the system pay less?
Absolutely! That's how you tackle congestion. The more people that use cheap public transport the less cars there are on the road.
Did you know that the American cities that used to have good public tram systems lost them because the automobile industry bought them out and scrapped them, so people had no choice but to buy a car. That misdeed needs undoing.