Metra urging riders to out cheaters, lax conductors

Does your fellow Metra traveler fudge the truth on their final destination? Is the conductor lackadaisical about collecting fares?

Do tell.

Metra has launched a “Be Fair, Pay the Fare” campaign that encourages riders to spill the beans about rule breaking on trains.

It's an effort to recoup every dollar, as agency leaders contemplate ticket increases of up to 32 percent in light of a $65 million budget deficit for 2012.

For starters, Metra CEO Alex Clifford said, commuters should put their tickets or passes in a visible spot and alert conductors if it wasn't punched or checked.

Riders also should contact the Metra website at metrarail.com if they perceive a conductor failing to collect tickets.

And if other passengers ride past their ticketed destination or scam the system in other ways, Metra wants to know about that, too, so it can work with crews to prevent future occurrences.

The issue surfaced this summer, when Metra leaders announced they had learned about instances of staff neglecting to check for tickets and sent out observers to conduct spot checks.

As to how much revenue has been lost, “we're still collecting that data,” Clifford said recently.

The money likely is not a huge amount, but it's important to show the agency isn't wasteful and takes every fare seriously, he added.

Riders “have told us, ‘if you're going to raise fares, you had better do your part to collect the fares,'” Clifford said.

Regarding the number of problems, “I still believe that we're talking about a very small number of conductors,” he said. “The overwhelming majority treat this as if it was a dollar out of their own pockets.”

Asked if riders would be comfortable identifying scofflaws or conductors, passengers are already doing just that, Clifford explained.

“We're just providing them with another tool to do what they're doing today,” he said. “Riders are communicating with us at an incredible rate.”

When trains are packed to the gills during rush-hour or after special events, the agency doesn't blame conductors for not being able to squeeze through the cars.

In those cases, officials have to analyze if paying for extra conductors to collect fares is worth the cost, Deputy Director of Operations George Hardwidge said.