there is a system called RAC

This is nothing but official market for reselling. And this is because the seats are numbered and managed to ensure seating is gauranteed. If seating need not be assured IR wouldnt bother. Try unreserved

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Wouldnt this result in a loss to BMTC and a profit to some other person

The whole point of selling a pass for a fixed price is, it is valid for the duration of the period mentioned regardless of the number of times it is used. It shouldnt matter who uses it. Personal identifiers in a pass is unnecessary policing overhead.

You dont create new users from the penny pinchers. These people who buy are only avoiding a single ticket, if they were daily users they would take a monthly pass. I am sure they wouldnt stand in the black market every day for a single ticket alternate. Your customers should be heavy users who will need it for the whole month (continus usage).

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The male/female marking is to ensure that resale fo pass is reduced to a certain extent. A male cannot use a female one and vice-versa so they feel taht resale can be reduced. That is the same reason for asking signatures as well as the age on the pass.

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How does it matter if the pass is resold? Why this unnecessary policing? If I bought a monthly pass and decided to sell it in the intermediate to somebody else because I find the need to buy an upgrade pass or I am moving out why should the BMTC bother?

Why does it matter who is using the pass as long as the date on the pass isnt expired and the pass has enough watermarks to ensure its authenticity?

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Its not for passes being resold taht way. It is u use the pass for the whole day and re-selling it after the complete usage of the same. EG: I buy a pass for Rs.32/- use it the entire day for about 40/- and sell it to some other person for Rs.10/- thus earning myself Rs.18/-(Notional Rs.8/- and resale Rs.10/-)Wouldnt this result in a loss to BMTC and a profit to some other person.The otehr person has paid Rs.10/- to some third party instead of BMTC and if he is on a long journey and re uses it for another Rs. 20/- BMTC loses Rs.20/- For more details try visting KBS after 8:30PM and u can find this happeneing all around there. Soem get caught but owing to crowd about 80% of them who resale escape.

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It is generally accepted that a ticket is issued under the condition that it is non-transferable & valid only for the journey in question on any transport (train /bus /aircraft) - this is printed on perhaps every ticket in the world.

Likewise, Bus Passes such as day pass, weekly pass, student pass, sr citizen pass, police duty pass, etc. are issued under the condition that it is non-transferable & is used only by the person to whom it was issued.

The above discussion indicates that there is misuse of daily bus passes - multiple users may be using a single ticket & passes are also being traded /sold when the pass holder has no more use of it for himself. This is obviously a contravention of the condition under which the ticket was issued & if conductors are removing cheats from buses, they are only carrying out their jobs & probably saving revenue for BMTC.

To stop these sort of malpractices, it is best to insist on photo ids from buyers (similar to monthly or other passes). The conductor then has to only write down the photo id no. on the pass. Upon checking, if the holder does not have the photo id or has an id that has a different no., then he would be caught easily & can be thrown out of the bus. This will save time for conductors & also, help in clamping down on misuse of daily passes.

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It is valid for the particular period of time agreed but whoever wants to use ti must buy it from the authorized person. The rs.20/- is just an example. By the way if you buy a ticket to particular place an dplan to get off before it will you be giving your ticket to some other person going till your stop. Absolute nonsense! You utilize the service but dont pay cost. It is true that I dont require the pass after travelling.Eg: You buy the pass for Rs.32/- use it the whole day fine no issues because you have paid Rs32/- for getting the services to the service provider. But how can u give it to the next person when u are not providing the service but being provided by BMTC. That means the service provider has to provide it to taht person free of cost? Why? Because someone else has given out the services of service provider without his permission.

And I am not sure if u are aware there is indeed a market for resale tickets. People wait to get the day passes and travel to their home saving some money. And there will be hundereds of people who do it meaning 100*10=1000 rupees a day is not earned by BMTC but service is provided to that amount.Superb!

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 IDS - think buffet dinner.  Yes - I can eat unlimited amount but that does not give me the right to share my dinner with a non-paying guest.  It does not give me the right to take the food home.

This is a reasonable restriction.  This is not a pay-per-use stored value card in which case transferability is not an issue.  

Srivathsa

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That means the service provider has to provide it to taht person free of cost? Why?

Because, thats what the service provider signed up for, to provide the service from the start date/time to end date/time. And its not free of cost as its already paid for by the person buying the ticket. Maximization of the value shouldnt be an enforcable overhead

It is generally accepted that a ticket is issued under the condition that it is non-transferable & valid only for the journey in question on any transport (train /bus /aircraft) - this is printed on perhaps every ticket in the world.

I can show you hundreds of public service tickets that dont have that message. I use one such pass on a daily basis.

I can eat unlimited amount but that does not give me the right to share my dinner with a non-paying guest

How do you enfoce that? How many people take a buffet and share with non paying guest? Is it beacuse they will be prosecuted or because they have their id checked against their reciept when serving?

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 I was not talking about enforcement but about a reasonable restriction.  The buffet was an analogy.  (In the serviced apartment that I lived in Singapore, there was a very clear rule that said that no taking breakfast out of the area).  Indian Railways tickets are not transferable e.g.  Even the Vajra tickets that are printed out from hand-helds have a condition on them that they are non-transferable and just because you are getting off the bus ahead of your stop does not give someone else the right to use your ticket till your original stop.

The service provider signed up to provide the service to that specific individual for the entire day.   If the individual now does not need the service for that period that is a loss he has to stomach.

This is called free riding.  The fact that one cannot police it out altogether does not mean it is okay.  Bombay locals have a pass with an ID card.

Srivathsa

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 Turnstiles are different. They are on a pay per use basis

Not necessarily, I use a monthly unlimited ride pass on the turnstile. It does not work beyond the month. In between the month it does not matter who uses the pass or how many times I do. There is no personal identifier to attach me to the pass. Even single use tickets all over europe have only expiry times on it. You can buy a strip of single use tickets and punch the time before you travel, the clock goes for an hour after which you punch again. You could make as many trips as possible and whoever wants can use it. They do crackdown on selling it but they are transferable.

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Indian Railways tickets are not transferable

And my point being, why should they not be transferable? I am questioning the fact that they are non transferable! If I booked a trip to Bombay and i dont want to travel I should be able to give it to someone else who can use it.

Let us not believe that because we dont use a transferable ticket in India it is downright harmful. I use transferable ticket where the crackdown on selling happens in the marketplace. They go after people who sell and not instead make the ticket non-transferable by putting identifiers on it.

Can you quantify the loss suffered due to this resale market and the measures that can be adopted without having to put identifiers on the pass? Does one need to have the flexibility to transfer the pass without being able to sell it. Will such transferability increase usage of public transport? WIll resale allow for people who would normally not use public transport to try it out. 

So tomorrow when you get electronic tickets you need to swipe on the turnstile, how are you going to enforce personal identifiers and non-transferability?

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 Turnstiles are different.  They are on a pay per use basis. You don't get unlimited rides on a stored value card.  No free riding is happening.  

You don't get that right, because there is a system called RAC.  There was a person in the queue who was waiting for a person to cancel the ticket.  

To take your argument to the limit, a bus or train operates anyway between Point A and point B even when there is no passenger in it.  If it is anyway going, why can't I just sit in it given that I am not adding any cost to the journey?  Lots of people will use it.  

The root cause might that not enough data and thought has gone into fixing the price of passes.  

Srivathsa

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 The Ulhasnagar Ticketless Travel Insurance scheme?  There was a brilliant chap in Ulhasnagar (Thane) who came out with this.  

Each person paid a premium to him which was far less than the monthly pass cost.  If they got caught, all they had to do was pay up the fine and show the receipt to him.  He would reimburse the amount.  All was fine till the Railways got wind of this and they shut it down.

What is wrong with this scheme?  

Srivathsa

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 What is the tax rate in Sweden?  And in France and in Germany?  

 Because in Singapore there are no monthly passes.  Japan - they re not transferable.  Neither in Bombay.   

We can go on giving examples and counter examples.   What is your principle based argument that this is better for society and for the service provider?   (It is not okay to say that there is no difference because I could have sat in the train all day long and therefore how does it matter if another body is sitting instead of me.  The fact is that I did not sit in the train all day long).  

A service exists and runs properly because there are people paying for it.   The intent of a pass is to make it convenient for a regular user to travel without having to wait in queues and it reduces transaction costs for the service provider.   At low levels of free riding a system does not break down.  But if more people did this, then BMTC will either have to discontinue the daily pass system or charge more. 

Srivathsa

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but here, it is excessive enough to warrant severe measures that might unfortunately restrict even genuine or legitimate transfers.

Would really need to see an estimate of the losses due to this. I am not sure these draconian measures are customer friendly. The pass is subsidised anyway. If fuel is decontrolled then cost of operations is going to go up and the ticket prices consequently. Once you get to true cost of ticket passed on to the customer they will vote with their feet with such inflexibility. Transferable passes then becomes an automatic customer retention tool. I am sure if BMTC wasnt a monopoly you would see this flexibility from providers.

How come movie tickets dont have personal identifiers? Is reselling movie tickets tackled with IDs?

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And my point being, why should they not be transferable? I am questioning the fact that they are non transferable! If I booked a trip to Bombay and i dont want to travel I should be able to give it to someone else who can use it.

There usually are many wait-listed & the senior-most who has registered for a ticket is the one that deserves to benefit from your cancellation - not someone of your choosing. Besides, such a system of transferability has led to a large number of malpractices & black marketeering in train tickets in the past; or buses, in this case. Hence, the practice of transferability is unacceptable.

They go after people who sell and not instead make the ticket non-transferable by putting identifiers on it. Can you quantify the loss suffered due to this resale market and the measures that can be adopted without having to put identifiers on the pass? Does one need to have the flexibility to transfer the pass without being able to sell it. Will such transferability increase usage of public transport? WIll resale allow for people who would normally not use public transport to try it out. 

It is true that the day pass system has loopholes that need fixing - it can be done as suggested (ie. insist on a photo id & write the id no. when issuing the pass, similar to monthly /student passes). A day pass should be issued to a specific person without flexibility to transfer it since if such flexibility is made available, it can be misused as discussed above.

Making transferability available for the sake of a few genuine cases & for increasing PT usage sounds absurd when the reality is that cases of misuse are overwhelmingly large & stare us in the face, though such cases of cheating may seem trivial to some.

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What is your principle based argument that this is better for society and for the service provider?

On just fair principles I would not want to have personal identifiers on my tickets if seating is not going to be guarunteed.

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I would not want to have personal identifiers on my tickets if seating is not going to be guarunteed.

No city public transport guarantees a seat to anybody, but city bus or train passes almost always have identifiers. The daily pass by BMTC might be the only exception, but I'm certain they will realize this soon & clamp down on it hard.

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but city bus or train passes almost always have identifiers

Here are tickets where there are no identifiers. Top left & Bottom are single use tickets, Top right is monthly pass. No personal identifiers on any and they are usable on both train & bus.

Also check the unreserved ticket of Indian Railways if it enforces personal identifiers. How much of a black market is there in the unreserved?

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 If sold for higher prices than originally paid for at the counter such as when there is high demand, it is considered illegal & cops crack down on profiteers, isn't it ?

Yes, so while they retain transferability rights on the movie tickets, they dont put personal identifiers on the tickets and instead go after the black marketeers. So if bus tickets are being sold in black go after those people instead of putting non-transferability imprints preventing non-commercial sharing.

Again its a commercial decision of an entity based on how it wishes to conduct its business. Railways does this for their unreserved, I cant see why BMTC cant. Not that it has to.

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This discussion can go on & on with examples from elsewhere & counter arguments to support them. It is not about tickets, passes & common practices in Europe or elsewhere in the world. It is about tickets, passes & malpractices that are specific to India, & in particular BMTC bus daily passes.

I don't think it is hard for anyone to recognize that selling a day pass ticket to others is not ethically correct since that pass was issued in good faith to result in some savings for an individual & on the understanding that it would be used only by the one individual for the day, & that he would not cut down on it's price further by selling it to another individual.

People misuse anything & everything possible in this country & this clearly is another example. Europe may be much cleaner & such cases may be rare, but here, it is excessive enough to warrant severe measures that might unfortunately restrict even genuine or legitimate transfers.

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Would really need to see an estimate of the losses due to this

I don't think losses due to this might be large either - not presently anyway, but it nevertheless is a leakage in revenues for BMTC. If left unchecked in the spirit of flexibility for customers, the day is not far when almost every pass will be resold multiple times, & bus travel ticketing might well be dominated largely by resale of passes :-

X buys it for 32rs, does one trip costing 12rs & sells it to Y for 24rs (saving himself 4rs), who does one trip of 10rs & sells it to Z for 18rs (also saving 4rs), & so on. This may sound extreme, but such will happen. Srivathasa mentioned about the Ulhasnagar Ticketless Travel Insurance scheme - People in this country find every way possible to cheat the system.

I am sure if BMTC wasnt a monopoly you would see this flexibility from providers

The flexibility is not unwelcome from BMTC either, but as explained, the problem is that the number of cases of cheating if left unchecked, eventually become so huge that it can't be ignored right at the start. Private providers would most likely have built safeguards even before such a scheme were introduced, else they would correct themselves immediately when they chance upon any such malpractice or misuse.

How come movie tickets dont have personal identifiers? Is reselling movie tickets tackled with IDs?

Movie tickets are of no use to anyone if only half the show is to be watched - & hence resale midway through the show does not take place. Resale of tickets before the show begins (without any hike in rates) is legitimate & no one loses nor gains. If sold for higher prices than originally paid for at the counter such as when there is high demand, it is considered illegal & cops crack down on profiteers, isn't it ?

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 @IDS

you cannot call this as a result of monopoly. You have been given something to use U and allotted a period of time to use it. You used it within the time limits. There is no restriction that once u reach home you cannot travel out with that pass-you can do it till the end of the day. But U cannot pass it on to the other person because you have limited right on the pass that is to use it. There are words imprinted that is non-transferrable. Now what happens when u transfer it. It means you are giving opportunity to a person to enjoy the rights but without any obligation to pay the person from whom u are enjoying the same. Whenever a right is to be provided there is a duty. 

Govt. is only recovering the running costs by giving tickets and hence it is mandatory that anyone who uses it pays for the running costs to travel.How can a person travelling pay someone else who has not incurred cost of running the vehicle but only travelled by the same. He doesnt own the right over the vehicle-only over the reciept given as payment of the amount.

Now you pay the fees to your son for degree examination ad allow some other person to take that exam? Will you accept ? Or will the university accept?University is not going to lose anything but wrt BMTC it is question of revenue loss.

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of ridiculously high bus ticket prices..which make the passes lucrative..maybe someone should check on the prices!

About passes..how about limiting the number of trips a pass user can do and the conductor can punch holes to keep track of the trips..say 10 trips per pass or something

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The most important criterion has to be ease of compliance and enforcement. It's in that context that I had repeatedly been suggesting a single uniform charge per ride, as compared to the present 'stage' (from where the the term 'stage carriage service' perhaps came into use) fare, whose essential feature is its pilfer-friendliness (and, perhaps the reason why it won't be dismantled). Single uniform charge per ride regime can then, with a bit of simple automation, do away with the conductor. Passes, ID cards, etc, on the contrary, are just creating and adding to the inspection regime.

 

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X buys it for 32rs, does one trip costing 12rs & sells it to Y for 24rs (saving himself 4rs), who does one trip of 10rs & sells it to Z for 18rs (also saving 4rs),

On a lighter note, I wouldnt mind getting into this exchange market for pass instrument of face value Rs 32. SPX may soon start trading derivatives like pass options & futures. Nice liquidity, and surely AAA rated.

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if bus tickets are being sold in black go after those people instead of putting non-transferability imprints preventing non-commercial sharing.

Cases of misuse with daily bus passes are probably already in the hundreds, if not in the thousands now & may soon run into lakhs, if left unchecked. This occurs each single day, for 365 days a year as travel is a basic need for everybody, unlike movies.

For movie tickets, cases of profiteering might not number more than perhaps a few dozen, & that too at certain cinema halls when there is a movie for which tickets are in great demand.

Thus, they are in no way comparable.

Railways does this for their unreserved, I cant see why BMTC cant. Not that it has to.

It's more about poor ethical standards by an unfortunately large section of users. Most would fail to see that this tantamounts to misuse, & even if they did, they wouldn't bother since the savings on tickets is more attractive to them.

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My sincier thanks to everyone who have had a lots of thoughts about this. Well, I am thinking that inlcuding BMTC daily pass in lottery scheme(if not already included) may achieve goal partially. I am percieving lottery idea that it would work due to our believe in luck (which is positive vis-a-vis policing/inspection/enforncement) result in following ways :

1) It would make a pass holder to think about a lucky draw he/she is loosing. (Provided BMTC creates awareness very well)

2) In case a pass holder wants to sell really, he/she may also make little costlier to secondery buyer as he is selling a "value added" item. Thus reducing potential sale transaction. It may happen vice versa

3) BMTC will incur more expenses as it will have to give prizes. BMTC should weigh this option before launching. If BMTC thinks that resale market is really bring a huge loss then it may think about this lotter idea. Also BMTC has to look into the success factor it achieved for its regular ticket.

4) Though there is a remote chance ,it may result in some people ending up collecting used passes by paying some amount to just test their luck by spending amount for this improper activity and using BMTC services.

5) It may act as brand building activity if BMTC put its punchline ( say "BMTC Winner", "Go BMTC" etc) on prize items. I imagine BMTC can choose such an item which can be used by a winner with a proud. Example : wrist watch, back-packs, mobile phone cover, ladies bags, Sun Caps .

6) If conductor/drivers also made part of lottery winning process, I bet they will increase their effort( I have seen already they are doing a lot).

Last but not least, BMTC can encourage return of used daily passes, in turn conducting a lottery for returned daily passes. But that may result in additional burden if economical calculation does not workout !

What do you think?

Another Note : Do still people think this M/F marking is good idea? I see contradiction in daily pass implementation. While daily pass is intended to be non-transferable , logically it should have person identifier, thus ability to track/stop transfer. M/F is not an full identifier though. If its other way, BMTC should remove M/F marking/ Signature/Age and make it freely transferable, but use indirect positive ideas/methods to stop revenue leakage.

Thanks again and I remain

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In January, BMTC’s checking staff collected Rs 7,64,435 as fine from 8,736 people for ticketless travel; Rs 5,22,253 from 2,257 people for misuse of daily passes.

From TOI

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The Daily pass of Rs. 32 should be split into Forenoon and Afternoon passes of Rs. 16 each. This will avoid resale of passes in the afternoon.

K.V.Pathy

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Today I saw the daily pass. Very small improvement  but well thought. It was very hard to mark m/f in pass, there was chance of wrong marking in moving/shaking bus. Now see it is resolved. There are 2 icons for male and female far enough to clearly mark.

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