An Egged ticket inspector is attacked by a passenger.
Taken from a body camera of another visitor/Agg
During 2023, 238,146 reports on non-payment were distributed to public transportation passengers, amounting to more than 24 million shekels. 92% of the reports were distributed to Egged passengers, which is also the largest bus company, but not by such a gap.
The data came up in a follow-up meeting on the subject held today by the committee The special one for public inquiries headed by MK Yitzhak Pindros (Torah Judaism) regarding the powers and conduct of inspectors in public transportation.
The inspectors often suffer violence from the passengers, who know that, contrary to the Ministry of Transportation's promises to upgrade their powers, they have no ability to require passengers to identify themselves, and the Ministry of Transportation even intends to prohibit them from holding up a bus until a police officer arrives, in a move that will benefit passengers who avoid paying.
Therefore, the fine for non-payment on the bus is NIS 100 and on the light trains - NIS 180.
According to the data of the Ministry of Transportation, more than 20% of the passengers do not pay for the trips (photo illustration)/Official website, Avshalom Sashoni, Ma'ariv
Enforcement is carried out by the companies according to the state's requirement, in order to ensure its revenues from travel.
The state finances about 70% of the cost of public transportation, and the passengers pay the rest through the fares.
The amounts that passengers pay when loading their Rav Ko cards, in apps or at the cash desks in the central stations, do not go into the company treasury, but are transferred directly to the state.
The companies all together employ 977 inspectors, with a salary of about NIS 10,000 per month, according to data from the Ministry of Transportation.
862 inspectors are employed directly by the companies and another 115 are funded by the state.
The head of the Public Transportation Authority, Idan Moalem, wrote to the committee that this is not a source of profit for the companies and that the company's revenue from fines to passengers is far from financing their cost, and that they are required to transfer 8% of the value of the fines to the state coffers.
According to him, on the lines where enforcement has been increased, the number of passengers who do not pay for the trip has decreased.
Failure to pay hurts passengers who do pay, makes it difficult for the state to add trips, track passenger traffic and get the information it needs to decide on strengthening existing lines and creating new ones.
The enforcement system costs the companies NIS 103.5 million a year in aggregate, and their revenues after the transfer of the Ministry of Transportation's share reach NIS 16 million.
Attorney Ofer Levy from the Legal Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation, said at the hearing that "a large number of passengers - increases the revenue of the operators, while large amounts of fines reduce the travel experience and decrease the number of passengers.
The operators are not hired by law enforcement through inspectors.
We are in the process of formulating and distributing a new procedure regarding the distribution of fines which should begin at the beginning of April.
There is a significant difference in the powers of the bus inspectors and the light rail inspectors.
The inspector of the light rail has more extensive powers than his counterpart who works on the bus."
Gal Hershkovich, an audit and collection consultant at Egged, said that "the amount of reports distributed by Egged's inspectors reflects 2.8 reports per inspector every day. The inspector only distributes reports to - 1.5% of the number of passengers he checks. Our inspectors check about 800,000 passengers a month, of which 15,000 fines are handed out and only about 200 complaints are received about the conduct of the inspectors. If the conduct of the bus inspectors was grossly improper, we would receive a flood of complaints. Each auditor of Egged is trained by an external company through a large number of simulations. The cost that Egged spends on training the inspectors and their financing exceeds the income they provide to the company."
More in Walla!
Pietro is celebrating a round birthday and you enjoy a once-in-60-years sale
In collaboration with Pitro
MK Yitzhak Pindros/Reuven Castro
According to the data of the Kafir company that operates the light rail in Jerusalem, since the start of its operations in April 2021, the total amount of money collected for fines constitutes only about 43% of the cost of operating the system of inspectors and collection.
According to the data of Tevel, the operator of the Red Line in Gush Dan, the average monthly expenditure for the inspection system is about half a million NIS per month. On the other hand, the amount of fines that enter the company is only about 75 thousand NIS.
Yossi Ozan, Chairman of the Board of Inspectors at Superbus , said in the discussion that: "Inspectors from various sectors of Israeli society work for us, but they do not receive sufficient training and guidance.
The bus inspectors are exposed to violence against them while they just want to do their job faithfully.
If we don't get the proper professional envelope we won't be able to do our job.
The status of the inspector in Israel needs to rise.
Before we are inspectors, we are service providers."
Despite this, Chairman Pindros summed up the discussion: "Public transportation passengers feel that the inspectors do not have an appropriate service awareness. We need to examine in depth the possibility of public transportation supervision by a third party that is not the operating company. Requesting the Ministry of Transportation to check the quality of the training of the inspectors in the various bus companies and to unify them all. Before the Ministry of Transportation publishes its procedure for inspectors, it is asked to publish it for public comment."
The companies that collected the most fines
The company
The number of reports
The sums of the fines
Agged |
197,599 |
19,941,170
Dan |
7,865 |
779,705
Dan Beer Sheva |
6,939 |
693,560
lines |
6,350 |
658,020
avenues |
6,090 |
619,235
data: Ministry of Transport for 2023
More on the same topic:
Public Transport