People who have a penchant for hopping on buses in Copenhagen without a valid ticket are in for a rude awakening in the near future.
The bus operator Movia has hired a private guard firm G4S in a bid to come to terms with the ticket cheats in the capital region following revelations that 2.66 percent of the passengers on their buses were riding illegally last year.
“We need to push the cheat percentage down even further, although we haven’t set a specific target yet as to how much,” Søren Englund, the centre head at Movia, told Metroxpress newspaper.
“It’s about being more visible on the buses and creating a preventative effect. If we weren’t there, the cheat numbers would rise significantly.”
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Apeing Aarhus
Movia expects that the move will triple the income it receives from fined passengers from its originally-budgeted 8 million kroner for 2016 to 23.4 million kroner.
A similar initiative in Aarhus already has a proven track record. In 2013, Midttrafik bus operators hired a guard firm and the percentage of passengers without a valid ticket fell from 3.32 percent in 2012 to 1.67 percent this year.
Hiring the guard firm has also increased its income from ticket sales. Cash ticket sales increased by 5.4 percent from 2012-2014 and sales of the now-retired ‘Klippekort’ and periodical tickets – such as the month card – shot up by almost 10 percent.
