The Editor,
Re. "TransLink expects cheating to be rare with Compass card" (The Tri-City News, Oct. 18).
Anyone who has spent some time in London, Paris, Tokyo, etc. has seen fare evaders enter the system by standing right against the back of a fare-paying customer and entering with him/her through the gates.
At any rate, buses everywhere have more cheaters than rapid transit. Since TransLink got its own police force, of all the buses I use, only the UBC 99 B line buses were checked, and no more than three or four times at that.
As for charging fares by the exact distance travelled, in all the cities on three continents where I have used transit, only trains charge by the exact distance travelled for the simple reason that train stations are far from one another - not the case with urban transit.
J-L Brussac, Coquitlam
